The referendum held in Russia this past April has left President Boris Yeltsin in office, which is better than his defeat would have been, but it has done nothing to resolve the ongoing crisis which has caused so much panic both in Western capitals and in Russia itself.

A few months ago, when the crisis once again hit the news, some hastened to announce what had always been expected and feared, yet would, it had simultaneously been hoped, be averted by a miracle: the death of the fragile democratic system which had been born in Russia after the failed coup of August 1991, the fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, and the accession of Boris Yeltsin to power. Others argued that democracy in Russia had been stillborn right from the start, or even that it had never quite been a democracy. Most even likened the change to what had happened 75 years earlier, when the Provisional Government, which had taken power after the Czar’s abdication, was overthrown by the Bolsheviks.