What Yeltsin’s Assault on Parliament Can Teach Us About American Democracy
On the surface, comparing the 1993 attack on the Russian legislature with the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol may seem awkward, but the comparison reveals a lot.
In October 1993, a weak and desperate president ordered a frontal assault on his legislature. Then Russia’s great democratic hero, Boris Yeltsin had become convinced that the country’s parliament — a holdover from the Soviet period — had become an insurmountable impediment to his agenda. It was a one-sided battle.
When the dust from the tank-fire settled, some 147 people had lost their lives, with Yeltsin taking clear control and using his power to institute major constitutional changes. Successful in the short term, this move eroded public trust and planted the seeds for Russia’s eventual backsliding into authoritarianism in the longer term.
On January 6, 2021, a weak and desperate president incited his supporters to disrupt legislative proceedings. Buoyed by conspiracy theories and white nationalism, U.S. President Donald Trump had become convinced that his legislature — newly constituted after free and fair elections — had become an insurmountable impediment to his agenda. It was a one-sided battle, as a small but forceful mob initially breached the Capitol, causing material damage, before being removed by security forces.
When the dust settled, some five people had lost their lives, with Trump reluctantly accepting that a constitutionally mandated and peaceful transfer of power was inevitable. Though he failed in the short term, Trump pledged that the battle was not over.
On the surface, the comparison might seem awkward. Russia in 1993 was a young, deeply flawed democracy, while America in 2021 claims to be the world’s oldest. The Russian president was in a genuine standoff against a legislature of questionable legitimacy, while the American president manufactured a standoff against a legislature of broadly accepted legitimacy.
The Russian president had called in the army, while the American army refused to get involved. Russia today has reverted to authoritarianism, while America today remains broadly democratic.
Yet, if we look deeper, the comparison reveals a lot. Whether old or new, democracy may be more fragile than we assume. In my field of study, political science, scholars have been writing for decades about “consolidated” versus “new” democracies.
The thinking went something like this: in a consolidated democracy, all the players accept the “rules of the game,” including elections and the peaceful transition of power. Moreover, they have so internalized these rules that there is no chance that the losers would storm off in a huff, scuttling the game itself. In overestimating democracy’s resilience, this led to the flawed belief that — to quote the title from Sinclair Lewis’ famous book — “It can’t happen here.”
The reality is that it can happen here, there or anywhere. The beauty and the challenge of democracy is that it is always on knife’s edge. The actions of a tank operator, a border guard or a Twitter fact-checker may be enormously consequential.
Our institutions are only as durable as the choices we make every day to ensure that they work, and that they work well. Such choices can produce trust — the bedrock of democratic order and a bulwark against backsliding — but trust in institutions and trust in fellow citizens can degrade rapidly.
America’s democracy has endured for now, but it is far from invincible. Russia’s fledgling democracy failed, but that does not mean it was doomed from the start.
The comparison also reminds us that democracy is full of contradictions that only deft leadership and broad public commitment can navigate. In most Western accounts of the standoff between Yeltsin and parliament, Yeltsin is portrayed as a committed democrat, while parliamentarians were seen as intransigent Soviet-era holdovers. This is not false, so much as incomplete.
Yeltsin spoke the language of democracy with great fluency, but his heroics in the waning days of the Soviet Union gave him a hero complex that led to anti-democratic if not megalomaniacal tendencies. For their part, the parliamentarians had indeed obstructed Yeltsin’s moves, but they did have legitimacy, if only partial, having been elected in the most democratic (though clearly flawed) parliamentary elections to that point. Instead of using leadership to build coalitions, construct consensus and model democratic behaviour, he bombed parliament.
For his part, Trump also speaks the language of democracy, though his fluency might be debated. Because the pro-Trump mob was eventually repelled and democratic institutions have survived, we might find ourselves drawn to President Joe Biden’s words: “This is not America.”
The real America should apparently be the one where voice, civility and opportunity prevail — just as they have since 1776. This is a nice narrative, but it is also incomplete. American democracy is built just as much on violent conquest, slavery, deeply entrenched racism and unequal opportunity.
The real America is a diverse and complex place. Boris Yeltsin lacked the leadership necessary to steer his fledgling democracy through Russia’s own complexity and historical grievances; one hopes that Joe Biden will be different.
