On April 25, 1993, a referendum was held in Russia on confidence in the policies of President Boris Yeltsin and the dissolution of parliament and the Supreme Soviet. Fear that MPs who disagreed with the course of socio-economic reforms could lead the country into a dead end led to the adoption of a new Constitution which gave the country’s leader virtually unlimited powers. The head of the “Opinions” section of Russian media, Mikhail Karpov, recalls why Russian citizens voted this way.
magic phrase
Along with the “Vote or Lose” slogan from Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 presidential campaign, people who remember him will likely find a “yes, yes, no, yes!” Moreover, the majority will not even remember for and against which points of the ballot of the referendum organized on April 25, 1993, it was proposed to vote in this way. But their order alone is firmly etched in memory.
“Yes, yes, no, yes” were everywhere. They were stuck on billboards, thrown into mailboxes, newspaper editorials came out with them, and videos with people repeating this slogan were played on television.
That its meaning eludes us now is not surprising. The questions themselves were very rarely quoted on campaign materials. Most often, in addition to the answers, the leaflet simply said “We are building a new Russia”, and that’s it. Many then went to the polling station and, after having clearly followed the instructions, deposited their ballot in the ballot box.
In the meantime, confidence in Boris Yeltsin, his socio-economic policy, the need for early presidential elections, as well as the Supreme Council, were on the agenda.
Participants of a rally in support of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Palace Square in St. PetersburgYuri Belinsky/TASS
Everything went almost like clockwork, the spell worked. However, there was a fun fact. It turned out that almost 59% of those who voted trust Boris Yeltsin, while only 50.5% were against early presidential elections. It turned out that 8% had faith in something, but still kept in mind that it would be nice to change the head of state.
Unable to negotiate
In the first year and a half after the collapse of the USSR, a real mess was happening in Russia. The country was struggling with “shock therapy” – radical transformations of the state economic system, its rapid transition to a market economy.
The people’s deputies, for the most part, were in favor of a regulated economy and put a spoke in the wheel of the reformers by all means. The Supreme Council, as a legislative power, has taken a position no less radical than the executive power.
It can be said that this is the meaning of the true democratic structure of the state, when the branches of its power are independent and can discuss among themselves. But a constructive dispute assumes that the parties are able to agree on acceptable positions and make concessions. The Supreme Council was not going to make serious concessions, and even the great “ritual sacrifice” that Yeltsin brought to the parliamentarians in the form of the resignation of the government of Yegor Gaidar did not help.
President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Andrei Kozyrev and Acting. Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar in 1992 Vladimir Musaelyan and Alexander Sentsov / TASS
However, if we are talking about a real compromise, then the first president of Russia was certainly not ready for it either. Maybe he reasoned like this: we are building a new Russia here, and they want everything back! And that means that normally, on equal terms, there is nothing to negotiate with all this “red-brown” scum.
“Red-brown,” another phrase remembered by Russians, characterized the deputies of the Supreme Council. Here, they say, the Nazis and Communists have gathered and they are rocking the boat, but we must sail forward!
But in reality, this was quite far from the truth, because not only those forces that would later be called much softer – leftist patriots were disappointed in Yeltsin. He even succeeded in setting up against him the “Democratic Russia” faction, made up of the first supporters of the reforms.
The reason for this was primarily the rapid division of the property of the CPSU. There was no question of legal methods, as the Democrats dreamed of. As early as the fall of 1991, the RSFSR government began a completely arbitrary redistribution of the assets of the Communist Party, thus diverting from it many of those who had previously sympathized with it.
An interesting fact, which for some reason now no one thinks about, was the fact that at that time in the new state, the Russian Federation, in fact, there were no elected bodies of power legislative and executive.
How could this happen? Very simple. The fact is that the elections of deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR took place in 1990, and the elections of the President of the RSFSR – in 1991. Logically, the establishment in December 1991 of a new independent state formation should have led re-elections to the country’s authorities, but that did not happen. They passed to the Russian Federation “by inheritance”.
Democracy in action
The executive power, instead of seeking means of compromise, demanded the subordination of parliament. The parliament, for its part, absolutely did not want to transform itself into a body approving the decisions of the government, which “knows what it is doing”. At the same time, of course, the position of the Supreme Council on many issues and bills could not be called constructive.
But on the other hand, once again, how to develop a democratic state other than through dialogue? On March 20, 1993, Yeltsin showed how.
On that day, he addressed the nation, announcing this same referendum and endowing the executive with special powers “until the crisis is overcome”. The main question of the referendum was, of course, the fourth, because in the event of a positive outcome, it gave the president the possibility of dissolving parliament.
Boris Yeltsin in 1993Sergei Guneyev / The Chronicle Collection via Getty Images
This question, in fact, would be the only one if the deputies later, after a failed attempt to impeach Yeltsin (for which, by the way, only 72 votes were not enough), did not add their three to it. The hope was that the people would certainly not support the president’s socio-economic policies, but the rest of the answers would be obvious.
The problem was that despite all attempts, the Supreme Soviet failed to take control of the media. Yeltsin, on the other hand, secured the support of the mainstream media, through which he actively promoted the “correct” answers that the ballot should submit.
In addition, the president received the support of cultural personalities, who also campaigned for the “yes, yes, no, yes”. Their position was perhaps best described by writer Viktor Astafiev in Literaturnaya Gazeta. He admitted that in 1991 he had not voted in the presidential elections, because he was “tired of participating in stupid mass action, in a humiliating celebration of stupidity”. Nevertheless, in the referendum, he offered to support Yeltsin, because “a lean, expensive and restless life is better than widespread famine and pestilence”.
Summary
Now, in hindsight, that position seems alarmist. A long and exhausting dialogue between the executive and the legislative, real concessions in relation to each other, is unlikely to lead to the establishment in the country of a dictatorship analogous to the dictatorship of the CPSU and the complete usurpation of power by the deputies. Yes, the reforms would have slowed down, yes, most likely, for a time the state would have experienced difficulties of a different order – not the ones it subsequently encountered in the mid and late 1990s. difficulties would perhaps be much more serious.
But, of course, for the third time to ask the question “how else to build a democratic state?” funny. After all, the result is before your eyes.
The bestial fear of the enlightened part of society before the terrible “commies” that will lead the country to a dead end, as well as Yeltsin’s desire to become, in fact, the “correct and democratic Pinochet” determined the development of the Russia for years. come.
Everything that happened in 1993 seems to be natural. The success of the presidential information campaign with the phrase spelled “yes, yes, no, yes”, which hardly touched anything. The bloody events of October, which ended with the shooting of the White House and the dissolution of the Supreme Council, which no one really wanted.
OMON soldiers near the White House during the events of October 1993Eddie Opp/Kommersant
One of the Moscow newspapers after the October events published a front-page cartoon. It depicted the ghosts of Lenin and Dzerzhinsky above the Moscow Television Center, which supporters of the Supreme Council were trying to storm. And the signature: “Stay on Ostankino. For example, the revanchists lost and we, the people of progressive democratic views, won.
Finally, the icing on the cake was the popular adoption of a new super-presidential constitution in December of the same year, which finally gave Yeltsin the opportunity to shed the shackles of control by lawmakers and make ” all is well “. It is truly the triumph of democracy.
It was at this time that the dismissive attitude of society towards this form of government as such was formed. And later it was very easy to convince him that in reality there is no democracy and that parliament is just a screen behind which decisions are made by “who needs it”, pulling on those who disagree with the tank guns. And since people have never seen anything else, that means it’s like that everywhere.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editors
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