Transition Man

Reading that speech now, it8217;s hard to see what the fuss was all about. Yeltsin complained that the party lacked 8220;revolutionary spirit8221; and that the Soviet people suffered from 8220;disillusionment.8221; The language was that of a party functionary, which is, of course, what Yeltsin was.

But then, unexpectedly, he resigned. And with that extraordinarily canny decision, he won instant notoriety: never had a communist leader set himself up as a popular alternative to the Communist Party. Within days, half a dozen versions of Yeltsin8217;s speech were being sold on the streets of Moscow, their authors variously speculating that Yeltsin had condemned communism, had supported democracy, had attacked the privileges of the Communist Party leadership. Every person who felt dissatisfied 8212; and there were many 8212; believed that Yeltsin shared his views. Two decades later, in a far more cynical Russia, this mood is hard to remember. But in the late 1980s, Yeltsin was wildly popular. When the first presidential election was held in Russia in 1991, it was inevitable that he would win.

That euphoria launched an extraordinary period in Russian history, and a presidential career best described as manic-depressive. Over the next eight years, Yeltsin had enormous bursts of creative energy, alternating with long periods of illness, alcoholism and retreat. He could rouse himself to rally the country and would then vanish, leaving the government in the hands of his corrupt cronies. He was capable of speaking eloquently about freedom, yet he had an autocratic streak and brooked no criticism. He talked about economic reform but transferred his country8217;s industry to a small group of oligarchs. He ended the Cold War but started a new and terrible war in Chechnya.

During that time, Western perceptions of Yeltsin fluctuated no less schizophrenically. In the beginning, he was considered a dangerous upstart: the elder President George Bush openly refused to meet him. Then he stood on a tank in the centre of Moscow, told cheering crowds to resist an attempted putsch 8212; and the West turned 180 degrees, called him a hero and embraced him, sometimes literally. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl exchanged bear hugs with Yeltsin. Bill Clinton campaigned for Yeltsin8217;s re-election. The IMF created new types of loans for Russia, just to be able to give Yeltsin money with no strings attached.

Yet even while he and Clinton were enjoying those long, heavily televised walks through the woods, it was clear that Yeltsin was planting some of the seeds of the retrenchment we see in Russia today. During his administration, that IMF money vanished into secret bank accounts. Yeltsin first abolished the KGB, then quietly revived it to keep tabs on his enemies. Despite the rhetoric of the Yeltsin era, Russia still does not have what most of us would recognise as a free-market economy. Though we hailed him as a democrat, Yeltsin did not leave behind anything resembling a functional democracy. And he knew that he had failed: when he resigned from the presidency, on New Year8217;s Eve of the millennium, he wiped away a tear and apologised to the Russian people for 8220;your dreams that never came true.8221;

It has become fashionable to turn another 180 degrees and to condemn Yeltsin for corruption and autocracy just as thoroughly as the West once supported him. This is tempting, especially for those who disliked the lionisation of Yeltsin as much as I did. But now that he is dead, perhaps it makes more sense not to classify him as a liberal or an autocrat, as friend or foe. For in the longer historical perspective, it is clear that Yeltsin, unlike his predecessor Gorbachev, was a genuine man of transition. He knew things had to change, but he had neither the ideas nor the tools to change them. He had some instincts of a populist democrat but all the habits of a lifetime Communist Party apparatchik.

In truth, he belonged neither to the Soviet Union, which Gorbachev had hoped to revive, nor to the West, which Putin now rejects. Had we ever been realistic about him, we would have understood his limitations 8212; and appreciated his strengths. And had we not embraced him uncritically, we would have been less disappointed when things turned out differently from what we, too, had hoped.