January


Rebel Chechen fighters in Grozny repulsed Russian forces who attempted to storm the city on New Year's Eve. On Russian Orthodox Christmas Day, Patriarch Alexy II and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov laid the cornerstone of the new Cathedral of Christ the Savior, beginning a controversial $244 million construction project to replace the original torn down by Stalin. Russian jets bombed central Grozny a day after President Boris Yeltsin ordered an end to aerial bombardments in Chechnya for the second time. Human rights campaigner Sergei Kovalyov chastised Yeltsin for not stopping the bombing, and said the country was being run by villains. Yegor Gaidar announced that his party, Russia's Choice, was withdrawing its support for the president. Yelena Bonner withdrew from the president's human rights commission. Alexander Solzhenitsyn called the war a "political blunder," and said Chechens should be given independence. The presidential palace in Grozny fell. Grachev was congratulated for completing the military operation in Chechnya. The head of Aeroflot, Vladimir Tikhonov, said 1995 would be better than 1994, which he called exceptionally bad for Russian aviation. Crash deaths were more than three times the world average. For him, 1995 was to prove a bad year; he was fired before it ended.





February


Twenty-five American strippers began work at Moscow's latest night spot, Dolls. Yeltsin appeared at a CIS summit in Almaty, looking frail as he was supported by aides on either side. The Duma passed a bill requiring that foreign residents be tested for AIDS. The controversial head of the Bolshoi Theater for 30 years, Yury Grigorovich, resigned. Kovalyov was fired from his post as the Duma's human rights commissioner. The Pushkin Institute opened a small exhibition of trophy art seized from Germany in World War II, which had long been thought lost, and the Hermitage followed with a sensational one the following month. The Tretyakov Gallery displayed the secret protocol of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.





March


The popular television journalist Vladislav Listyev was murdered. Norman Thagard became the first U.S. astronaut to fly into space on a Russian rocket. Valery Polyakov became the first person to live in space for 438 days. On the 10th anniversary of the launch of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev said he would not rule out running for president again. Azeri President Heidar Aliyev extended a state of emergency in Baku after an attempted coup. President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan won 99 percent of the vote in a referendum on whether to extend his term of office until the year 2000. Nikita Mikhalkov won an Oscar for his film "Burned by the Sun." The Old Tretyakov Gallery reopened after a 10-year renovation. Russia's Soldiers' Mothers marched on Grozny.





April


U.S. aid worker Frederick Cuny was reported missing in Chechnya. Russian Interior Ministry troops went on a rampage in the village of Samashki, massacring more than 100 civilians who were hiding in their cellars. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan extended his term until 1999. The patriarch, prime minister and mayor all went to Russia's main midnight Easter service in Bogoyavlensky Cathedral -- but not President Yeltsin. The Japanese sect Aum Shinrikyo, blamed for the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo metro, was banned in Russia, where it claimed to have 30,000 members.





May


U.S. President Bill Clinton and other foreign leaders came to Moscow for parades commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. In talks with Clinton, Yeltsin stood firm on Russia's actions in Chechnya and its nuclear deal with Iran.The spring snow-melt revealed the vast extent of the oil spill in Usinsk the previous summer. A powerful earthquake leveled the town of Neftegorsk on Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East, killing more than half of its 3,200 residents. A heat wave buckled the runway at Sheremetyevo, forcing the Moscow airport to close temporarily. Duma speaker Ivan Rybkin abandoned a cargo of humanitarian aid in the U.S. to ship home some garden furniture for his dacha on the government plane. The military prosecutor cleared Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin's chief bodyguard and closest confidant, of criminal liability for a December raid on MOST Bank headquarters.





June


Cholera was found in the Moscow River, and health authorities banned swimming at certain points. Aid workers prevented any major epidemics from breaking out in the ruins of Grozny or among the 300,000 Chechen refugees in Ingushetia and Dagestan. Moscow formalized its relationship with NATO, finally endorsing Russia's participation in the Partnership for Peace program. Russia and Ukraine decided after three years of arguments to split the Black Sea Fleet 50-50, but left the details to be worked out. General Alexander Lebed, commander of the 14th Army in Moldova, resigned to take up politics. Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev and a band of fighters seized about 1,200 people in the Southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk and held them hostage in a hospital for a week. Yeltsin departed for the G-7 meeting in Halifax, Canada, leaving orders to storm the hospital. After an attempt to do so failed, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin telephoned Basayev and agreed to begin peace talks in Chechnya. He also gave the fighters safe passage home. Peace talks began in Grozny, and a cease-fire was declared. Yeltsin fired his interior minister, security service chief and nationalities minister for their parts in the Budyonnovsk hostage crisis. Prosecutor General Alexei Ilyushenko launched legal proceedings against NTV Independent Television's satirical program, "Kukly," saying it humiliated top government officials. U.S. Vice President Al Gore visited Russia for a mini-summit but failed to persuade Moscow to drop its nuclear deal with Iran. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to slash aid to Russia by nearly half.


