BORIS YELTSIN STOOD ALONE AMONG GREAT EXPECTATIONS
The mixed assessments of Boris Yeltsin's legacy emerging
since his death on April 23 reflect as much uncertainty about his
times as about the man himself. Figuring out Yeltsin's contribution
quickly becomes a fascinating but inconclusive exercise in
counterfactual history -- looking not only at the choices he made but
at the other realistic possibilities that were available as well.
Although Yeltsin headed an independent Russia from 1991
through 1999, in a real sense only his first term matters. By the
time he faced reelection in 1996, his soaring popularity had been
reduced to single digits and all the personal and political capital
he had in the heady days of 1991 had been spent, for good or ill.
In 1996, he had only two options: either he could participate
in a rigged, undemocratic, dishonest, and corrupt election -- selling
his political soul to the devil -- or he could stand aside and allow
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov to win, sending Russia on a
completely different historical course. Even that choice might not
have been available to Yeltsin, since the political machine that
stole the election for him could easily have been marshaled in the
service of some other candidate.
Yeltsin will always be remembered as the heroic figure
standing on a tank in front of a huge, adoring crowd during the
August 1991 coup attempt. The image seems ironically appropriate as a
symbol of his first term -- Yeltsin standing virtually alone on top
of a powerful machine that he couldn't really control while the whole
world gazed at him expectantly. "I ask forgiveness for not fulfilling
some hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump
from the gray, stagnating, totalitarian past into a bright, rich, and
civilized future in one go," Yeltsin said in his December 31, 1999,
resignation speech.
An important consequence of the bloodless collapse of the
Soviet Union, for which Yeltsin and Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev are rightly praised, was that Soviet-era institutions and
entrenched interests remained. Most important among these was the
Communist-dominated parliament, whose democratic mandate was
virtually as solid as Yeltsin's own.
This division produced a 20-month standoff that was violently
resolved in October 1993 when Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the
White House. For most of the rest of Yeltsin's first term, the
half-white, half-charred shell of that building loomed over Moscow
like a reproach. Later, the hastily repaired building was taken over
by the executive branch, another ominously symbolic development.
But the months before the shelling of the White House were an
enormous opportunity lost. Lawmakers feuded among themselves and
refused to adopt any significant legislation, forcing Yeltsin to rule
by undemocratic decrees -- many of which infuriated parliament
further and fueled endless debates about impeachment and the like.
Parliament refused even to confirm Yeltsin's first choice as
prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, who served as acting premier from June
to December 1992. (Earlier, Yeltsin served as prime minister himself
to wage the confrontation with the legislature, and he later replaced
Gaidar with the colorless technocrat Viktor Chernomyrdin in an
attempt to compromise with lawmakers.)
During this period, the economy collapsed, savings
evaporated, and the population suffered enormously. Some Yeltsin
critics have even accused him of committing "genocide" against the
nation. However, it would be an injustice to heap the blame for this
entirely on Yeltsin, who was locked in a political struggle with foes
who realized well that the mounting public discontent worked to their
political advantage.
Leftist and nationalist lawmakers who opposed Yeltsin's
overall course had no political incentive to work with the executive
to resolve these problems. Those who criticize Yeltsin for an
overdependence on the questionable advice of Western economists
during this period must bear in mind that no one else was offering
him any meaningful cooperation at all.
As he waged this struggle at the national level, Yeltsin may
have placed his hopes for systemic change on the local level. He gave
unprecedented degrees of autonomy to local leaders. However, none of
them -- even those with substantial democratic credentials such as
St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak -- made significant inroads in
building local democratic institutions.
Local leaders maintained their control over local media,
suppressed political activism, and kept their grip over electoral
mechanisms. It is, therefore, not surprising that many of them are in
power to this day.
The biggest mistake of that first term that certainly must be
laid on Yeltsin's shoulders was the disastrous and avoidable war in
Chechnya, a conflict that continues to shape post-Soviet Russia
politically and socially. Yeltsin had many sage advisers -- including
lawmakers Galina Starovoitova, Sergei Kovalyov, and Ella Pamfilova --
who warned him against this calamity.
Perhaps the most telling indicator of Yeltsin's democratic
intentions was his failure to build a strong, pro-presidential
political party. Observers in the 1990s laughed at the seemingly
pathetic efforts of parties like Russia's Choice and Our Home Is
Russia, which were barely able to win representation in the
legislature despite strong government backing.
But with hindsight, those fledgling efforts look like truly
democratic initiatives, compared to the juggernaut of Unified Russia
that was built so quickly and so powerfully in the immediate
post-Yeltsin period. In today's Russia, it is hard to imagine a
pro-presidential party garnering just 10 percent of the vote the way
Our Home Is Russia did in 1995.
By 1996, Yeltsin's political capital was spent and the
country was gripped by a seemingly boundless pessimism. Moreover,
Yeltsin's health was wrecked, and he was surrounded by opportunists
who exploited him.
He had not been able to create any foundation of democratic
institutions -- strong independent media, autonomous political
parties, governmental and nongovernmental oversight bodies, etc. --
that could have continued the course for which he had such a powerful
mandate in 1991. The entrenched Soviet-era interests -- in different
guises -- merely waited him out and returned in force when he left
the stage.
It seems little surprise that President Vladimir Putin's
leadership is in unseemly haste to bury Yeltsin and have him
consigned to history as a noble experiment that failed, rather than
risk him being seen as a noble experiment they managed to kill.
