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New Russia is Yeltsin’s legacy
Boris Yeltsin will be indelibly
linked to the creation of democracy in Russia. By facing down the
tanks outside the Russian parliament, he showed that popular
opinion could conquer authoritarianism.
Such personal courage and high principle earned him national
acclaim and international attention. And it broke the stranglehold
of Communism, the ideology that nurtured him and first brought him
to national power. But his time in power enabled a “Wild West”
form of capitalism under which a small group of businessmen
swiftly acquired huge fortunes.
Born to a peasant family in the Ural mountains in 1931, Boris
Nikolayevich Yeltsin advanced through the Communist Party
hierarchy. He became party secretary in Sverdlovsk, a secret city
heavily involved in defence manufacturing.
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev summoned Yeltsin to take charge of
Moscow and shake the corruption out of its moribund party
structure.
Presenting himself as a streetwise leader rather than a remote
bureaucrat, Yeltsin’s reforming zeal infuriated the old guard.
Attacked, eventually, even by Gorbachev, he left the Politburo in
1988 and, within two years, the Communist Party.
As the party outcast, Yeltsin remained popular. In 1991, he
emerged as the first elected president of Russia, a titular post
dependent on the existence of the Soviet Union.
In August of that year, hard-line conservatives attempted a coup.
Yeltsin rallied the liberals and restored Gorbachev to office.
Nonetheless, he used the coup to discredit both Gorbachev and the
plotters.
He banned the Communist Party, still the keystone of Soviet power.
By the end of the year the Soviet Union had fallen apart. Yeltsin
was now president of an independent Russia.
Within two years the Russian parliament was again under siege, but
this time the tanks were ordered in by president Yeltsin. Calling
new elections, he tried to clear away his opponents. They
resisted, barricaded themselves inside parliament and attempted to
take over state television.
When troops loyal to Yeltsin blasted the parliament building, the
rebels surrendered, but the new parliament was to prove nearly as
truculent as its predecessor.
The ultra-nationalists were a major new force in the parliament
and they sniped at the president’s government and political
programme.
With the collapse of the old order came economic liberalisation.
But this meant stock markets and rampant inflation, amazing wealth
for a few, misery for many and a severe psychological shock for a
country accustomed to state direction.
On the world stage, Yeltsin wanted Russia to be respected as a
world power, but he also needed western investment. Above all, the
United States decided he was the best hope to stabilise his
country and provided steadfast support.
Slowly the economy was coming right. New markets opened up popular
products at affordable prices. But Yeltsin’s once mighty
popularity had been eroded. By 1994, Russia was mired in blood and
confusion. Its security forces botched an attempt to put down a
rebellion in the wayward Chechnya.
Indiscriminate fighting laid populated areas to waste and killed
many civilians. Liberal Russians said it was inhumane;
nationalists called it ineffective. Crime and corruption in Russia
became endemic, with contract killings almost an everyday
occurrence.
Into this social vacuum stepped the newly-revived Communist Party
promising a seductive cocktail of old certainties and new vigour.
But as presidential elections approached in 1996, Yeltsin began an
astonishing political resurrection. He invited the Chechen rebels
into the Kremlin to end the war. He mounted an energetic campaign.
Above all, he appeared healthy and commanding. The result of the
election was a triumph for Yeltsin.
In November 1996, he underwent a successful quintuple heart bypass
operation in Moscow. Two months later, he was taken ill again with
a serious bout of pneumonia. He would never be fully fit again.
For the rest of Yeltsin’s life his health was unstable, forcing
him to disappear from view for weeks at a time.
Yeltsin sacked one prime minister in 1998 – one after a disastrous
financial collapse – and another two in 1999. Vladimir Putin, a
former spy chief took over the premiership in August 1999 and the
Russian presidency four months later.
Chechnya aside, one of the most remarkable features of Yeltsin’s
rule is how generally peaceful it remained. He carried his country
through a turbulent transformation with far less bloodshed than
many had feared, and the new Russia is his legacy. – BBC
 
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