IB History Failure to Establish Democracy and Re-emergence of the Communist Party Notes

Elections Without Democracy: Russia's Political Failure After 1991

Institutions inherited from the Soviet collapse

1. Russia became an independent state with institutions designed for a Soviet republic rather than a settled sovereign democracy. Authority remained divided among the president, legislature, regions, courts, and former union agencies.
2. Yeltsin had won direct election as president of the Russian republic in June 1991. His public mandate became the strongest source of legitimacy after the August coup.
3. The Congress of People's Deputies and its Supreme Soviet had also been elected before the Soviet collapse. Deputies claimed their own democratic authority and resisted presidential control.
4. The amended 1978 Russian constitution did not clearly divide executive and legislative powers. It contained layers of changes made during rapid political transition.
5. Political parties were new, weakly organized, and centered on leaders. Many deputies had entered office through Soviet institutions rather than stable party competition.
6. The civil service, police, military, courts, and security services continued with much of their personnel and culture. Democratic rules changed faster than state practice.
7. Federal relations were unsettled because republics and regions demanded autonomy after challenging Soviet centralization. Moscow negotiated individual arrangements rather than one accepted balance.
8. Economic reform transferred property and resources before legal institutions could regulate ownership. Political power and economic access became closely connected.
9. Citizens gained meaningful electoral choices and wider expression. They also faced inflation, unemployment, crime, and uncertainty that weakened confidence in new institutions.
10. Democratic consolidation required more than holding elections. It required losing sides to accept rules, courts to enforce limits, and officials to govern without treating opponents as enemies.

The struggle between president and parliament

1. Yeltsin appointed Yegor Gaidar to lead rapid market reform in late 1991. Price liberalization and privatization created immediate social and political conflict.
2. Many deputies opposed the speed of reform, executive decrees, and the decline in living standards. Opposition included Communists, nationalists, centrists, and former allies.
3. Parliament controlled legislation and could influence senior appointments. Yeltsin argued that obstruction prevented coherent economic policy.
4. The 1992 Federation Treaty reduced some regional tension but did not settle constitutional authority. Tatarstan and Chechnya refused to sign.
5. Deputies declined to confirm Gaidar as prime minister in December 1992. Viktor Chernomyrdin replaced him and represented a more cautious economic approach.
6. A referendum in April 1993 asked voters about confidence in Yeltsin, economic policy, and early elections. Results supported the president without resolving the institutional conflict.
7. Both sides used legal arguments based on an inconsistent constitution. Neither accepted the other's claim to final authority.
8. Yeltsin issued Decree 1400 on 21 September 1993 to dissolve the legislature and call new elections. The Constitutional Court ruled the action unconstitutional.
9. Parliament declared Vice President Alexander Rutskoy acting president and barricaded itself in the White House. Competing institutions now claimed control of the state.
10. The conflict became democratic breakdown because elected rivals abandoned accepted procedure. Political disagreement shifted toward coercion and armed mobilization.

Violence and the 1993 constitutional settlement

1. Police surrounded the White House and restricted access, electricity, and communication. Negotiations led by figures including Patriarch Alexy II failed to produce a settlement.
2. On 3 October armed supporters of parliament broke through police lines. They seized the mayor's offices and moved toward the Ostankino television center.
3. Fighting at Ostankino caused deaths and raised fear of wider insurrection. Yeltsin declared a state of emergency and secured military support.
4. On 4 October tanks fired on the White House and troops entered the building. Rutskoy, parliamentary chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, and other leaders surrendered.
5. Official and unofficial estimates of casualties differ, but more than one hundred people died. The use of force established executive victory outside a consensual constitutional process.
6. Elections and a constitutional referendum followed in December. The draft constitution passed, though turnout and campaign conditions remained contested.
7. The constitution gave the president power to appoint the government, issue decrees, influence courts, conduct foreign policy, and dissolve the Duma under specified conditions.
8. The bicameral Federal Assembly gained legislation and oversight but faced high barriers to removing the president or government. Executive power dominated the design.
9. Timothy Colton interprets the settlement as an improvised response to deadlock. Its institutions still created a durable path for later presidential concentration.
10. The crisis damaged the principle that democratic rivals must resolve conflict without violence. It also normalized reliance on the armed state during constitutional disputes.

