Boris Yeltsin, elected President in July 1991, began assuming increasing powers, leading to a political standoff with Russia's parliament, which in 1993 was composed of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet.

On 4 October, the army, which had remained neutral, shelled the White House using tanks and stormed the building with special forces on Yeltsin's orders, arresting the surviving leaders of the resistance.

[4][5] The ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of street fighting in Moscow's history since the October Revolution;[6] 147 people were killed and 437 wounded according to the official Russian government statistics.

The program began to lose support, and the ensuing political confrontation between Yeltsin on one side, and the opposition to radical economic reform on the other, became increasingly centered in the two branches of government.

Throughout 1992, opposition to Yeltsin's reform policies grew stronger and more intractable among bureaucrats concerned about the condition of Russian industry and among regional leaders who wanted more independence from Moscow.

The United States provided an estimated $2.58 billion of official aid to Russia during the eight years of Clinton's presidency, to build a new economic system, and he encouraged American businesses to invest.

[16] In an angry speech the next day on 10 December, Yeltsin accused the Congress of blocking the government's reforms and suggested the people decide on a referendum, "which course do the citizens of Russia support?

On 20 March, Yeltsin addressed the nation directly on television, declaring that he had signed a decree on a "special regime" (Об особом порядке управления до преодоления кризиса власти), under which he would assume extraordinary executive power pending the results of a referendum on the timing of new legislative elections, on a new constitution, and on public confidence in the president and vice-president.

As a reaction, a number of the representatives of Saint Petersburg intelligentia (e.g., Oleg Basilashvili, Aleksei German, Boris Strugatsky) sent a petition to president Yeltsin, urging "putting an end to the street criminality under political slogans".

[31] On 29 April 1993, Boris Yeltsin released the text of his proposed constitution to a meeting of government ministers and leaders of the republics and regions, according to ITAR-TASS.

In July, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation confirmed the election of Pyotr Sumin to head the administration of the Chelyabinsk Oblast, something that Yeltsin had refused to accept.

In this case, his powers cease immediately.In his television appearance to the citizens of Russia, President Yeltsin argued for the decree nr 1400 as follows: Already for more than a year attempts were made to reach a compromise with the corps of deputies, with the Supreme Soviet.

The more flagrant ones are the so-called economic policies of the Supreme Soviet, and its decisions on the budget and privatization; there are many others that deepen the crisis, cause colossal damage to the country.

[56] Yeltsin scoffed at the parliament-backed proposal for simultaneous elections, and responded the next day by cutting off electricity, phone service, and hot water in the parliament building.

Under the Western-backed economic program adopted by Yeltsin, the Russian government took several radical measures at once that were supposed to stabilize the economy by bringing state spending and revenues into balance and by letting market demand determine the prices and supply of goods.

The rationale of the program was to squeeze the built-in inflationary pressure out of the economy so that the newly privatized producers would begin making sensible decisions about production, pricing and investment instead of chronically overusing resources, as in the Soviet era.

By letting the market rather than central planners determine prices, product mixes, output levels, and the like, the reformers intended to create an incentive structure in the economy where efficiency and risk would be rewarded and waste and carelessness were punished.

However, Western critics of Yeltsin's reform, most notably Joseph Stiglitz and Marshall Goldman (who would have favored a more "gradual" transition to market capitalism) consider policies adopted in Poland ill-suited for Russia, given that the impact of communism on the Polish economy and political culture was far less indelible.

[61] On the afternoon of 3 October, armed opponents of Yeltsin successfully stormed the police cordon around the White House territory, where the Russian parliament was barricaded.

Rutskoy greeted the crowds from the White House balcony, and urged them to form battalions and to go on to seize the mayor's office and the national television center at Ostankino.

On the evening of 3 October, after taking the mayor's office located in the former Comecon HQ nearby, pro-parliament demonstrators and gunmen led by General Albert Makashov moved toward Ostankino, the television center.

When broadcasting resumed late in the evening, vice-premier Yegor Gaidar called on television for a meeting in support of democracy and President Yeltsin "so that the country would not be turned yet again into a huge concentration camp".

[68] A number of people with different political convictions and interpretations over the causes of the crisis (such as Grigory Yavlinsky, Alexander Yakovlev, Yury Luzhkov, Ales Adamovich, and Bulat Okudzhava) also appealed to support the President.

[69] Similarly, the Civic Union bloc of 'constructive opposition' issued a statement accusing the Supreme Soviet of having crossed the border separating political struggle from criminality.

[69] Several hundred of Yeltsin's supporters spent the night in the square in front of the Moscow City Hall preparing for further clashes, only to learn in the morning of 4 October that the army was on their side.

The supporters of the parliament did not send any emissaries to the barracks to recruit lower-ranking officer corps, making the fatal mistake of attempting to deliberate only among high-ranking military officials who already had close ties to parliamentary leaders.

They hoped for the unexpectedness, for the fact that their impudence and unprecedented cruelty will sow fear and confusion.Yeltsin assured the listeners: "The fascist-communist armed rebellion in Moscow shall be suppressed within the shortest period.

It was written in reaction to the events and contained the following seven demands:[81] In the weeks following the storming of the White House, Yeltsin issued a barrage of presidential decrees intended to consolidate his position.

On 5 October, Yeltsin banned political leftist and nationalist organizations and newspapers like Den', Sovetskaya Rossiya and Pravda that had supported the parliament (they would later resume publishing).

[83] "Russia needs order," Yeltsin told the Russian people in a television broadcast in November in introducing his new draft of the constitution, which was to be put to a referendum on 12 December.