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...once wrote that Yeltsin was a unique political mix. He combined a folksy Reaganesque simplicity with a Nixonian sense of political intrigue (and paranoia) plus a tendency toward accidents that recalled Gerald Ford. He once fell into a small river near his dacha outside of Moscow, surely drunk, possibly related to a tawdry love affair. On another occasion he was too soused to leave his plane to meet with the Irish Prime Minister - even as aides committed the ultimate lese majeste and slapped him hard to bring him to consciousness...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Yeltsin's Promise and Failure | 4/23/2007 | See Source »

...Yeltsin had moments that made one believe Russia could shed its authoritarian impulses and emerge as something of a Western-style democracy. His finest hour, really his defining moment, was in August 1991. The leader of the country, Mikahil Gorbachev, was in the Crimea on summer vacation, and dark forces opposed to Gorby and his stop-start reforms tried to stage a coup...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Yeltsin's Promise and Failure | 4/23/2007 | See Source »

...Yeltsin's political instincts were still sharp, and he raced to the scene outside of Russia's White House. He memorably climbed atop a rebel tank and urged defiance. Troops involved in the attempted power grab defected, and the putsch failed. Gorbachev returned to Moscow and, remarkably, declared that he still believed in communism. Russia was suddenly Yeltsin's. The Soviet system crumbled and by Christmas day of that year, the Soviet Union itself was finished. The era of reform had begun...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Yeltsin's Promise and Failure | 4/23/2007 | See Source »

...promise of that moment quickly turned sour. Yeltsin and his team were optimistic about pushing rapid change, and about cooperating with the West. The halls of power were filled with Harvard University types who were advising on stock markets, political reform, defense initiatives. But nothing seemed to work. A rapid economic-development plan of "shock therapy" delivered the shock, but no therapy. Russia got more corrupt. Russians felt more desperate (another enduring image of Yeltsin's Russia: the poor babushkas on the streets desperately trying to sell whatever they could - knives and forks, books, old socks). Russia lost territory...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Yeltsin's Promise and Failure | 4/23/2007 | See Source »

...Things came to a head in 1993. Russian politics were paralyzed and Yeltsin, with dubious constitutional justification, suspended parliament and called for new elections. When his foes in the legislature wouldn't leave, and accumulated a stockpile of arms, Yeltsin brought his tanks to the Parliament building. I remember watching from a rooftop across the street as the tanks fired shell after shell into Russia's highest legislative body. In the name of democracy, Russia's president had suspended, and now was bombing, his own parliament. And the West mostly went along, convinced that it was necessary to support this...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Yeltsin's Promise and Failure | 4/23/2007 | See Source »

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