Ten hours into a tank assault on the Russian White House parliament building, rebel parliamentarians led by Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi and Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov surrender to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Yeltsin, who had barely survived an impeachment bid by the Russian Duma (Parliament) earlier in the year, dissolved the legislative body on September 21 and called for general elections. Rutskoi, Khasbulatov, and other hard-liners responded by barricading themselves inside the White House building and electing Rutskoi as Russian president, beginning a tense siege that ended with Yeltsin’s tank assault and the rebels’ subsequent surrender and arrest. In December 1993, parliamentary elections were held and a new Russian constitution that gave President Yeltsin greater executive power and decreased the authority of the Duma was approved in a national referendum. After a decade of controversial rule, Yeltsin resigned at the end of 1999 and was succeeded by Vladimir Putin.
