Title: Boris Yeltsin
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Content: Many of his old enemies from the White House turned up in the new parliament, while almost one quarter of the votes went to Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. Western-style reformers were now out of fashion, though the West was kept sweet by the government’s continued policy of fighting inflation. Power was once again in the hands of the old Soviet nomenklatura. Yeltsin gathered around him associates from his days as Communist Party boss in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg. Membership of the inner circle depended principally on loyalty in the 1993 uprising. The Kremlin became a court, filled with intrigue where real power was wielded by the most unlikely people. Alexander Korzhakov, who rose from being bodyguard to become chief of presidential security, was seen as the second most influential man in the land. A tougher stance was adopted in foreign affairs, with Russia making every effort to appear a superpower, even if it was not. This was particularly clear in dealings with the former Soviet republics, in which the Kremlin arrogated itself the right to use all means, including force, to defend Russian interests. The apogee of General Korzhakov and like-minded men suspicious of the West came in December 1994, when the might of the Russian armed forces was turned against the rebellious republic of Chechnya, a small territory on Russia’s southern border which declared itself independent in 1991.