Leon Aron

A weighty and excellent biography, one of the best of its genre I've read, though out of date now as it covers events only up to 1998, i.e. the first half of his second term as President of Russia. The book is valuable as a reminder of the key role Yeltsin played in pushing forward democratisation in the last few years of the Soviet Union and then in continuing to push forward democratic rights and liberties, as well as controversial economic liberalisation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin comes across as a contradictory figure, often using heavy-handed tactics in pursuit of democratic ends, as when he opposed the bulk of the last Soviet-era elected Congress of People's Deputies in the famous stand-off of October 1993 when they opposed a new post-Soviet constitution. Whatever his failings as a man and leader, he strenuously supported multi-party democracy and the freedom of Communists and other oppositionists to challenge and oppose his own regime, even when some of the anti-Yeltsin campaigning was extremely bitter, nationalistic and even anti-Semitic during the 1996 Presidential election (see some of the election posters printed in the book, some of which chillingly resemble Nazi posters). Certainly one gains a more positive impression of this flawed but immensely courageous man than from the drunken and bullying caricature presented in the media in more recent years. It's a tragedy that since Putin took over, some of the democratic gains have been reversed, particularly freedom of the press. But the ever reducing votes of Communist candidates in both Parliamentary and Presidential elections seem to indicate that there will be no reversion to the Soviet era, though the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is by far the biggest political party and undoubtedly has the support of a significant minority of Russian voters.… (más)