At the same time,
the leaders who came and went over time were all of Chuvash ethnicity and ¯ uent in
the Chuvash language. A. M. Leontiev, the chairman of the republic’ s Supreme Soviet at the end of perestroika, was forced out of of®ce for supporting the August 1991
coup. He was replaced by his deputy, Eduard Kubarev, who was allied with the pro-democracy faction in the soviet. His power was in turn undermined when he was eliminated in the ®rst round of the republic’ s 1991 presidential election, but he was able to hold on to power because neither of the remaining candidates received a majority in the second round. A repeat election was not held until December 1993. This contest was won by Nikolai Fedorov, the former Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation and a prominent member of the pro-democracy camp. Since his election, Fedorov has attempted to gain support from Chuvash nationalist groups by
inviting some of their leaders into his administration. He also became known as one of the ®ercest critics of the war in Chechnya.