Title: Boris Yeltsin
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Content: 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. But the Russian economy remained chaotic, and intractable; there was nothing that Yeltsin could do, even during periods when he was capable of consistent action. His political opponents held up reform; Western bankers drew the line at pouring money into an undefined morass. The disastrous collapse of the Russian stockmarket and currency in 1998 came when Yeltsin seemed to be one of the walking wounded.