Entry into political life In the late 1980s, Khasbulatov began to work closely with rising maverick in the Communist Party
Boris Yeltsin. He was elected to the
Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian SFSR in 1990. He followed Yeltsin in the successful resistance to the
coup attempt in 1991. He quit the Communist Party in August 1991, and on 29 October 1991, he was elected speaker of the
Supreme Soviet of RSFSR.
1993 Constitutional Crisis Khasbulatov had been an ally of Yeltsin in this period, and played a key role in leading the resistance to the
1991 coup attempt. However, he and Yeltsin drifted apart following the collapse of the
Soviet Union at the end of 1991. After the collapse of the USSR, Khasbulatov consolidated his control over the Russian parliament and became the second most powerful man in Russia after Yeltsin himself. Among other factors, the escalating clash of egos between Khasbulatov and Yeltsin led to the
Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, in which Khasbulatov (along with Vice-President
Alexander Rutskoy) led the Supreme Soviet of Russia in its power struggle with the president, which ended with Yeltsin's violent assault on and subsequent dissolution of the parliament in October 1993. Khasbulatov was arrested along with the other leaders of the parliament. In 1994, the newly elected
Duma pardoned him along with other key leaders of the anti-Yeltsin resistance.
"Professor Khasbulatov's peacekeeping mission" In 1994, he organized the so-called "Peacekeeping Mission of Professor Khasbulatov". He traveled to Chechnya, trying to organize negotiations between the separatist leader, Ichkerian president
Dzhokhar Dudayev and the anti-Dudayev opposition, as well as the Russian authorities. However, the mission was unsuccessful, the parties were not ready to make any compromises, in addition to the popularity of Dudayev at the time in Chechnya being extremely high, and Khasbulatov himself essentially joined the anti-Dudayev opposition. A few months before
Russian troops entered Chechnya, on August 20, 1994, Khasbulatov at a rally in the town of
Shali in Chechnya called for the creation of a reconciliation commission and the signing of an agreement on the non-use of weapons by armed groups against each other.
Chechen politics Khasbulatov considered running as a candidate in the 2003 election for
President of the Chechen Republic, following the
Second Chechen War, but ultimately chose not to run. In the
2021 Chechen head election, he endorsed incumbent
Ramzan Kadyrov. == Later life==