Boris Yeltsin 1931 – 2007:

From bureaucrat to capitalist - via buffoon

Rick Simon

Boris Yeltsin, who died on 23 April 2007, was described by the Western media as the person who ‘ushered in democracy in Russia’ (BBC) and although ‘the democracy was flawed ... he had the right instincts. For liberating Russians from the yoke of the one-party state and the planned economy, he deserves immense gratitude’ (The Economist). That gratitude comes predominantly, of course, from Western governments and transnational corporations, anxious to profit from Russia’s huge market and vast natural resources.

The gratitude was not so forthcoming from ordinary Russians: although he ‘turned Russia into a free nation’, Masha Lipman noted in The Washington Post, Yeltsin ‘remains largely unappreciated by his fellow countrymen, and most Russians think of him as a negative figure’. Lipman draws a striking contrast between Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, who has ‘largely destroyed what was left of Yeltsin's political achievement’.

What political achievement was that, exactly? According to The Economist, despite all the positives, Yeltsin’s ‘nepotistic and capricious rule spawned colossal lawlessness and corruption’. With achievements like that perhaps Putin is heading in the right direction after all!

It is, of course, rather easy to lampoon Yeltsin as he did such a good job of it himself. Whether conducting a military band, or failing to appear for a meeting with the Irish prime minister, Yeltsin embodied the traditional image of the amiable Russian drunkard.

Such behaviour disguised the genuinely vicious character of his policies, either in promoting Russia’s economic transformation or in the war in Chechnya.

Yeltsin, however, should not just be remembered for attempting to bring capitalism to Russia. His career, particularly during the perestroika period between 1985 and 1991, mirrored the colossal upheavals shaking the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin’s populist streak as Sverdlovsk party boss and preparedness to ruffle feathers to get results brought him to the attention of Gorbachev as the Politburo tried to overcome the crisis of leadership brought on by the demise of three general secretaries between 1982 and 1985.

That crisis, combined with difficulties in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, and increasingly virulent attacks on the Soviet Union by Reagan and Thatcher as neo-liberalism gained the ascendancy in the West, necessitated a radical response.

As Moscow party boss, Yeltsin soon built a reputation for being unusually in tune with the popular masses, eschewing his chauffeur-drive limousine for public transport and outspokenly critical of bureaucratic resistance to reform.

That outspokenness brought about his downfall from the Politburo in November 1987 as he criticised Gorbachev for not going far enough. It was during this period through to 1989 that Yeltsin appeared to offer a radical socialist alternative to the Soviet system.

Instead of disappearing off the radar, Yeltsin sought to build a base in the mass of informal organisations that had mushroomed in support of perestroika and glasnost’, a policy which permitted more open political debate.

When Gorbachev announced elections to a new parliamentary body, the Congress of People’s Deputies, which enabled independent candidates to stand for the first time for decades, Yeltsin utilised a new phenomenon, the Moscow Popular Front, as the basis of his campaign and swept to office with 90 per cent of the vote in his Moscow constituency.

What crystallised Yeltsin’s support was not so much his policies, which tended to be vague, but the loathing he engendered in the party apparatus.

Once elected, Yeltsin’s politics quickly changed. He shifted from ambivalent populism to liberalism under the influence of the only organised opposition in the Congress centred around the released dissident, Andrei Sakharov. The liberal current no longer talked in terms of democratising the Soviet system but of replacing it with a liberal-democratic capitalist state.

As nationalist movements developed across the Soviet Union, Yeltsin also began to see the potential value of promoting Russia as a counterweight to Gorbachev. His final ideological break with the Soviet system came at the 28th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in July 1990, when he dramatically announced his resignation from the party and marched out of the hall.

Less than a year later, his opposition to an increasingly authoritarian Gorbachev was rewarded as he was elected president of the Russian Republic with almost 60 per cent of the vote.

This set the stage for Yeltsin’s greatest personal triumph, seized upon by the world’s media as evidence of Yeltsin’s democratic credentials in the face of Soviet authoritarianism.

On 19 August 1991, elements of the Soviet state endeavouring to keep the USSR together placed Gorbachev under house arrest and launched a ‘coup’ to prevent the signing of the new Union Treaty which would have transformed the Soviet Union into a much looser confederation of states.

Yeltsin’s opposition to the coup, from atop a tank outside the Russian parliament, his appeals for popular resistance and divisions between the plotters themselves led to the collapse of the coup attempt and left Yeltsin with real power in his hands.

Yeltsin humiliated Gorbachev on his return to Moscow and, relying entirely on behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, negotiated an end to the Soviet Union with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus.

Yeltsin was now in control of an independent Russia but the coalition that had precipitated the demise of the USSR comprised many different interests and, with the implementation of neo-liberal ‘shock therapy’ in early 1992, it disintegrated.

Yeltsin granted industrial managers what they wanted in terms of ownership of their own enterprises but then clashed with the Russian parliament, eventually using military force in October 1993 to crush its resistance. For liberal commentators this signalled the final end of communism but it consolidated Yeltsin’s domination of the system, enshrined in Russia’s new constitution.

A year later Yeltsin attempted to eliminate another obstacle to Kremlin domination by removing the Dudaev leadership from breakaway Chechnya. The brutal bombardment of Grozny, the Chechen capital, which reduced the city to rubble, and the general terrorisation of the civilian population revealed the lengths Yeltsin was prepared to go to ensure Kremlin rule.

The high loss of life on both sides rendered the war deeply unpopular among the Russian people and, combined with the catastrophic decline in living standards resulting from ‘shock therapy’, reduced Yeltsin’s popularity to single figures by the beginning of 1996.

His re-election as president was placed in serious jeopardy, especially as the communist party was also resurgent. Some in Yeltsin’s ranks, democrats that they were, suggested cancelling the election but there was another solution.

Fortunately for Yeltsin, a band of knights in tarnished armour was at hand to rescue this seemingly irretrievable situation: the ‘oligarchs’.

Along with the impoverishment of the bulk of the Russian people, Yeltsin’s other major economic achievement was to enable the emergence of a tiny group of billionaire capitalists who gained the most lucrative sectors of the economy at knock-down prices.

Not surprisingly, their gratitude knew no bounds and, through their control of the mass media and virtually limitless financial support, they orchestrated Yeltsin’s re-election in July 1996.

His position secure, the Chechen war temporarily at an end, and his health improved after heart surgery, Yeltsin began to use his office increasingly for personal gain. The figure who had once railed against the depravity of communist party bureaucrats became himself the centre of a web of corruption.

He just about survived the financial crash of August 1998, although some of his allies didn’t, and the weakness of parliament prevented communist attempts to impeach him. His final acts were to appoint and then anoint his successor, Vladimir Putin, whose popularity soared as war was unleashed yet again against the Chechen people.

Ultimately, Yeltsin’s career reveals a common thread of populism in pursuit of power, for its retention at all costs, and for reaping the rewards of such power. While, briefly, Yeltsin was able to embody popular strivings for a more democratic socialism, he never articulated a coherent programme. Even his adoption of liberalism was superficial - liberal intellectuals formulated his policies - and when they became unpopular he switched to a more nationalist approach.

He designed a constitution to prevent any challenges to his position while overseeing the collapse of the Russian economy. Lipman’s claim that Putin has destroyed Yeltsin’s political achievement is incorrect - Putin is simply using the instruments engineered by Yeltsin to stifle dissent and ensure the Kremlin’s domination. That is his legacy.