Information About RussiaInformation About Russia

History

The earliest Russian State, Kievan Rus, arose in the 9th century, with the different Slavonic tribes moulded into an ambitious Russian nation within its borders. The founding of Novgorod in 862 by the viking Rurik is traditionally taken as the birth of what became the Russian state. In the year 988, the young state adopted Christianity. Rurik's successor, Oleg, became the ruler of Kiev two decades later and in the 10th and 11th centuries Kiev became the dominant regional power. The state, however, fell apart in the 12th century through the efforts of feuding princes and princelings, who decided to rule over their home-turf principalities and small lands on their own (Republic in Novgorod, Vladimir-Suzdal, Galicia-Volynia).

With the princes constantly intriguing against one another, the Russian lands failed to pool enough forces together and coordinate their efforts in repelling the invasion by the marauding Mongolian Tatars in the opening decades of the 13th century. Centuries of prosperity and growth were brought to an abrupt halt. The Russians paid the price for their princes' feud with nearly 250 years of life under Tatar control, known as the Tatar Yoke, which brought immeasurable suffering and incalculable losses among the population and inflicted tremendous damage on the land's economic, political and cultural development. A crippling blow to the invaders was dealt in 1380 by the united forces of allied Russian lands under Grand Prince Dmitriy of Moscow, better known as Dmitriy Donskoy in tribute for his resounding victory over the enemy on the Kulikovo Field in the upper reaches of the Don River. Another 100 years were to elapse, however, before the Russians cast off the Yoke.

Between the 14th and 16th centuries, Moscow gathered around it a centralized state that included all Russian lands in the north-east and north-west. In historic terms, this was the core of the Great Russian nation.

The 16th century witnessed the expansionist reign of Ivan IV, byname Ivan the Terrible, (Russian IVAN GROZNY, the first to be proclaimed Tsar of Russia (from 1547). Ivan IV managed to conduct successful campaigns against the hostile Khanate of Kazan, on the Volga River and the Khanate of Astrakhan, located at the mouth of the Volga. From that moment onward, the Volga became a Russian river, and the trade route to the Caspian Sea was rendered safe. Ivan the Terrible's policy antagonised the neighbouring countries of Poland and Sweden. When the 700-year Rurikid dynasty ended with the childless Fyodor, vengeful Swedish and Polish invaders each bloodily claimed the Russian throne early in the 17th century. But the Russian people fought off the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish interventions. The issue was finally settled in 1613, with the 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov issuing in a dynasty that was to rule until 1917. Ukraine wrested itself free from Polish domination to join Russia in a unified and greatly expanded state.

Russia received a powerful boost in political, economic, social and cultural development, including revolutionary reforms in the army, in the reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725), who finally made Russia a major world power. He celebrated his victory over the Swedes by building a new capital city on land taken from them: St.Petersburg. Russia's great victories in the Northern War between 1700 and 1721 gave the nation free access to the Baltic Sea it had been seeking and fighting for over centuries. The country's bulging muscles and its newly acquired "window on the West" stirred diplomatic activity and closer links between Russia and other countries, particularly in Western Europe. By pursuing an active foreign and internal policy and development of territories in the North, down the full length of the Volga River, the Ural Mountains and beyond, Siberia and as far as the Pacific coast, with many areas joining the dynamic state of their own free will, Russia became The Empire.

Under the 20-year reign of Peter the Great's daughter, the empress Elizabeth (1741-1761), the Russian monarchy was greatly stabilized. Devoted to much pleasure and luxury and greatly desirous of giving her court the brilliancy of a European court, Elizabeth prepared the way for Catherine the Great.
Catherine II or Catherine the Great (1762-1796) continued Peter the Great's reforms of the Russian state, further increasing central control over the provinces. Her skill as a diplomat, in an era that produced many extraordinary diplomats, was remarkable. Russia's influence in European affairs, as well as its territory in Eastern and Central Europe, were increased and expanded. Catherine was also an enthusiastic patron of the arts. She built and founded the Hermitage Museum, commissioned buildings all over Russia, founded academies, journals, and libraries, and corresponded with the French Encyclopedists, including Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert.

