Will Middle Class Owners in Russia Become a Support for Economic Reform? By Lidia Lukyanova In 1995, there were nearly 10 million people in Russia employed in 900,000 small enterprises. These enterprises, however, accounted for only 12 to 13 percent of the national GDP. Among... MORE

Yeltsin's Penchant for Self-Destruction by Dmitri Glinski The Russian presidential elections have not started yet. It will be only in late April that the Election Commission will draw the final list of actual contenders. An ever-growing crowd of hopefuls, from well-known to most obscure, are... MORE

Chechens Prepare to Fight On by Maria Eismont President Boris Yeltsin has announced his peace plan for Chechnya but the situation on the ground gives little reason to believe that the conflict can be settled before the presidential election in June. In fact, Chechen militants... MORE

The Fortnight in Review CHECHNYA: YELTSIN'S SETTLEMENT PLAN STILLBORN More, or Less? In a long-awaited and repeatedly postponed address to the country, finally delivered March 31, President Boris Yeltsin unveiled a plan for settling the Chechnya conflict. The next day he issued a presidential decree... MORE

The Results in Novosibirsk: A Portent for June? by Grigory V. Golosov The recent Duma elections in Russia have been won by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). Does this mean that the party's leader, Gennady Zyuganov, will inevitably win this year's competition... MORE

Zhirinovsky: The Great Mystificator By Nikolai Troitsky Russian Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has thrown himself into the presidential race. He knows all too well that he does not have the slightest chance of winning the election, but it is not the presidency... MORE

The Shadow of Chechen Crime over Moscow by Aleksandr Zhilin "When I hear the heads of our power ministries assuring Muscovites that they are reliably protected against the intrigues of Dudaev militants, I feel bewildered. Those who make such statements are either unaware of the... MORE

Yeltsin's Political Purge by Andrei Zhukov The beginning of 1996 was marked by an unprecedented wave of personnel changes and resignations at the top echelons of Russian power. Of the twenty-six ministers and vice premiers dismissed during the three years that Viktor Chernomyrdin has been... MORE

The Fortnight in Review THE DUMA VOTE Events throughout the region were dominated by the decision of the Russian State Duma on March 15 to denounce the Belovezhye accords of December 1991, thereby attempting to invalidate both the dissolution of the USSR and the establishment... MORE

The Fortnight in Review CHECHNYA: The War Escalates On February 23, Chechens and Ingush commemorated their 1944 mass deportation by the Soviet authorities amid a new cycle of destruction and uprooting. Russian forces, enacting a district-by-district attack strategy just promulgated by the Army general staff,... MORE