ABSTRACT
On 11 December 1994 Boris Yeltsin issued an order to the Russian armed forces to enter the breakaway republic of Chechnya and pacify it. In response to the international outcry over the indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilian targets in and around Grozny, Yeltsin announced an end to the bombing on 4 January. If Mikhail Gorbachev’s dislike of Yeltsin was intense and his wish to humiliate him clear, he stopped short of banishing him from political life when he had the opportunity. In the late twentieth century Russians once again rushed without preparation to import another Western institution. Parliamentary democracy would resolve decades of repression and bring about the country’s evolution to a normal state. The creation under Gorbachev of parliamentary institutions had released decades of pent-up energy and enthusiasm but these institutions rested upon no concrete social foundation.