With the onset of the French Revolution, Catherine became strikingly conservative and increasingly hostile to criticism of her policies. From 1789 until her death, she reversed many of the liberal reforms of her early reign. One notable effect of this reversal was that Catherine II ultimately contributed to the increasingly distressing state of the peasantry in Russia. In the early 19th century the Russian Empire stopped and rolled back, to their ultimate end, the armies of the French dictator Napoleon I and it went down in Russian history as the 1812 Patriotic War. In the Decembrist revolt in 1825, a group of young, reformist military officers attempted to force the adoption of a constitutional monarchy in Russia by preventing the accession of Emperor Nicholas I. They failed utterly, and Nicholas I became the most reactionary leader in Europe.

A watershed in Russian history came in 1861 with Emperor Alexander II's Peasant Reform, which abolished serfdom, imposed since the late 16th century, and jolted Russia into a tempestuous economic development. In the closing decades of the 19th century, manufacturing and private business burgeoned, and banking and trade flourished. At the same time, Russia had expanded its territory and its power considerably over the nineteenth century. Its borders extended to Afghanistan and China, and it had acquired extensive territory on the Pacific coast. The foundation of the port cities of Vladivostok and Port Arthur there had opened up profitable avenues for commerce, and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway (constructed from 1891-1905) linked the European Russia with its new eastern territories. However, in that period, social disparities were coming to a head and discontent with autocracy was spreading. There was growing opposition to the repressive and autocratic tsarist rule. Peasants were angry at having to pay for land they regarded as their own, liberals advocated constitutional reform along Western European lines, terrorists managed to kill tsar Alexander II in 1881. Many opposition leaders fled abroad including the most famous exile Vladimir Ulyanov, better known by his later nom de guerre, Lenin.

Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 led to further unrest. It brought to a head a variety of political discontents simmering back at home. On January 9, 1905 the St.Petersburg workers marched on the Winter Palace to present Emperor Nicholas II (acceded to the throne in 1894) a loyal petition containing demands of a popularly elected legislative assembly and better working conditions. They were met by troops who opened fire on them, and about 130 were killed. News of this massacre, known as Bloody Sunday, spread quickly, and very soon most of the other social classes and ethnic groups in the empire were in uproar. There were mass student demonstrations, workers' strikes, peasant insurrections, and mutinies in both the army and navy. The revolutionary movement reached its climax in October 1905, with the declaration of a general strike and the formation of a soviet (or council) in St. Petersburg. Most cities, including the capital, were paralyzed. Finally the tsar and the government yielded to the demands and permitted the formation of the elected legislative assembly - The State Duma.

The World War of 1914-1918 strained the powers of the Russian economy to the snapping point, and exhausted the country's material and financial resources. The setbacks and blunders on the battlefield tipped the social balances and plunged the nation into a deep crisis.
By 1917 the bond between the tsar and most of the Russian people had been broken. Governmental corruption and inefficiency were rampant. The tsar's reactionary policies, including the occasional dissolution of the Duma (Russian parliament), the chief fruit of the 1905 revolution, had spread dissatisfaction even to moderate elements.

The February Revolution of 1917 was caused by deep resentment over the economic and social conditions that had prevailed in imperial Russia under Tsar Nicholas II. The tsar was well-meaning but fell short as a war leader and was unable to cope with the burdens of being head of state. The strain of the war, complicated by the intrigues and machinations within the royal house, caused a great gap to develop between the monarchy and the rest of the population. Riots over the scarcity of food broke out in the capital, Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), on February 24 (March 8) 1917. Nicholas II instructed the city commandant to take firm measures and sent troops to help restore order. It was too late. Most of the Petrograd garrison joined the revolt. The government resigned, and the Duma, supported by the army, called on the emperor to abdicate. At Pskov, on March 2 (March 15), Russian Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. More than 300 years of rule by the Romanov dynasty came to an end.

The State Duma appointed a Provisional Government to succeed the authority, but it faced a rival in the Petrograd Soviet (Council) of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. The 2,500 delegates to this soviet were chosen from factories and military units in and around Petrograd. The Soviet soon proved that it had greater authority than the Provisional Government. The Provisional Government continued Russia's participation in the World War. It was absolutely unable to cope adequately with the major problems afflicting the country. But while the Provisional Government's power waned, that of the Soviet was increasing, as was the Bolsheviks' influence within it.

