In September and October 1993, a constitutional crisis arose in the Russian Federation from a conflict between the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the country's parliament. Yeltsin performed a self-coup, dissolving parliament and instituting a presidential rule by decree system. The crisis ended with Yeltsin using military force to attack Moscow's House of Soviets and arrest the lawmakers. In Russia, the events are known as the "October Coup" (Russian: Октябрьский путч, romanized: Oktyabr'skiy putch) or "Black October" (Чëрный октябрь, Chornyi Oktyabr').
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic turned into an independent country, the Russian Federation. The Soviet-era 1978 Russian constitution remained in effect, though it had been amended in April 1991 to install a president independent of the parliament. Boris Yeltsin, elected president in July 1991, began assuming increasing powers, leading to a political standoff with Russia's parliament, which in 1993 was composed of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet. After holding a four-part referendum in April on support for his leadership and socio-economical policies, as well as on support for early elections, Yeltsin called for parliamentary elections and dissolved the legislature on 21 September in a move not authorized by the constitution, nor approved by the referendum.
On 23 September, the parliament (led by Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov) impeached Yeltsin, proclaimed vice president Alexander Rutskoy the acting president, and barricaded itself in the White House building. Ten days of street fighting commenced between police and demonstrators loyal to Yeltsin and the parliamentarians. On 3 October, demonstrators removed militia cordons around the parliament and, urged by their leaders, took over the mayor's offices and tried to storm the Ostankino television centre. On 4 October, the army, which had remained neutral, shelled the White House using tanks and stormed the building with special forces on Yeltsin's orders, arresting the surviving leaders of the resistance. All of those involved in the events were later granted amnesty by the State Duma in February 1994 and released from jail.
At the climax of the crisis, Russia was thought by some to be "on the brink" of civil war. The ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of street fighting in Moscow's history since the October Revolution; 147 people were killed and 437 wounded according to the official Russian government statistics. In the wake of the events, Yeltsin consolidated his position, further expanded the powers of the executive, and pushed through the adoption of the 1993 constitution of the Russian Federation.
Origins
Intensifying executive–legislative power struggle
The Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991 and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic gained its independence as the Russian Federation. In Russia, Yeltsin's economic reform program took effect on 2 January 1992. Soon afterward, prices skyrocketed, government spending was slashed, and heavy new taxes went into effect. A deep credit crunch shut down many industries and led to a protracted depression. As a result, unemployment reached record levels. The program began to lose support, and the ensuing political confrontation between Yeltsin on one side, and the opposition to radical economic reform on the other, became increasingly centered in the two branches of government.
Throughout 1992, opposition to Yeltsin's reform policies grew stronger and more intractable among bureaucrats concerned about the condition of Russian industry and among regional leaders who wanted more independence from Moscow. Russia's vice president, Alexander Rutskoy, denounced the Yeltsin program as "economic genocide". From 1991 to 1998, the first seven years of Yeltsin's incumbency, the Russian GDP (measured by purchasing power parity) went from over two trillion U.S. dollars annually to less than one and a quarter trillion U.S. per annum. The United States provided an estimated $2.58 billion of official aid to Russia during the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency, to build a new economic system, and he encouraged American businesses to invest. Leaders of oil-rich republics such as Tatarstan and Bashkiria called for full independence from Russia.
Also throughout 1992, Yeltsin wrestled with the Supreme Soviet (the standing legislature) and the Russian Congress of People's Deputies (the country's highest legislative body, from which the Supreme Soviet members were drawn) for control over government and government policy. In 1992 the speaker of the Russian Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, came out in opposition to the reforms, despite claiming to support Yeltsin's overall goals.
The president was concerned about the terms of the constitutional amendments passed in late 1991, which meant that his special powers of decree were set to expire by the end of 1992 (Yeltsin expanded the powers of the presidency beyond normal constitutional limits in carrying out the reform program). Yeltsin, awaiting implementation of his privatization program, demanded that parliament reinstate his decree powers (only parliament had the authority to replace or amend the constitution). In the Russian Congress of People's Deputies and in the Supreme Soviet, the deputies refused to adopt a new constitution that would enshrine the scope of presidential powers demanded by Yeltsin into law.
Another cause of conflict was the repeated refusal of the Congress of People's Deputies to ratify the Belovezha Accords, which declared the dissolution of the USSR and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Congress also refused to remove references to the Constitution and laws of the USSR from the 1978 Constitution of the RSFSR.
Seventh Congress of People's Deputies
During its December session, the parliament clashed with Yeltsin on a number of issues, and the conflict came to a head on 9 December when the parliament refused to confirm Yegor Gaidar, the widely unpopular architect of Russia's "shock therapy" market liberalizations, as prime minister. The parliament refused to nominate Gaidar, demanding modifications of the economic program and directed the Central Bank, which was under the parliament's control, to continue issuing credits to enterprises to keep them from shutting down.
In an angry speech the next day on 10 December, Yeltsin accused the Congress of blocking the government's reforms and suggested the people decide on a referendum, "which course do the citizens of Russia support? The course of the President, a course of transformations, or the course of the Congress, the Supreme Soviet and its Chairman, a course towards folding up reforms, and ultimately towards the deepening of the crisis." Parliament responded by voting to take control of the army.
On 12 December, Yeltsin and parliament speaker Khasbulatov agreed on a compromise that included the following provisions: (1) a national referendum on framing a new Russian constitution to be held in April 1993; (2) most of Yeltsin's emergency powers were extended until the referendum; (3) the parliament asserted its right to nominate and vote on its own choices for prime minister; and (4) the parliament asserted its right to reject the president's choices to head the Defense, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Security ministries. Yeltsin nominated Viktor Chernomyrdin to be prime minister on 14 December, and the parliament confirmed him.
