Escape from Political Freedom. The Constitutional Crisis of 1993 and Russia’s Political Trajectory

Abstract

The constitutional crisis of 1993 was one of the major turning points in the failed democratization of Russia and subsequent turn of the country towards personalist authoritarianism. The October 1993 conflict, as the crisis is commonly called in Russia, was driven by a strategic choice of priorities by Russia’s political leadership during the post-Communist “triple transition”. After the overthrow of the Communist regime in August 1991, Russian elites prioritized market reforms and sacrificed further democratization of the country for the sake of preserving the new political status quo. This choice, made at the expense of building new democratic institutions, greatly contributed to the clash between the plebiscitary legitimacy of President Boris Yeltsin and unconstrained legality of the parliament, which was resolved in a violent zero-sum game in October 1993. The new Russian constitution sought to drastically reduce institutional constraints to presidential power. Its approval paved the way to authoritarian regime building and served as a role model for other post-Soviet countries.