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party under Vladimir Lenin came to power in a revolution that sealed the country's fate for decades ahead. The revolution was purported to eliminate social inequalities and build a socialist society that was, in a longer run, to evolve into communism. In March 1918 the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Communist Party and the nation's capital was moved from Petrograd (St Petersburg's new, un-German-sounding name) to Moscow. The Red Army was formed. Although the Bolsheviks enjoyed substantial support in St.Petersburg and Moscow, they didn't have control over the whole country. They succeeded in taking Russia out of WW I (though on very unfavourable terms), but within months civil war broke out throughout Russia. Strongholds of those hostile to the new power had developed in the south and east of the country, their collective name, the Whites, their only source of cohesion. Great Britain, France and America saw in communism a permanent threat to their existence and provided aid to the White armies. For the next three years the country was devastated by civil strife, until by 1920 the Bolsheviks and the Reds had finally emerged victorious.

Three years of civil war resulted, with approximately 1.5 million citizens fleeing to exile. The economic consequences of the civil war were disastrous, culminating in the enormous famine of 1920-21, when between four and five million people died. The different republics joined together to form The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or The USSR, in December 1922.

Following Lenin's death in January 1924, his successor, Stalin introduced farm collectivisation, policy adopted by the Soviet government, pursued most intensively between 1929 and 1933, to transform traditional agriculture in the Soviet Union and to reduce the economic power of the kulaks (prosperous peasants). Under collectivization the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy). The process was ultimately undertaken in conjunction with the campaign to industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly. Soviet leaders believed that the large kolkhozy could use heavy machinery more efficiently and produce larger crops than could numerous small, individual farms, besides that they could be controlled more effectively by the state. As a result, they could be forced to sell a large proportion of their output to the state at low government prices, thereby enabling the state to acquire the capital necessary for the development of heavy industry.

The industries were rapidly modernized, the armed forces equipped with letter-day hardware, and industrial construction was launched on a vast scale. However, the ruling elite under Josef Stalin seized all the reigns of power, forcing a totalitarian rule on the country. Dissidents were victimized and several millions more were repressed. The top brass of the Red Army, the country's armed forces, was ruthlessly purged, sapping the nation's defensive potential. A skilled but phenomenally ruthless organizer, Stalin destroyed the individual freedoms, yet he was successful in rapidly industrializing a backward country - as was widely acknowledged by enthusiastic contemporary foreign witnesses, including such well-known writers as H.G.Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Stalin created a mighty military-industrial complex and led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age.

By early 1939 the Soviet Union faced the prospect of resisting German military expansion virtually alone. Soviet Union had been repeatedly ignored in its attempts to enter into a collective-security agreement with Britain and France against Nazi Germany, most notably at the time of the Munich Conference (September 1938). In August 1939, after first attempting to form an anti-Hitler alliance with the Western powers, Stalin realized the growing danger of German attack on the Soviet Union and concluded the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. He hoped to keep the Soviet Union at peace with Germany and to gain time to build up the Soviet military establishment, which had been badly weakened by the purge of the Red Army officer corps in 1937.

Anxious to strengthen its western frontiers and save the population of these territories from the Nazis the Soviet Union joined Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (they were organized as Soviet republics in August 1940), eastern Poland and parts of Romania. The USSR attacked Finland and forced it in March 1940 to yield the Isthmus of Karelia and make other territorial concessions. The Soviet Union sought to consolidate its "sphere of influence" as a defensive barrier to the German aggression. An hour of trial for the nation struck on June 22, 1941, when Nazi Germany, after having conquered most of Europe, attacked the Soviet Union without warning in Operation Barbarossa. Industry, agriculture and resources of occupied France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway etc. were forced to feed the German war machine. For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted 190 divisions containing a total of about 5,000,000 men. Among these were 19 panzer divisions, and in total the "Barbarossa" force had about 3,500 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, and 4,950 aircraft. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history. The Germans' strength was further increased by more than 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops.

