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Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007
By Jeff Fecke | April 23, 2007
If you’re under, say, 25, you probably don’t have a special place in your heart for Boris Yeltsin. For you, the Cold War was never much on the radar. If you were aware of it, it was distant, and it was gone and done by the time you were in second grade.
I was seventeen in 1991, and the Cold War was very much on the radar. I had spent my youth acutely aware that America was at war with the Soviet Union, that we were involved in a Manichean conflict in which all the nations of the world had lined up on one side or the other, and I knew well that both sides were armed with nuclear weaponry sufficient that a war between the two powers could well mean not just the end of America, but the end of humanity. It is a powerful and frightening thing to grow up knowing that you and everything you know could be destroyed tomorrow–and it’s one reason why to me, the threat of terrorists destroying part of a city has never seemed remotely like the gravest threat our nation has faced.
By 1991, the ediface of communism had begun to collapse. The Berlin Wall had fallen two years before, and with it the illusion that there was such a thing as an international monolithic communist conspiracy. Slowly, the faint flicker of democracy, hidden by walls and gulags for forty-five years, was beginning to build into a flame in the previously forlorn countries behind the Iron Curtain.
The changes reached within the very center of the Evil Empire, where Yetsin was then the id of reform to Gorbachev’s technocratic ego. Yeltsin had been sacked from the Politburo in 1987, after clashing with Gorbachev over the role of Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, in the government. Yeltsin was bitter and depressed after being fired, even attempting suicide. But in 1989, Yeltsin made a triumphant return, getting elected to the Supreme Soviet in the semi-free elections of that year. He later rose to Chair of the Presidium, the highest position in the Russian Soviet. In 1990, he quit the Communist Party; in 1991, he was elected to the newly-created position of President of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic with 57% of the vote.
That same year marked independence movements in the Baltic States and Azerbaijan; Gorbachev responded by trying to rework the relationship between the central leadership structure and the Soviets. The hard-liners saw the writing on the wall: the USSR was collapsing, and just as the German Democratic Republic had been swept away two years before, now the very center of the Warsaw Pact was in jeopardy. They had to act, and act they did, implementing a coup d’etat against Gorbachev on August 19, 1991.
The coup began, as they usually did in the USSR, with somber music, and announcements that Gorbachev was “ill,” and that the State Emergency Committee, led by Vice President Gennady Yanayev, would lead. Yanayev soon took to the air in a shaky address, denouncing Gorbachev’s liberal ways.
And then something amazing happened. Whether sensing the Committee’s weakness or simply caught up in the rush of freedom and liberalism that had been opened for them, the Soviets refused to accept it. They marched, and protested, and demanded a return of Gorbachev to power. In Moscow, they rallied at the White House, the home of the Russian Soviet’s parliament. There, citizens faced tanks, ostensibly there to repress the citizenry, but actually driven by citizens who were at worst sympathetic to their aims.
Into that meelee walked Boris Yeltsin with a megaphone. Brazenly, he mounted a tank, grabbed a bullhorn, and urged the crowd to oppose the junta that had seized power.
It was an electric moment, and the beginning of the end for the Committee. Within days, the coup failed; Gorbachev returned to Moscow, though badly weakened. In December, Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union, and Yeltsin, as Russia’s president, recognized it. Soon enough, the Soviet Union itself was dead, and the Cold War was at an end.
Perhaps Yeltsin did not live up to that courageous moment. His economic “shock therapy” program, which transformed Russia from a poorly-run command economy to a lassiez-faire kleptocracy, did little to improve the lives of the average Russian. When he resigned in 1999, giving way to current Russian President Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin left a country in chaos, one quite willing to turn to an autocratic former KGB director with little interest in trifles such as basic human rights.
But if Yeltsin failed to build a perfect model Russia, he was at the very least equal to his moment. Had Yeltsin failed to act when he did, or had he tried to cut a deal with the Committee, perhaps the coup would have gained traction. Perhaps Russia would have tried to impress itself on its recalcitrant provinces. Certainly, as bad as Putin is, the hardline Soviets proved themselves to be worse.
So today, as we mark the death of Boris Yeltsin, let us remember that whatever his ability to govern, at the very least he was equal to a singular moment in time, one where his country’s future hung in the balance, and at least at that moment, he chose the right path.
Topics: In Memoriam, Russia | 1 Comment »
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:52 pm
[...] Blog of the Moderate Left, makes the case that he was the right man at the right time . . . . . . If Yeltsin failed to build a perfect model Russia, he was at the very least equal to his moment. Had Yeltsin failed to act when he did, or had he tried to cut a deal with the [State Emergency] Committee, perhaps the coup would have gained traction. Perhaps Russia would have tried to impress itself on its recalcitrant provinces. Certainly, as bad as Putin is, the hardline Soviets proved themselves to be worse. [...]