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Boris N. Yeltsin, the father of Russian democracy, dies at 76
(Chiaki Tsukumo/AFP/Getty Images)
An official at the Kremlin today announced the death of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who is shown above waving to photographers on April 1, 2003.
By David Filipov, Globe Staff
Former president Boris N. Yeltsin, who helped bring down the Soviet Union and led Russia on its stormy post-communist odyssey, has died at 76. A Kremlin official announced his death today but gave no cause or further information, according to the Associated Press.
Russia's most dominant political force in the past decade, Mr. Yeltsin profoundly changed the political and economic landscape of the world's largest nation.
Expansive and unpredictable, Mr. Yeltsin's volatile personality was mirrored by his mercurial political career. He had a flair for dramatic gestures and a talent for keeping both his allies and his enemies off balance,
He sought to become the father of a new Russia, where the police state and shortages would be replaced by democracy and prosperity. But Mr. Yeltsin was a brilliant tactician, not a visionary, who stayed in power long after he stopped leading Russia in that direction. He left behind an ambiguous legacy after seven years as Russia's president.
In a single stroke of political genius and courage, Mr. Yeltsin stood on a tank outside the Russian Parliament building in August 1991 and faced down the might of the Soviet police state. It was Mr. Yeltsin's single greatest moment: It changed the course of history and it came to symbolize his legendary talent for winning political battles.
Born in 1931 in the Urals region of Sverdlovsk, Mr. Yeltsin became an engineer in the construction trade. In 1961, at the height of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s anti-Stalinist political thaw, Mr. Yeltsin became a member of the Communist Party. Mr. Yeltsin rose quickly through the ranks, and by 1976, headed the Sverdlovsk regional branch of the Communist Party, a position similar to governor in the United States. There, he gained the reputation of a reformer, which eventually caught the attention in 1985 of newly appointed Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
With Gorbachev as his mentor, Yeltsin rose to the post of first secretary of Moscow’s Communist Party organization, a job that included membership in the Politburo, the Soviet Union’s de facto ruling body.
It was as a Politburo member in 1987 that Mr. Yeltsin, spurred by Gorbachev’s calls for restructuring and "glasnost," or openness, began a vocal campaign against corruption and abuse of privilege among party elites.
Party hardliners quickly moved to oust Mr. Yeltsin from the Politburo and gave him an obscure job in Sverdlovsk. That should have been the end of Mr. Yeltsin's career. But in the first of what would be many comebacks, Mr. Yeltsin was soon back in the capital, elected in a landslide to be a member of the first Soviet parliament in which voters were allowed to choose among candidates.
There, the increasingly popular Mr. Yeltsin began a two-year campaign that saw him quit the Communist Party and eventually rise to become Gorbachev’s main rival as the democratically elected leader of the Russian republic within the Soviet Union.
The attempt of hard-line Communists to oust Gorbachev in August 1991 gave Mr. Yeltsin the chance he was waiting for; within a few months after he stood on the tank, Gorbachev was ousted from power and Mr. Yeltsin took office in the Kremlin.
At first, the West was slow to take to Mr. Yeltsin, whose reputation as a heavy drinker and penchant for breaches of protocol contrasted with the urbane, staid Gorbachev. But from 1992 on, Mr. Yeltsin enjoyed unprecedented support for a Kremlin chief in the West, despite moves that would have brought harsh protests during the Cold War.
Two years after his famous stand against a hard-line coup attempt in August 1991, tanks again rumbled to the Russian Parliament building in October 1993. This time Mr. Yeltsin gave the order to drive out lawmakers who refused to obey his illegal order to disband.
More than 140 people died in the street fighting that ensued. Mr. Yeltsin emerged triumphant, but democracy in Russia was never again the same.