Yeltsin's December 1992 compromise with the seventh Congress of the People's Deputies temporarily backfired. Early 1993 saw increasing tension between Yeltsin and the parliament over the language of the referendum and power sharing. In a series of collisions over policy, the congress whittled away the president's extraordinary powers, which it had granted him in late 1991. The legislature, marshaled by Khasbulatov, began to sense that it could block and even defeat the president. The tactic that it adopted was gradually to erode presidential control over the government. In response, the president called a referendum on a constitution for 11 April.
Eighth congress
The eighth Congress of People's Deputies opened on 10 March 1993, with a strong attack on the president by Khasbulatov, who accused Yeltsin of acting unconstitutionally. In mid-March, an emergency session of the Congress of People's Deputies voted to amend the constitution, strip Yeltsin of many of his powers, and cancel the scheduled April referendum, again opening the door to legislation that would shift the balance of power away from the president. The president stalked out of the congress. Vladimir Shumeyko, first deputy prime minister, declared that the referendum would go ahead, but on 25 April.
The parliament was gradually expanding its influence over the government. On 16 March, the president signed a decree that conferred Cabinet rank on Viktor Gerashchenko, chairman of the central bank, and three other officials; this was in accordance with the decision of the eighth congress that these officials should be members of the government. The congress' ruling, however, had made it clear that as ministers they would continue to be subordinate to parliament. In general, the parliament's lawmaking activity decreased in 1993, as its agenda increasingly became dominated by efforts to increase the parliamentarian powers and reduce those of the president.
"Special regime"
The president's response was dramatic. On 20 March, Yeltsin addressed the nation directly on television, declaring that he had signed a decree on a "special regime" (Об особом порядке управления до преодоления кризиса власти), under which he would assume extraordinary executive power pending the results of a referendum on the timing of new legislative elections, on a new constitution, and on public confidence in the president and vice-president. Yeltsin also bitterly attacked the parliament, accusing the deputies of trying to restore the Soviet-era order.
Soon after Yeltsin's televised address, Valery Zorkin (Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation), Yuri Voronin (first vice-chairman of the Supreme Soviet), Alexander Rutskoy and Valentin Stepankov (Prosecutor-General) made an address, publicly condemning Yeltsin's declaration as unconstitutional. On 23 March, although not yet possessing the signed document, the Constitutional Court ruled that some of the measures proposed in Yeltsin's TV address were unconstitutional; however, the decree itself, that was only published a few days later, did not contain unconstitutional steps.
Ninth congress
The ninth congress, which opened on 26 March, began with an extraordinary session of the Congress of People's Deputies taking up discussions of emergency measures to defend the constitution, including impeachment of President Yeltsin. Yeltsin conceded that he had made mistakes and reached out to swing voters in parliament. Yeltsin narrowly survived an impeachment vote on March 28, votes for impeachment falling 72 short of the 689 votes needed for a 2/3 majority. The similar proposal to dismiss Ruslan Khasbulatov, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet was defeated by a wider margin (339 in favour of the motion), though 614 deputies had initially been in favour of including the re-election of the chairman in the agenda, a tell-tale sign of the weakness of Khasbulatov's own positions (517 votes for would have sufficed to dismiss the speaker).
By the time of the ninth Congress, the legislative branch was dominated by the joint communist–nationalist Russian Unity bloc, which included representatives of the CPRF and the Fatherland faction (communists, retired military personnel, and other deputies of a socialist orientation), Agrarian Union, and the Russia faction led by Sergey Baburin. These groups, together with more centrist groups like Change (Смена), left the opposing bloc of Yeltsin supporters (Democratic Russia and Radical Democrats) in a clear minority.
National referendum
The referendum would go ahead, but since the impeachment vote failed, the Congress of People's Deputies sought to set new terms for a popular referendum. The legislature's version of the referendum asked whether citizens had confidence in Yeltsin, approved of his reforms, and supported early presidential and legislative elections. The parliament voted that in order to win, the president would need to obtain 50 percent of the whole electorate, rather than 50 percent of those actually voting, to avoid an early presidential election. This time, the Constitutional Court supported Yeltsin and ruled that the president required only a simple majority on two issues: confidence in him, and economic and social policy; he would need the support of half the electorate in order to call new parliamentary and presidential elections.
On 25 April, a majority of voters expressed confidence in the president, and called for new legislative elections. Yeltsin termed the results a mandate for him to continue in power. Before the referendum, Yeltsin had promised to resign, if the electorate failed to express confidence in his policies. Although this permitted the president to declare that the population supported him, not the parliament, Yeltsin lacked a constitutional mechanism to implement his victory. As before, the president had to appeal to the people over the heads of the legislature.
On 1 May, antigovernment protests organized by the hardline opposition turned violent. Numerous deputies of the Supreme Soviet took part in organizing the protest and in its course. One OMON police officer suffered fatal injuries during the riot. As a reaction, a number of the representatives of Saint Petersburg intelligentia (e.g., Oleg Basilashvili, Aleksei German, Boris Strugatsky) sent a petition to president Yeltsin, urging "putting an end to the street criminality under political slogans".
Constitutional convention
On 29 April 1993, Boris Yeltsin released the text of his proposed constitution to a meeting of government ministers and leaders of the republics and regions, according to ITAR-TASS. On 12 May Yeltsin called for a special assembly of the Federation Council, which had been formed 17 July 1990 within the office of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and other representatives, including political leaders from a wide range of government institutions, regions, public organizations, and political parties, to finalize a draft for a new constitution from 5–10 June, and was followed by a similar decree 21 May.