Within a very short space of time, the country's efforts were marshalled to resist the aggression and repel the enemy. The most notable battles of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945):

The battle for Stalingrad (summer 1942-Feb. 2, 1943) was particularly decisive. Stalingrad became the scene of some of the fiercest and most concentrated fighting of the war. Streets, blocks, and individual buildings were fought over by many small units of troops and often changed hands again and again. The city's remaining buildings were pounded into rubble by the unrelenting close combat. Total German losses are estimated to have been 800,000 dead. Russian military historians estimate that 1,100,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in the campaign to defend the city. The Battle of Kursk (July 5-August 23, 1943) was the largest tank battle in the world history, involving more than 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft. Hitler concentrated all efforts on this offensive in an attempt to recover the offensive on the Eastern Front but his plans failed. It marked the decisive end of the German offensive capability on the Eastern Front and cleared the way for the great Soviet offensives of 1944-45. Siege of Leningrad, also called 900-DAY SIEGE (Sept. 8, 1941-Jan. 27, 1944), prolonged siege of the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). German armies by early September 1941 had approached Leningrad from the west and south while their Finnish allies approached to the north down the Karelian Isthmus. Leningrad's entire able-bodied population was mobilized to build antitank fortifications along the city's perimeter in support of the city's 200,000 Red Army defenders. Leningrad's defences soon stabilized, but by early November it had been almost completely encircled, with all its vital rail and other supply lines to the Soviet interior cut off.

The ensuing German blockade and siege claimed 650,000 Leningrader lives in 1942 alone, mostly from starvation, exposure, disease, and shelling from distant German artillery. Sparse food and fuel supplies reached the city by barge in the summer and by truck and ice-borne sled in winter across Lake Ladoga. In January 1944 a successful Soviet offensive drove the Germans westward from the city's outskirts, ending the siege. The Soviet government awarded the Order of Lenin to Leningrad in 1945 and bestowed the title Hero City of the Soviet Union on it in 1965, thus paying tribute to the city's heroic resistance in one of the most cruel and memorable sieges in history.

The gallantry of the fighting men and women, the skills of their generals, heroic self-sacrificing labour, innumerable feats and the all-out effort of the entire nation contributed greatly to Germany's final defeat in early May 1945. More than 50 years ago, in merely a four-year span during the Great Patriotic War, the Russians lost an estimated 27 million civilians and military personnel. Their loss, and victorious struggle against Hitler's forces, is still reflected in the Russian national character. The Soviet Union paid a high price for the freedom of the world and made a decisive contribution to the victory over fascism in World War II.

After Stalin died (1953) Nikita Khrushchev soon came to power and attempted to relax some of the strict controls governing Soviet society while opposing the influence of the United States in world affairs. Khrushchev had a vision for the Soviet Union: a land of plenty where democracy, guided by the party, reigned. A passionate believer in the communism, Khrushchev tried to evangelize the world. He spoke of alternative roads to socialism. Khrushchev was convinced that the Soviet road would prove the most attractive and erase the others. His policies amounted to de-Stalinization. He was aiming at humane socialism with Communist Party monopoly of power; centrally planned economy; party control of the media, education, and culture.

Khrushchev was a patriot who genuinely wanted to improve life of all Soviet citizens. Under his leadership there was a cultural thaw, and Russian writers who had been suppressed began to publish again. Western ideas about democracy began to penetrate universities and academies. On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first space satellite, Sputnik 1. Then followed Sputnik 2, with the dog Laika on board. On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space. Soviet cosmonaut in 4 3/4-ton Vostok 1 spacecraft orbited the Earth once in 1 hour 29 minutes at a maximum altitude of 187 miles (301 kilometres). His spaceflight brought him immediate worldwide fame. The Soviet Union became the leading space superpower. On June 16, 1963 Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space. She was launched in the spacecraft Vostok 6, which completed 48 orbits in 71 hours.

In 1964 a collective leadership under Leonid Brezhnev came to power. During the 1960s and '70s the Soviet Union managed to spread its influence worldwide. During the 1970s Brezhnev attempted to normalize relations between the West and the Warsaw Pact and to ease tensions with the United States through the policy known as detente. At the same time, he saw to it that the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex was greatly expanded and modernized. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union achieved parity with the United States in strategic nuclear weapons, and their space program overtook the American one. A huge navy was fitted out and the army remained the largest in the world. The Soviet Union supported "wars of national liberation" in developing countries through the provision of military aid to left-wing movements and governments.

