Khasbulatov, speaker of parliament who turned against Yeltsin, died

Ruslan Khasbulatov, for several years the second man of Russia and the Soviet Union, died at the age of 80. He became Speaker of Parliament shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union and was initially an ally of Boris Yeltsin.

Khasbulatov became speaker of parliament in 1991 and in August of the same year he and Yeltsin opposed the putschists who wanted to prevent the demise of the Soviet Union.

In December of that year, the curtain fell on the Soviet Union, which had been falling apart for years. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Soviet Union on December 26. After that, ties between Khasbulatov and Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, deteriorated, in part due to economic and constitutional differences of opinion.

In September 1993, more than a year and a half after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Khasbulatov, as Speaker of Parliament, questioned Yeltsin’s leadership with Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoy. They received the support of thousands who took to the streets, but Yeltsin retaliated by dissolving parliament.

This sparked a violent crisis in early October, with supporters of parliament attempting to storm the state television building in Moscow.

A firefight broke out and Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the White House, where the Russian parliament was located. Hundreds of parliamentarians who had holed up there were arrested. Khasbulatov was also arrested, as were many protesters.

He wouldn’t be stuck for long. In February 1994, Khasbulatov was released under an amnesty. After that, he disappeared from the political scene for good; he would also stop interfering in political discussions.

Khasbulatov, an ethnic Chechen, is believed to be buried in his home village north of Grozny, the Chechen capital.