Title: Boris Yeltsin
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Content: Yeltsin thrived in opposition, but aged visibly in power. His finest hour was his campaign in 1991 to unseat the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the course of which he killed off the Soviet superpower and ushered in the modern Russian state. Once in power, Yeltsin seemed less comfortable. As the challenger he enjoyed popularity: the more he upset the West, then in the grip of its love affair with Gorbachev, the more old women begged to kiss his feet. But Yeltsin was not a naturally popular figure in the West. With his bear-like frame, growling voice and unpredictability he embodied the more disturbing traits of the Russian male character. In opposition, Yeltsin was caricatured in the West as an axe-wielding Russian peasant and rarely appeared in cartoons without a vodka bottle. Yet for a time it seemed that he had done more to make possible movement by Russia towards a modern economy than anybody else. Where Gorbachev dithered about economic reform, Yeltsin grasped the nettle, freeing state-controlled prices in 1992, and engaging in a massive privatisation of Russian industry the next year.