Word: duma
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...during the long evening of Dec. 17, 1995, Felix Braynin sat transfixed before a television set in the living room of a government guest house in Moscow. He didn't like what he saw. Returns from the elections for the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, represented a devastating setback for reform-minded parties, including the one linked to Boris Yeltsin. The Communists and their allies were on their way to controlling the body, a disturbing development because in six months Russians would vote for President. Yeltsin's standing in the polls was abysmal, a reflection...
Most of Yeltsin's confidants believed the President would be magically re-elected despite the Duma catastrophe, but Braynin thought otherwise. The President, he reasoned, could lose without the same kind of professional assistance U.S. office seekers employ as a matter of course. Braynin began a series of confidential discussions with Yeltsin's aides, including one with First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, who at the time was in charge of the President's nascent re-election effort. Finally, in early February, Braynin was instructed to "find some Americans" but to proceed discreetly. "Secrecy was paramount," says Braynin. "Everyone realized...
MOSCOW: President Boris Yeltsin's resounding victory over Communist Gennady Zyuganov came with "palpable sigh of relief," says TIME Moscow bureau chief Paul Quinn-Judge. Realizing that the President was back to stay, the Communist-led Russian Duma sent Boris Yeltsin a congratulatory telegram Friday, just one day after subdued Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov finally conceded defeat. Although Zyuganov complained about the "ruinous cost" of Yeltsin's election campaign, which saw the country blanketed in pro-Yeltsin media coverage and festooned with Yeltsin banners, he held out the promise of cooperation, provided the Communists were offered significant posts...
...controlled by Yeltsin, and Lebed began appearing more frequently on news shows in the last weeks of the campaign. In addition, his commercials seemed to flood the airwaves. Alexei Golovkov, chief of staff to the reformist Cabinet in the early 1990s, was recruited from the government benches in the Duma to help mastermind Lebed's efforts. One major Moscow weekly received 2 billion rubles from the Yeltsin campaign to cover the cost of running Lebed's election propaganda...
Last month Grachev was summoned before the Communist-dominated State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament). The Duma wanted an explanation for the slaughter of up to 93 Russian soldiers in a rebel ambush in Chechnya. Grachev publicly decried "all the outrages that are happening in this country" and offered to resign, should the Duma require it. "He was signaling to Yeltsin that his loyalty could not be taken for granted," says the defense analyst. "And he [was] also signaling to the opposition that he might not be all that loyal to Yeltsin anymore...