Title: Boris Yeltsin
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Content: 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. The busiest entrepreneurs in Russia were the mafia. Crises punctuated Yeltsin’s career. In August 1991, when he was the elected President of the Russian Federation, then still part of the Soviet Union, hardliners from the KGB and the army incarcerated the then Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in his Crimean holiday home, and declared a coup. It was typical of the bone-headed (and often drunk) coup leaders that they did not arrest Yeltsin at dawn. He drove into the heart of Moscow, and the flag of resistance was raised at the Russian parliament, based in the Moscow White House.