ABSTRACT
In the wreckage of the Soviet Union the line-ups grew longer. For many, money had almost ceased to have meaning, since there was nothing to buy. In the fall of 1991, shortly after being named first deputy premier of Boris Yeltsin’s government, he described the team as “a government of military field-engineers preparing a blast which will be like a minefield exploding.” Yeltsin considered the normal work of negotiation and political horse-trading with the Russian Congress as if it was an unnatural act. When Yeltsin finally decided on how to use the political capital from his referendum victory in April, it was to convene a constitutional assembly. The choice was significant; Yeltsin’s obsession with sweeping away the detested Congress was now coupled with a search for a political structure that would confirm the legitimacy of his regime and reinforce the powers of his office.
