Boris Yeltsin, who played a key role in the demise of the Soviet Union and the first president of the Russian Federation, has died of heart failure in hospital at 1545 (1145 GMT) on April 23. He was 76.
How will we remember Boris Yeltsin?
Obviously his place in history is assured with his resistance against the August 1991 coup launched by hard-line communists, to overthrow the President of the Soviet Union (Mikhail Gorbachev). Who can forget Yeltsin mounting a tank outside the Russian Parliament in Moscow and denouncing the coup?
Yeltsin gave us the promise of a world without two superpowers bent on "Mutual Assured Destruction." He rejected communism and his actions led to the collapse of the coup, and subsequently the end of the Soviet Union.
However Boris Yeltsin's economic radicalism for Russia involved the withdrawal of price controls, steep cuts to state spending and unleashing unregulated free markets. During the rushed transition of the world's largest socialist planned economy into a market democracy, hyper-inflation wiped out the life savings of many Russians. Yeltsin's presidency in the 1990s was a period of instability for Russia and his leadership also contributed to the rise of the oligarchs, who profited from his push for privatizing former state enterprises.
Obviously his place in history is assured with his resistance against the August 1991 coup launched by hard-line communists, to overthrow the President of the Soviet Union (Mikhail Gorbachev). Who can forget Yeltsin mounting a tank outside the Russian Parliament in Moscow and denouncing the coup?
Yeltsin gave us the promise of a world without two superpowers bent on "Mutual Assured Destruction." He rejected communism and his actions led to the collapse of the coup, and subsequently the end of the Soviet Union.
However Boris Yeltsin's economic radicalism for Russia involved the withdrawal of price controls, steep cuts to state spending and unleashing unregulated free markets. During the rushed transition of the world's largest socialist planned economy into a market democracy, hyper-inflation wiped out the life savings of many Russians. Yeltsin's presidency in the 1990s was a period of instability for Russia and his leadership also contributed to the rise of the oligarchs, who profited from his push for privatizing former state enterprises.
And let us not forget Yeltsin's disastrous large-scale military intervention in the breakaway republic of Chechnya in 1994 - leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians (Yeltsin himself acknowledged in 1996 that the decision to go to war in Chechnya was probably a mistake). Or the numerous incidents related to his drinking problem.
But had Boris Yeltsin lost back in August 1991, I'd hate to think of the consequences.
Борис Николаевич Ельцин
(February 1, 1931 – April 23, 2007)
Борис Николаевич Ельцин
(February 1, 1931 – April 23, 2007)
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