Timeline (The Second Revolution)

A timeline detailing the events of The Second Revolution timeline.

1996

 * 1996-presidential-campaign.jpgFebruary 16 - Russian president Boris Yeltsin announces he would seek a second term of office despite an ailing economy and concerns about his health.
 * March 2 - February polls return to see a small increase in Yeltsin's popular opinion due to his recent presidential announcement, however, most indicate he still lags behind the communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who has a 5% lead against the president.
 * March 10 - Weeks of campaigning open with the first unofficial advertisements appearing is the capital, the majority of which appear to support the incumbent.
 * March 12 - In a meeting between the members of Yeltsin's campaign team, Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of Saint Petersburg and co-author of the Russian Constitution is chosen to lead the Yeltsin re-election campaign alongside one of Russia's chief managers of privatization, Anatoly Chubais.
 * March 19 - Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) makes his first major public appearance of the election in the industrial city of Tula, rallying for a return to the former stability and economy of the Soviet Union.
 * March 24 - Yeltsin appears in front of a number of core-supporters announcing his peace plans for the Chechen region and a resolution to accelerate to end the conflict.
 * March 27 - Zyuganov calls out against Yeltsin's "Chechnya plan", claiming the president's actions so-far failed to end, and perhaps even caused an upturn in violence in the region.
 * April 4 - In an attempt to subsidize the re-election campaign, Chubais enters into talks with some of Russia's most powerful financial and media oligarchs. In return for subsidization and a mass media campaign which guaranteed a favourable coverage of the president, the companies would be granted majority stake in some of the country's most important state-owned assets. Despite agreeing to the deal, Sobchak, the campaign's head and a major member of the financial team, refuses to gamble with the government assets, and turns down the deal, causing a rift between himself and Chubais.
 * April 7 - Yeltsin ends a week of public appearances in Moscow and the outlying towns, discussing with the public a number of important measures, including Chechenya, the economy and the privatization of such, the military and international relations, esspecially with the former Soviet republics.