Title: Boris Yeltsin
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Content: On August 23 he signed a decree which suspended the Communist Party. The next day Gorbachev, unable to deny the complicity of Communist leaders in the plot, resigned as general secretary of the Party, and called on the central committee to dissolve itself. By the end of the year the Soviet Union had collapsed and its 15 constituent republics found themselves as nation states. As befitted someone who served the Communist Party for most of his working life, Yeltsin set to work introducing change in 1992 in a rough, Bolshevik fashion. The aim was (as Lenin would have said) to “smash” the Communist system and ensure it never returned. The poor lost their life savings in the massive prices rises and hyper-inflation. Privatisation was manipulated by old party bosses and the criminal mafia; it became a synonym for theft. But there was no turning back to Communism. It was not long before Yeltsin’s reforms spawned another opposition coalition, based this time inside the White House.