On May 26, 1972, at a Summit meeting in Moscow General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev and US President Richard M. Nixon signed the Treaty on Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Systems. The ABM treaty became a corner stone document for the international security and stability. It regulated antiballistic missiles that could theoretically be used to destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by the other superpower. The treaty limited each side to only one ABM deployment area (missile-launching site). These limitations prevented either party from defending more than a small fraction of its entire territory, and thus kept both sides subject to the deterrent effect of the other's strategic forces. Toward the end of his life, Brezhnev lost control over the country. Brezhnev retained his hold on power to the end despite his weak health and growing feebleness. He gave the Soviet Union a formidable military-industrial base capable of supplying large numbers of the most modern weapons, but in so doing he impoverished the rest of the Soviet economy. After his death, he was criticized for a gradual slide in living standards, the spread of corruption and cronyism within the Soviet bureaucracy, and the generally stagnant and dispiriting character of Soviet life in the late 1970s and early '80s.

When Brezhnev died on Nov. 10, 1982, he was succeeded by Yuri Andropov. Andropov had been head of the KGB from 1967 to May 1982. He was a cautious reformer, believing that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the socialist system. He believed that more discipline, energy, and initiative would turn things around. Andropov cut back privilege and met workers on the shop floor. Andropov's antialcohol campaign was well conceived but it led to a sharp fall in government revenue. His industrial and agricultural policy was quite sensible but ineffective, since the economy was already in decline. Under Andropov a group of cautious reformers rose to prominence. These included Mikhail Gorbachev, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolay Ryzhkov. Andropov was mortally ill. He wanted Gorbachev to succeed him. Instead the 72-year-old, terminally ill Konstantin Chernenko was eased into the top in 1984. The aging Politburo elected a nonreformer to be the leader. It was a throwback to Brezhnevism. However Chernenko also began showing signs of deteriorating health shortly after taking office. His frequent absences from official functions because of illness left little doubt that his election had been an interim measure.

The socialist idea peaked in the '60s, and then tumbled down to stagnation and eventual crisis. Managed by self-willed and smug bureaucrats, the country's economy was awash with red ink, hardly managing to trudge along by injections of hard currency earned by mineral exports; it was groaning under the heavy burden of defence expenditure and; many constructive initiatives were frowned upon, all aspects of society's life including foreign policy were squeezed into a tight ideological mold contrary to common sense, and dissidents were persecuted again. All this tied poorly with the trumpeted ideas of a bright future the country was out to build. In the mid-80s, the country was confronted with the need to launch radical reforms in its economy and social and political structure. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Communist Party's General Secretary who later became the USSR President, led the drive to reform society. When Gorbachev took over as general secretary of the party in March 1985 he launched perestroika, a program of economic and political restructuring. He believed that the system itself was basically sound and it was necessary to accelerate economic growth. Gorbachev's primary domestic goal was to improve the stagnant Soviet economy after its years of drift and low growth during Leonid Brezhnev's tenure in power (1964-82). He called for rapid technological modernization and increased worker productivity. Gorbachev tried to make the cumbersome Soviet bureaucracy more efficient and responsive.

Gorbachev had also instituted a policy of glasnost ("openness"), a major cultural thaw. Freedoms of expression and of information were significantly expanded; the press and broadcasting were allowed unprecedented criticism in their reportages. In foreign affairs, Gorbachev from the beginning cultivated warmer relations and trade with the developed nations of both West and East. In December 1987 he signed an agreement with US President Ronald Reagan for their two countries to destroy all existing stocks of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. In 1988-89 he arranged the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afganistan. In the late 1989-90 Gorbachev agreed to the phased withdrawal of Soviet troops from Poland, Hungary, Chechoslovakia. By the summer of 1990 he had agreed to the reunification of East and West Germany. In 1990 Gorbachev received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his striking achievements in international relations.
Gorbachev was the initiator of a series of events in late 1989 and 1990 that transformed the political face of the world and marked the end of the Cold War. The reforms were an uphill struggle, however. As new social relations were taking hold, the economy slumped, inflation heated up, the various political forces were locked in confrontation, social tensions rose, and ethnic conflicts erupted. On June 12, 1991 Boris Yeltsin won the presidency to become Russia's first democratically elected leader. An attempted coup d'etat by the military, the KGB and communist hard-liners who wanted strong central leadership in order to keep the Soviet Union communist and together on August 19-21, 1991 failed decisively.

