Title: Boris Yeltsin
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Content: Television cameras showed Yeltsin clambering on to a tank. “We appeal to the citizens of Russia to give a worthy answer to the putschists,” he roared. “ Dictatorship will not pass.” From that moment, the putsch was doomed — and the fate of Gorbachev and the Soviet superpower with it. Using his new prestige to humiliate Gorbachev, Yeltsin became undisputed leader of Russia. 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.