Title: Boris Yeltsin | Russia | The Guardian
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Russia
Boris Yeltsin
Jonathan Steele

Content: By mid-1990 the Communist party's monolithic rule was being openly challenged. The party had agreed to change the constitution to allow for other parties to emerge, but Gorbachev's efforts to remove the conservatives from influence in the Communist party were meeting growing resistance. Yeltsin decided to abandon the party completely. At its congress in July 1990 he stunned fellow delegates by announcing his resignation and walking out of the hall. During the crisis over the Baltic republics' moves towards independence, when Soviet forces seized the television headquarters in Lithuania in January 1991 in support of a mysterious Committee of National Salvation that wanted to overthrow the elected government, Yeltsin rushed to the area to show solidarity with the independence movements. He called on Soviet troops not to obey illegal orders. It was a bold move that undoubtedly helped to split the Soviet establishment and prevent the coup attempts going further. Gorbachev, meanwhile, kept silent for 10 days, apparently unwilling to confront the hardliners in the KGB and the military. The Lithuanian crisis led many radicals to conclude that Gorbachev himself had become an obstacle to change. Yeltsin took the same view, calling publicly for Gorbachev's resignation in February 1991.