After the coup the soviet republics rushed to be free of Moscow's control. The three Baltic republics - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - seceded from the union. Ukraine voted for independence on December 1, 1991. Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia on December 8, 1991 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Belorussia) spelled the end of the Soviet Union and founded a loose grouping known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On December 21 in Alma Ata, Kazakstan, 11 states signed a protocol formally establishing the CIS. Gorbachev was destroyed politically. He resigned as Soviet president on December 25, and all Soviet institutions ceased to function that day. The hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin, and in its place rose the white, blue, and red flag of Russia. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was officially renamed simply Russia, or the Russian Federation, with Boris Yeltsin as elected president of the newly independent state. Russia became a successor to the Union's assets and liabilities, assumed the USSR's seat in the UN Security Council. All Soviet embassies became Russian embassies.

Boris Yeltsin elected the first Russian President was solidly behind reforms and plans to revitalize Russian society. Privatization had since his election been pursued on a vast scale and private enterprise was asserting itself in manufacturing, trade, banking and the service industry. The pace of the reforms was, however, restrained by some negative factors as the lack of social experience in developing a market-oriented economy, working out new industrial relations, and promoting private business. The social differentiation, the falling living standards for the majority of the population, ethnic problems, high crime incidence rate were adding to the acrimony of political fights and fueling tensions in society.

Conflicts soon developed between Yeltsin, who favoured a speedy transition to a market economy, and the national legislature, which sought to delay the privatization of industry and agriculture. Yeltsin thought that the only real solution to the problem of parliamentary obstruction was to get a new Parliament. On September 21 the president dissolved the national parliament - the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet - and set new elections to a two-chamber parliament for December 11-12. According to the new plan, the lower house would have 450 deputies and be called the State Duma. The Federation Council, which would bring together representatives from the 89 subdivisions of the Russian Federation, would play the role of an upper house.

The Congress of People's Deputies adopted a hostile position. It declared the president's decree null and void. The parliament argued that Yeltsin had exceeded his authority and he would forfeit his position as President of the Russian Federation. This was the essential political conflict that produced the events in the first week of October 1993. The political impasse developed into an armed conflict. A stand-off between the parties was followed by a siege of the Parliament building (the White House) and street fighting between the supporters of the Parliament and Interior Ministry troops who remained loyal to Yeltsin. Yeltsin was supported by the military, the former KGB, and Ministry of Interior forces. Besides that Yeltsin received strong backing from leaders of the Western democracies and the other Soviet successor states. Inside the parliament building, two former allies of Yeltsin, vice president Aleksandr Rutskoy and parliament speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov, declared themselves, with the backing of the Congress, leaders of a provisional government in place of the supposedly illegal Yeltsin regime. The Parliament building was encircled and the leaders of the Parliament, including Rutskoy and Khasbulatov, were arrested. Later everybody was granted amnesty.

Finally on December referendum the new constitution was approved by approximately 60% of the Russia's voters. The parliamentary elections and the adoption of a democratic Constitution in December 1993 served as a legal starting point for the new Russian statehood. 1993 new constitution greatly strengthened the powers of the presidency and created a new bicameral parliament. The most serious situation was in Chechnya, where full-scale civil war broke out in 1994. The Russian government had to use military forces against the separatist republic to restore the constitutional order. A cease-fire signed in August 1996 included the agreement to defer a decision on Chechnya's status for five years. The first six months of 1996 in Russia were dominated by the presidential election campaign. There was alarm inside and outside Russia that incumbent Pres. Boris Yeltsin would be defeated by Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov. However, Yeltsin was reelected. The election confirmed that Russia remained on track to implement a market economy and a democratic society. In August 1999 Vladimir Putin was appointed to be a new Russian Prime Minister.
Chechnya remained the burning problem for the Russian government. The regime of Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev was replaced by the regime of new elected president Aslan Maskhadov and there seemed to be grounds for cautious optimism. But it was the only change. Deliberations about sovereignty for Chechnya served as the background for the old business of killing the remaining Russians and raiding neighbouring regions. Slave trade flourished and the torture of hostages became a fact of life, more foreign mercenaries arrived in the republic and bloody fighting between field commanders over spheres of influence racked Chechnya. Chechnya gained de facto independence for several years, but it failed to take hold of its freedom, protect the rights of people, or restore the economy. Chechen leaders could not come to an agreement with Russia or even with each other. Hundreds of thousands of Chechens fled the republic, taking refuge from the bandit reign, economic ruination and open helplessness of "president" Maskhadov in other regions of Russia. The attempt of the Chechen leaders to create a fair society based on Islamic dogmas failed completely. For it was a strange "Chechen Islam", which had little in common with genuine Islam. An infantile and illiterate bandit armed with a submachine-gun was "respected" more than an elder armed with his life experience.

