Boris Yeltsin presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union which in turn broke the balance of power that had kept the world uneasy but safe for almost 50 years of Cold War. As a result, America found itself the lone superpower and has misused its position with disastrous consequences, not least for the people of Iraq. Some wonder if Yeltsin might have held the collapsing Soviet state together as a non-communist entity if he had possessed the will. Or had the political and economic rot set in so far that it was bound to collapse anyway? The moment for which Yeltsin will be most remembered was when he clambered onto one of the tanks sent by the anti-Gorbachev coup leaders to demand his surrender as the then powerful mayor of Moscow. His defiance caught the world’s imagination and broke the back of the rebellion. But when Gorbachev was freed from his temporary imprisonment in Yalta, Yeltsin went out of his way to discredit his leader and former sponsor, and so make himself an almost certain victor in Russia’s first free presidential elections.
The West and the Americans of course loved Yeltsin. They lauded his democratic reforms, even applauded his banning of the Communist Party and they showered him with advice on the transformation of the Russian economy. There were of course two reasons for this. First, Yeltsin’s political triumph and his friendly overtures to the old Western enemies signaled the Cold War victory of the US. Less appreciated at the time was the disruptive extent of the economic changes that the country was about to undergo. They might have been designed to pauperize and humiliate Washington’s longtime foe. Military spending collapsed and the consequences were spectacular. Russia’s entire Black Sea fleet rusted into port for lack of money to pay for fuel and spare parts. Morale in the armed forces plummeted. The Americans thought they had nothing further to fear from the Russian bear.
Yeltsin’s political savvy seemed to desert him in his second term, as the collapsing ruble destroyed almost overnight the hard-won savings of millions of citizens. Increasingly prone to drink, he allowed the control of the administration to slip into the hands of a few chosen cronies, who had bought up state assets at a fraction of their real value. To his discredit, he also permitted the restart of the military campaign to crush the Chechen rebels. Here he was much influenced by his prime minister and soon to be successor, Vladimir Putin.
At a time when his country was going through painful and profound change, Yeltsin lacked the vision provide it with firm guidance. He certainly lacked the acuity to see how the collapse of Moscow’s global influence was creating such a dangerous stage for an unchallenged and aggressive US foreign policy. The irony is that two years after he made his political fortune with his triumphant appearance at the White House of Russia, he was ordering tanks to open fire against the same building to drive out rebellious parliamentarians. A very mixed legacy.
