Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000).
Has any peacetime political leader ever brought his country as low as Boris Yeltsin brought Russia, a former superpower turned into a mendicant? The old Soviet economy may have been creaking noticeably, but it hardly compares to the shambles that is the Russian marketplace today. Whereas the militia and the KGB formerly kept order in the streets (and everywhere else), there is now soaring crime and ubiquitous corruption. The army, once feared around the world, can no longer even put down minor insurrections within Russia's reduced frontiers. The communist leaders of the old USSR had their grave flaws, but at least they behaved with a measure of decorum. They did not appear in public intoxicated, as Yeltsin did during a state visit to Germany in 1994, snatching the baton from the conductor of the Berlin Police Orchestra and attempting to lead the musicians, embarrassing himself and his country before the world.
From the public record of his deeds, it is easy enough to frame a searing indictment of Boris Yeltsin. Indeed, by the time he stepped down this past December, the Russian president was widely despised in his own land and, in the sharpest possible contrast to the last leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, had few if any admirers abroad. Yet, while the critics have ample ammunition to fire at Boris Yeltsin, there is, as we see from Leon Aron's richly researched and highly readable biography, another side to their target. The story of the Russian leader's "revolutionary life" is far more complicated, and his achievements far more significant, than his critics both within Russia and abroad acknowledge.
