Russia

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Russia, officially known as the Russian Federation is an Eastern European country that was once under the control of the Soviet communist party in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, until its collapse in December 1991 as the nation started transitioning towards democracy. However, the transition from socialist to democratic for Russia proved to be severely fatal as there was direct military involvement along with public widespread protest during the Constitutional Crisis of 1993. Although it was a time in which former President Boris Yelstin (executive) was in a heated confrontation with the Russian Parliament (legislature formerly formed by the Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet) on issues about the control and reframing the constitution of the government, it was actually a time in which the nation was entrenched with political instability as many political analyst would answer the question of, why has the nation had problems with political instability?

It all began to take root on early January of 1992 as Boris Yelstin, who was faced with “One of the most urgent challenges…for rescuing the sinking Russian economy” (Breslauer 2002: 153), decided to take an initiative to put into effect his economic reform policies to alleviate the economy. Consequently, it caused many industries to go out of business as prices soon began to skyrocket which caused spending to take a drastic downturn and taxes to escalate further. Soon afterwards Yelstin’s reform began to viewed as being too radical which caught the Parliament’s attention for his actions being somewhat “unconstitutional” because “He was an autocrat who, without regard to formal constraints…acted in unpredictable ways to achieve his goals” (Rose and Munro 2002: 41), namely he exercised his powers beyond constitutional norms to stabilize the economy. Furthermore, Yelstin who grew aware that his special power to issue decrees was about to terminate at the start of 1993, but demanded Parliament to revise or amend the constitution (since the Constitution of 1978 invested them with the authority to be able to do so) which would grant the president more power than he already had at the time through his decree being revived. On the contrary, Parliament decided to decline his request which led to series of clashes between both Yelstin and Parliament as “…Yelstin did not change his position concerned his relations with Parliament and the power of the presidency” (Breslauer 2002: 167), to illustrate Yelstin’s will and determination in exercising his powers so the nation can truly obtain democracy.

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