July


Yeltsin was hospitalized with ischemia, a heart ailment. The Kremlin released photos of Yeltsin supposedly recovering in a hospital, but they turned out to have been taken three months before. Kazakhstan began televising executions of criminals. A street fight broke out when Ukrainian officials refused to allow the burial of Patrirach Volodymyr at the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral of Kiev and All Ukraine. He eventually was buried under the pavement outside the cathedral. Russian and Chechen negotiators in Grozny negotiated a military agreement, but failed to reach a political settlement on Chechnya's status. Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev refused to accept the deal and fired his chief negotiator. Yeltsin appointed Oleg Lobov, secretary of the Security Council, as his special envoy to Chechnya.





August


Rocked by the murder of leading banker Ivan Kivelidi, Russia's business community launched its own search for the killers, saying it had no faith in the ability of police to catch them. Kivelidi, who was poisoned, joined a list of about 80 businessmen murdered in the past 3 1/2 years. The new Constitutional Court ruled that Yeltsin's order to send troops into Chechnya was constitutional. Russkoye Bistro opened in Moscow as a Russian fast-food challenge to McDonald's. McDonald's said it would open 15 more branches in the city. Georgia's head of state, Eduard Shevardnadze, was slightly injured in a bomb attack on his motorcade in Tbilisi.





September


A series of bomb attacks started against top Russian officials in Chechnya. Someone fired a rocket-propelled, anti-tank grenade at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, hitting a photocopier but causing no injuries. Belarus fired a missile at a hot-air balloon that drifted near a secret base, killing two American balloonists competing in an international competition. Vladimir Zhirinovsky pulled a woman deputy's hair during a fight in the Duma. Boris Pasternak's Lara died at age of 83. Viktoria Brezhneva, wife of former Comunist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, died at age 79. Yeltsin returned looking fighting fit after a long sojourn in Sochi. A liquidity crisis hit Moscow's banking industry, forcing a two-week halt to its $1-billion-a-day interbank lending and currency operations.





October


The Russian All-Star Circus returned home after being stranded for seven months in the Philippines, where it had run out of money. A Russian businessman hit by a personal liquidity crisis hijacked a bus of Korean tourists on Red Square and demanding millions of dollars in ransom. Police freed the hostages and killed the hijacker. Yeltsin announced he was firing his foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, on the eve of a trip to France and the United States. The next day he said he was not sacking Kozyrev after all, bud he did fire the prosecutor general. After three days of talks with Clinton, Yeltsin said he felt a new degree of optimism about relations with the United States, then was hospitalized with another bout of ischemia. Close aides were denied access to the president, and officials said his treatment would be prolonged.





November


Yeltsin appeared on national television from the hospital, looking pale and puffy but saying he was not feeling bad. The Federation Council continued wrangling over how to prolong its life -- as an elected body or an appointed one. The 43 parties competing in the Dec. 17 Duma elections drew lots for their numbers on the ballot. Women of Russia drew No. 1, Our Home Is Russia No.17 and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats "lucky" No. 33. The Communists, favorites to top the polls, got No. 25. Parliament agreed to extend military service from one year to 18 months. Yeltsin evicted an American firm from its dacha outside St. Petersburg to build one for himself in the fashionable Kammeny Ostrov. In Chechnya, rebels vowed to disrupt the polls.





December


On International AIDS Awareness Day, the government announced that it was ready to implement its law requiring AIDS tests for foreign residents.The Davis Cup came to Russia, only to go away again. Russia lost in the finals for the second year running, this time to the United States. A huge car bomb rocked Grozny. About 65 percent of Russia's voters took part in elections to the State Duma. The Communists topped the polls, followed by Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party, Our Home Is Russia and Yabloko. Russia's Choice failed to make the 5 percent barrier to get seats from its party lists, and its leader, Yegor Gaidar, was left with no seat at all. Rebels seized key points in Chechnya's second-largest city, Gudermes, and withdrew a week later after fighting with Russian troops. Yeltsin aides said the president would announce in February his decision on whether to run for relection next June. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky confirmed that he would be running, and called on all democrats to unite behind a single candidate. Nostalgic Stalinists marked the 116th anniversary of his birth on the shortest day of the year. Moscow turned cold, crisp and white for Christmas.


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