Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Valery Zorkin

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


Valery Zorkin is the former chairperson of the Constitutional Court, which was established as the first independent judiciary in Russian history. He resigned in October 1993 following the dissolution of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet (legislature) and the armed removal of hard-line opponents to President Boris Yeltsin.  


Zorkin was born in 1944 in eastern Russia to a Soviet Army general and a Russian literature instructor. He grew up as an "army brat" and studied law at Moscow State University, during which time he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His academic thesis focused on a group of prerevolutionary Russian philosophers who had sought a liberal constitutional monarchy under the czars. In October 1991 he was appointed to the Constitutional Court, fashioned as a constitutional tribunal completely separate from the criminal court system and in charge of judicial review of legislative acts and executive orders. Zorkin helped Yeltsin pen legal protests against the unsuccessful August 1991 coup to restore hard-line Communist rule. As a tactful negotiator, he brokered a brief compromise between Yeltsin and parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov in 1992 when intransigent former Communist deputies (assured seats in the legislature until 1995) began to impede Yeltsin's economic reforms.  


Zorkin ran afoul of Yeltsin supporters in March 1993 when he publicly questioned the legality of Yeltsin's declaration of broad powers and his proposal for a national vote of confidence. Zorkin claimed that a referendum was too risky given the fact that Russia was threatened by hyperinflation, secessionist tendencies, and voter cynicism. Zorkin increasingly sided with Yeltsin's political opponents and presided over court decisions critical of the president. Yeltsin's prodemocratic supporters viewed Zorkin as an impediment to democratic change. In an attempt to break Congress's legislative deadlock on power, Yeltsin in September 1993 announced the dissolution of the existing parliament and new elections in December.  


Zorkin allied himself with Khasbulatov in the confrontation between hard-line parliamentarians who subsequently holed up in the parliament building before troops loyal to Yeltsin removed them by force. Zorkin was reappointed to a modified (less powerful) Constitutional Court in 1994.  


[Sources: Facts on File World News Digest; The New York Times]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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