Elections, parties, and uneven competition

1. Russia held parliamentary elections in 1993, 1995, and 1999 and presidential elections in 1996. Opposition parties won seats and could criticize the government.
2. The electoral system combined party lists with single member constituencies. This design allowed national parties, regional figures, independents, and local networks to enter the Duma.
3. Party organizations often lacked durable membership and local roots. Campaigns depended on television, wealthy sponsors, administrative access, and recognizable leaders.
4. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party performed strongly in 1993. Its nationalist protest vote showed anger with both reformers and Communists.
5. The Communist Party became the largest Duma faction after 1995. It used parliamentary committees and regional networks but did not control the executive.
6. Governors and regional presidents built personal machines around local media, budgets, and patronage. Federal elections therefore operated through uneven territorial conditions.
7. Courts and election commissions existed but lacked full independence. Officials could use registration, state resources, and media access to shape competition.
8. Independent newspapers and broadcasters expanded, creating real public debate. Ownership concentration meant that major outlets also served political and business interests.
9. Elections mattered because incumbents could lose votes and opposition survived openly. They were insufficient because the playing field and state power remained unequal.
10. Richard Sakwa's hybrid analysis captures this combination. Democratic procedures coexisted with an executive apparatus that resisted binding limits.

The Communist Party rebuilds

1. Yeltsin suspended and then banned parts of the Soviet Communist Party after the August 1991 coup. The ban did not remove Communist networks, voters, or organizational experience.
2. The Constitutional Court allowed primary party organizations to re-form in 1992. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation held its founding congress in February 1993.
3. Gennady Zyuganov developed a program combining socialism, Russian patriotism, state power, and criticism of Western influence. This differed from a simple restoration of the Soviet system.
4. The CPRF inherited local activists, offices, habits of organization, and support among older voters. Few new parties possessed comparable reach across Russia.
5. Economic collapse supplied a social base among pensioners, workers, military communities, rural areas, and regions dependent on state industry.
6. Communist candidates criticized privatization, wage arrears, inequality, NATO expansion, and the loss of superpower status. Their appeal joined material and national grievance.
7. The party condemned Yeltsin's 1993 actions and the strong presidency. It still participated in elections under the resulting constitution.
8. In the 1995 Duma election the CPRF won the largest share of party list votes. This result demonstrated that post-Soviet politics had not eliminated the former ruling tradition.
9. Communist regional governors and legislators gained office through elections. The party became both a protest movement and a participant in the new institutions.
10. Re-emergence reflected organizational strength and reform failure rather than public rejection of every democratic principle. Voters could use competitive elections to punish the government.

The 1996 presidential election

1. Yeltsin entered 1996 with low approval, poor health, war in Chechnya, wage arrears, and anger over reform. Zyuganov appeared capable of winning.
2. Business leaders feared Communist victory and coordinated support for Yeltsin. The Davos pact among leading oligarchs helped align money and media behind the incumbent.
3. Major television channels presented Yeltsin favorably and framed the election as a choice between freedom and return to repression. Zyuganov received less favorable coverage.
4. The government increased spending promises, paid some arrears, and used official travel and visibility to campaign. State and electoral resources became difficult to separate.
5. Yeltsin replaced unpopular officials and signed the Khasavyurt accords later in the year, while his campaign emphasized peace and stability.
6. General Alexander Lebed finished third in the first round and then endorsed Yeltsin. He received a senior security post and helped attract protest voters.
7. Yeltsin won the second round with about 54 percent against Zyuganov's roughly 40 percent. The vote was competitive, but the information and resource imbalance was substantial.
8. Yeltsin suffered a serious heart attack between rounds, and advisers concealed the extent of his incapacity. Voters lacked accurate information about the incumbent's health.
9. Stephen Cohen views the Communist challenge as a consequence of socially destructive market reform. The campaign also shows how fear of reversal justified manipulation by self-described democrats.
10. The election preserved alternation as a possibility but weakened democratic norms. Defeating an authoritarian past became the argument for concentrating media and state power in the present.

Why democracy did not consolidate

1. Post-Soviet Russia lacked a settled rule of law capable of limiting the presidency, protecting property consistently, and enforcing political agreements.
2. The 1993 constitution strengthened one executive to overcome deadlock. It reduced incentives for later presidents to build compromise with parliament.
3. Economic inequality gave a small group disproportionate control over media and campaign finance. Political competition became tied to privatized wealth.
4. Regional executives, federal officials, and security agencies retained administrative tools that could influence voting and information. Oversight remained weak.
5. Parties did not develop stable roots equal to state and business networks. Leader centered movements could disappear or change quickly.
6. Social crisis discredited reformers and widened nostalgia for order. Democracy became associated with inflation, crime, unpaid wages, and oligarch privilege.
7. Competitive elections, free discussion, and opposition representation were real achievements. A complete description cannot treat the decade as already identical to later authoritarian rule.
8. Colton emphasizes contingency in Yeltsin's choices, Cohen emphasizes the cost of shock therapy, and Sakwa emphasizes hybrid institutions. Together they explain a system that remained open but structurally unbalanced.
9. The CPRF's survival showed that political pluralism existed, yet its return also measured the failure of the new order to command trust. Democracy allowed opposition without securing accountability.
10. The strongest judgement is that Russia established electoral competition but not consolidated constitutional democracy. Executive dominance, weak law, unequal resources, and social crisis left the system vulnerable to further centralization.