Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin Dies at 76

He rose through the ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He stood on top of a tank in August 1991 to ensure that the Communist Party and the Soviet Union collapsed. He was the first Russian president who was freely elected. He oversaw the almost complete destruction of the Russian economy. Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin died today at the age of 76, apparently from heart failure, leaving behind a legacy of pure contradiction.

The young Yeltsin was a rascal, in the Huck Finn sense of the word. He excelled in school but was often a discipline problem (he’d had more than a few street fights), and he often had trouble with authority. In a foreshadowing of his future career, he often won in these confrontations. Wikipedia states (unsourced, so to be taken with a grain of salt), “when his 7-year education certificate was revoked, he demanded that a committee be formed to investigate the case; he eventually had the certificate restored and the teacher responsible for the revocation fired. He passed the 10-year education exams without taking the full course.”

A construction engineer by training, he joined the CPSU in 1961. As he said in his later years, “I sincerely believed in the ideals of justice propagated by the party, and just as sincerely joined the party, made a thorough study of the charter, the program and the classics, re-reading the works of Lenin, Marx and Engels.” Perhaps, but for anyone in the Soviet Union in those years, that was what one had to say one believed. It all came apart toward the end of 1987, when he had risen to be a member of the Politburo.

He slammed President Gorbachev’s wife Raisa for meddling in affairs of state (which she did with great frequency, essentially providing Hillary Clinton with a role model). President Gorbachev retaliated by demoting him to first deputy commissioner for the State Committee for Construction, a huge drop but not as bad as execution or exile. The timing was fortuitous in that Mr. Yeltsin became a rallying point for those who believed the gerontocracy had to go. Mr. Yeltsin clawed his way back due to his popularity. When the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic declared itself sovereign, Mr. Yeltsin was well-positioned to lead. On June 12, 1991, he was elected president of Russia with 57% of the vote.

His finest moment came in August 1991, when a cabal of reactionaries tried to put the Soviet Union back as it had been. Mr. Gorbachev was under house arrest in the Crimea, and Mr. Yeltsin went to the Russian White House to confront the troops there. With a large crowd of civilians behind him, the troops defected, and ended the coup. Mr. Gorbachev’s position became untenable, and the Soviet Union went out of business Christmas Day 1991.

Mr. Yeltsin’s regime struggled to find its way out of the Marxist-Leninist mess, and his own shortcomings made it hard for him to succeed. This led to another bout of instability in 1993, when President Yeltsin sent tanks against the Parliament, and forced through a new constitution that was much more autocratic. The oligarchs began plundering the nation, and Mr. Yeltsin either couldn’t or wouldn’t stop them.

Mr. Yeltsin was far from perfect. In many ways, the Russian nation is still trying to overcome the mistakes he made. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was quite correct when he said, “I express the very deepest condolences to the family of the deceased on whose shoulders rest major events for the good of the country and serious mistakes.” Those who believe one should always think kindly of the dead should remember his bravery in August 1991 in saving his country and forgive him for much of the rest. For those who would fix blame, there is plenty there to apportion to him.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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