President Boris Yeltsin said Tuesday that the era of political strife in Russia was over, a year after his tanks crushed the White House opposition in Moscow and left him in uncontested control of the country.
"We have succeeded in cutting the Gordian knot," the president told a press conference called on the anniversary of the "October events" in Moscow.
"In building a new Russia without malice, bloodshed and deceit let us remember all those who died, irrespective of whether they were defending democracy or were on the side of those dragging Russia into the conflagration of civil war," he said.
Yeltsin, red-faced and stiff, but confident nonetheless, dismissed the support for the leader of last year's opposition, his former vice president Alexander Rutskoi, as amounting to only "2 to 3 percent."
Opposition groups held a series of noisy anti-Yeltsin marches and public meetings in the days leading up to the anniversary, but Tuesday itself only a few demonstrators turned out.
At his press conference, Yeltsin insisted that he wanted to see presidential elections held on schedule in June 1996. But he said he did not want to "interfere" with the issue of putting back parliamentary elections, due in 1995. Some of his allies such as the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Vladimir Shumeiko, have proposed putting off polls for both parliament and presidency. Shumeiko himself stood by his position on parliamentary polls Tuesday, saying early elections were "not a blessing, but a curse," Itar-Tass reported.
In a further sign of his continued drive for full control of the country, Yeltsin signed a decree late Monday giving him the authority to appoint all heads of local administrations. Under the decree, the question of elections to these posts is put off "until another system is established by federal legislation." Some administrators have been appointed up till now, others have been elected.
In part, Yeltsin's preeminence stems from the fragmentation of the opposition one year after they held out against the president inside their headquarters, the Supreme Soviet. Although his own popularity has declined, the opposition to Yeltsin has still not regrouped in force.
"It is a chess match where the end has been delayed," said Nugzar Betaneli, director of the Institute of Sociological Parliamentarianism. "No one has won, no one's lost."
Meanwhile the president has made deals with the two houses of the new parliament, the Federation Council and the State Duma. Shumeiko, the speaker of the former, is a close Yeltsin ally, and the speaker of the other, Ivan Rybkin, has chosen a path of consensus with Yeltsin.
"Four of us got together before my visit to the United States," Yeltsin said Tuesday. "Shumeiko, Rybkin, Chernomyrdin and myself. We discussed a whole range of questions that we had not agreed on and we agreed on all the questions." He said the other three had supported his decree on local government.
In the last year the president has donned a much more authoritarian style and stolen many of his opponent's ideological clothes. He has rapped his ex-Soviet neighbors for their treatment of their Russian minorities, issued a tough decree on crime which outraged human rights activists and laid down the law to NATO and the West on the former Yugoslavia.
In his new tougher incarnation Yeltsin has distanced himself from his erstwhile allies in the democratic movement in the last year. Only isolated figures, such as Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais and Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Filatov have remained in a generally more conservative administration and government.
The president Tuesday did not reject outright the idea that a member of the Communist Party might join the government, something that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
"If someone professional and sensible comes -- and this is possible -- no matter from what party, from the opposition, I think that it will be no great sin, " Yeltsin said. "It will be only a benefit for our political stabilization."
He also declined to quash rumors about a reshuffle in his inner circle. The Moscow press has speculated that a group of liberal advisers, including his press secretary Vyacheslav Kostikov, may be fired.
"The president decides questions of dismissals," he said in answer to a reporter's question. "There may be changes in the make-up of the president's entourage. Why not?"
Kostikov himself chaired Tuesday's press conference in the Kremlin, but the atmosphere between the two men was much cooler than usual, with none of the friendly banter the two have indulged in on previous occasions.
The president joked that he was not surprised intrigue had been rife while he was away in the United States.
"You go away for a week and everything starts up, you come back everything is fine," he said. "So now everything is fine.
"We have succeeded in cutting the Gordian knot," the president told a press conference called on the anniversary of the "October events" in Moscow.
"In building a new Russia without malice, bloodshed and deceit let us remember all those who died, irrespective of whether they were defending democracy or were on the side of those dragging Russia into the conflagration of civil war," he said.
Yeltsin, red-faced and stiff, but confident nonetheless, dismissed the support for the leader of last year's opposition, his former vice president Alexander Rutskoi, as amounting to only "2 to 3 percent."
Opposition groups held a series of noisy anti-Yeltsin marches and public meetings in the days leading up to the anniversary, but Tuesday itself only a few demonstrators turned out.
At his press conference, Yeltsin insisted that he wanted to see presidential elections held on schedule in June 1996. But he said he did not want to "interfere" with the issue of putting back parliamentary elections, due in 1995. Some of his allies such as the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Vladimir Shumeiko, have proposed putting off polls for both parliament and presidency. Shumeiko himself stood by his position on parliamentary polls Tuesday, saying early elections were "not a blessing, but a curse," Itar-Tass reported.
In a further sign of his continued drive for full control of the country, Yeltsin signed a decree late Monday giving him the authority to appoint all heads of local administrations. Under the decree, the question of elections to these posts is put off "until another system is established by federal legislation." Some administrators have been appointed up till now, others have been elected.
In part, Yeltsin's preeminence stems from the fragmentation of the opposition one year after they held out against the president inside their headquarters, the Supreme Soviet. Although his own popularity has declined, the opposition to Yeltsin has still not regrouped in force.
"It is a chess match where the end has been delayed," said Nugzar Betaneli, director of the Institute of Sociological Parliamentarianism. "No one has won, no one's lost."
Meanwhile the president has made deals with the two houses of the new parliament, the Federation Council and the State Duma. Shumeiko, the speaker of the former, is a close Yeltsin ally, and the speaker of the other, Ivan Rybkin, has chosen a path of consensus with Yeltsin.
"Four of us got together before my visit to the United States," Yeltsin said Tuesday. "Shumeiko, Rybkin, Chernomyrdin and myself. We discussed a whole range of questions that we had not agreed on and we agreed on all the questions." He said the other three had supported his decree on local government.
In the last year the president has donned a much more authoritarian style and stolen many of his opponent's ideological clothes. He has rapped his ex-Soviet neighbors for their treatment of their Russian minorities, issued a tough decree on crime which outraged human rights activists and laid down the law to NATO and the West on the former Yugoslavia.
In his new tougher incarnation Yeltsin has distanced himself from his erstwhile allies in the democratic movement in the last year. Only isolated figures, such as Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais and Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Filatov have remained in a generally more conservative administration and government.
The president Tuesday did not reject outright the idea that a member of the Communist Party might join the government, something that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
"If someone professional and sensible comes -- and this is possible -- no matter from what party, from the opposition, I think that it will be no great sin, " Yeltsin said. "It will be only a benefit for our political stabilization."
He also declined to quash rumors about a reshuffle in his inner circle. The Moscow press has speculated that a group of liberal advisers, including his press secretary Vyacheslav Kostikov, may be fired.
"The president decides questions of dismissals," he said in answer to a reporter's question. "There may be changes in the make-up of the president's entourage. Why not?"
Kostikov himself chaired Tuesday's press conference in the Kremlin, but the atmosphere between the two men was much cooler than usual, with none of the friendly banter the two have indulged in on previous occasions.
The president joked that he was not surprised intrigue had been rife while he was away in the United States.
"You go away for a week and everything starts up, you come back everything is fine," he said. "So now everything is fine.
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