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

Content: In the new parliament he joined the radical wing of perestroika's critics. A year later he was elected to the new Russian parliament, making it clear he hoped to become its chairman. He probably did not yet see the job as a base from which to oust Gorbachev altogether, but he clearly wanted to reduce the Soviet leader's power. As the drive for independence developed in the Baltics, the notion of "sovereignty" - even for the other republics that did not want to leave the Soviet Union - became attractive. Yeltsin argued for a new treaty to transform the Soviet Union, not to abolish it. 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.