The division of Chechen society into families/clans (so-called "teips") suited organized crime very well. The godfathers of the Chechen Mafia smartly used the original, and sometimes archaic, traditions of the Chechen people, under which loyalty to the clan, family and teip was more important than respect for law, whatever the law - Russian, European, or Shariah Moslem. A genuine criminal enclave appeared on the body of the Russian Federation, where drug laboratories, false mints and thousands of thieves' oil mini-refineries worked comfortably, where the criminals of any nationality and from any country could take refuge, where hundreds of terrorists were trained in special camps for subversive acts in Russia and several other countries. The result was well known: an open aggression against neighbouring Degestan and the explosion of residential blocks in several Russian cities, which claimed the lives of 1.500 (!) peaceful civilians, including children.

The Russian government again had to take drastic measure and use the military forces. Counter-terrorist operation was launched in September 1999 under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, the then Russian Prime Minister. The struggle against the terrorists and bandits assumed a grand scale. Anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya was not spearheaded against Chechens or Muslims but aimed to punish rebels, criminals, terrorists and numerous foreign mercenaries who were trampling human rights underfoot. On December 9, 1999 after several years of negotiations Russia and Belarus formed an economic and political union. The treaty on the Union state was signed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his Belarussian counterpart, Aleksandr Lukashenko. On December 31, 1999 Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation as president six months before the end of his term and handling over power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. On March 26, 2000 Russia's presidential elections were held and acting president Vladimir Putin scored a convincing victory already in the first round of the elections.

On April 15, 2000 the State Duma ratified the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty-2 (START-2). This step paved the way to the further disarmament process, the more stable and secure world. On May 7, 2000 Vladimir Putin was sworn in as Russian president in an inauguration ceremony in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Former president Boris Yeltsin and the Soviet Union's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, were both present. Putin said in his speech that he aimed to make Russia a powerful, rich and civilized nation Russian people could be proud of, and which would be respected abroad. On May 9, 2000 President Vladimir Putin led ceremonies commemorating the 55th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The V-Day celebration is one of the most venerated holidays in Russia. The Soviet Union suffered more than any other country in World War II, losing 27 million people. The victory over Nazi Germany is seen as a high point of Soviet and Russian history. On May 9 parades are held, people place wreaths in memory of Russian soldiers who died in the World War II. "With you we got used to winning, this habit got into our blood and became a guarantee not only of military victories. It will again help us in times of peace, will help our generation to build a strong and prosperous country, to raise high the Russian flag of democracy and freedom," said Vladimir Putin addressing the veterans on May 9, 2000.

On May 13, 2000 President Vladimir Putin issued a decree dividing the country into seven districts, each with its own Kremlin representative, in order to strengthen the state. According to the decree, the federally-appointed representatives help implement federal laws in the republics and report back to Moscow on "providing nation security in the federal district, and also about the political, social, and economic situation in the federal district". Russia's 89 provinces were grouped under the new system. The seven districts are headquartered in the cities of Moscow, St.Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk.

Presently the main scoring points are as follows:
• the country's disintegration has been prevented, the spectre of civil war in the North Caucasus chased away, life in Chechnya is returning to normal. Voter turnout at the March 26 Russian presidential poll in the Chechen Republic was very high - about 75%. Tired of war, anarchy and ruin, people took the voting procedure as a sign of return to a normal human existence, in which there is authority, order and democracy. Gas and electricity supplies have been restored, communications re-established, six local papers in Chechen and Russian are being issued, local television channel is on the air. During Maskhadov's rule Chechnya closed almost all of its educational establishments, and now has a generation of children who sometimes cannot read or write. At the moment 70% of the republic's schools have already resumed classes and the aim is to enable all republican schools to open their doors by the beginning of the next academic year;
• Russia will be doing everything to prevent the advance of aggressive nationalism, radical separatism, extreme forms of confessionalism and other forms of dangerous extremism which threaten the Russian state and the whole world;
• constitutional foundations have been laid for a law-governed Russian state, in which the basic human rights and liberties are respected;
• work has been continued on building a truly federal state and strong positions in the world community.

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