FISTS FLY IN DUMA.

During the Duma’s deliberations on September 9, the ultranationalist National Republican Party leader Nikolai Lysenko physically attacked the prominent democratic deputy, Father Gleb Yakunin, and tore from his cassock his golden crucifix. Democratic deputy Yevgenia Tishkovskaya attempted to defend Yakunin, but was, in turn, set upon by none other than ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. "Get out of here, scum," he shouted to the disheveled Tishkovskaya as she was hustled away from the scene. Lysenko later said that he stripped Yakunin of this cross in order to fulfill the will of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose Patriarch, Aleksii II, had defrocked Yakunin. (2)

Yeltsin On Elections