Title: How Will Boris Yeltsin Be Remembered? : NPR
Headings: How Will Boris Yeltsin Be Remembered?
World
How Will Boris Yeltsin Be Remembered?
Yeltsin, Catalyst for Russian Change, Dead at 76
Read a Yeltsin Timeline
Yeltsin the Writer
In Depth

Content: But it really is not very pleasant to have to live through a revolution. And that's what happened under Boris Yeltsin. ROBERTS: So would any leader during that time have been vilified to some degree, or do you think Yeltsin had aspects that brought it on himself? Prof. MCFAUL: I think any leader would have been vilified, yes. And I think even in a place so pro-Democratic and pro-Western as Poland, the transformational process there in the early years derailed solidarity and derailed President Walesa. And that was in a country that had much more agreement about where they thought their country should be going. The difference in Russia in the 1990s was that there was a big argument and a very substantial argument between the communists and the so-called democrats or liberals about whether Russia should be a democracy, and more importantly about whether Russia - for them, I mean for the debate - whether Russia should be a market economy or not. So, yeah, I think, you know, I think Yeltsin made big mistakes that I would - I can think of other leaders that I know personally that had they been there, I think they probably would've made different decisions.