From Cold War To Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin's Russia

by Michael McFaul

obstacles to democratic consolidation were now codified in the new constitution, including, first and foremost, strong presidential rule. The new document, which Yeltsin was now free to redraft as he and his aides saw fit, spelled out the basic rights guaranteed to all Russian citizens and established a new system of government, which included the office of the president, a prime minister and government, and a bicameral parliament consisting of a lower house, the State Duma, and an upper house, the Federation Council. Despite those positive developments, the enhanced powers of the president loomed largest in the new draft. The president was to be elected directly by the people for a fixed term of four years, and impeachment procedures were described—that was the good news. The bad news was that the new constitution gave the president more authority to issue decrees, greater control in selecting the prime minister and the government, and the ability to directly appoint the foreign minister, defense minister, minister of the interior, and head of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor to the KGB)—together, the so-called power ministries.12 Many analysts, including myself, described the new system as “superpresidential.” But we differed in our assessments of just how authoritarian Russia had become. Some of my closest academic friends, Russians and Americans, argued that Russian democracy died during Yeltsin’s military attack on the parliament. The new constitution,...

Yeltsin in the wake of 1993 set the conditions for the rise of Putin