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

Content: Sergey Chirikov/EPA
Jonathan Steele
Mon 23 Apr 2007 03.09 EDT
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Boris Yeltsin, who has died aged 76, was the most controversial figure in recent Russian history, provoking even stronger emotions in his compatriots than Mikhail Gorbachev, the man he replaced in the Kremlin. While Gorbachev presided over the decline of the Communist party and the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, it was Yeltsin, Russia's first elected president, who buried the Soviet Union itself. For that he earned euphoric admiration from some of his fellow-citizens and raging hatred from others. Yeltsin's second outstanding claim to fame was his decision to launch Russia towards market reforms via the route known as "shock therapy", again covering himself with an avalanche of praise and fury. Then, in October 1993, in a bizarre episode for an emerging democracy, he ordered tanks to assault the seat of the Russian parliament in the climax of an 18-month struggle with elected deputies. Finally, just over a year later, he ordered Russian troops, most of them conscripts, to try to put down a rebellion in Chechnya that has remained a key issue ever since. The rash move sent more Russian citizens to their deaths than the 10-year-war, which the Soviet Union waged in Afghanistan till 1989. Any of these actions would have ensured Yeltsin a place in the catalogue of strong Russian leaders from Ivan the Terrible onwards. The four together create an extraordinary record for a man who was virtually unknown in Russia, let alone abroad, until the age of 56. Yeltsin's name is indelibly linked with Russia's faltering experience in trying to create democracy in a country which had known centuries of authoritarianism.