The Yeltsin paradox

By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive

He leapt on top of a tank in 1991 to denounce a coup attempt in Moscow -- and from there landed with both feet firmly in history.

Boris Yeltsin, the former communist apparatchik, volatile reformer and Russian president, became internationally renowned for his heroics as the Soviet Union was collapsing. But the ensuing years have tarnished his legacy -- due in part to his disastrous war with separatists in Chechnya, his inability to stop Russia's economic and political decline, and his sometimes erratic behavior.

For most of his life, Yeltsin has been very much his own man. He grew up in the Urals in the 1930s -- in a house without electricity or running water. He lost his left thumb and forefinger when he was 11 while playing with a stolen hand grenade. He was expelled from school while a teen-ager -- after publicly denouncing a tyrannical teacher.

Yeltsin was educated as a construction engineer, and at the relatively late age of 30 joined the Soviet Communist Party. But his cynicism toward the communists, he says, was almost immediate. Yeltsin once recounted an exam he had to take while joining the party:

"Among the numerous questions put to me was the following: 'On which page of which volume of Marx's "Kapital" does he refer to commodity-money relationships?'

"Knowing perfectly well that my examiner had never read Marx closely and that in any case he didn't even know what commodity-money relationships were, I immediately answered, half-jokingly, 'Volume 2, page 387.'

To which he replied with a sage expression, 'Well done, you know your Marx well.' After it all, I was accepted as a party member."

As he rose in the party, Yeltsin became known for his reformist views. He was sent to Moscow by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. But relations between the two men grew increasingly tense over their approaches to political reform. By 1987, Yeltsin had been ousted from his post as Moscow party head, and soon after from the Soviet Politburo.

Despite his career setbacks, Yeltsin's star was rising among the Russian rank-and-file. In 1991 he became the first elected president of the Russian Federation. And he truly came into his own a few months later, during the 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev.

Upon hearing that hard-line communists had arrested Gorbachev at his Black Sea resort, Yeltsin went from his suburban home directly to the White House, the Russian parliament building. Once there, he climbed atop one of the tanks plotters had sent to take control of the building, and he denounced what he described as a "criminal coup."

Yeltsin set the tone of defiance against the coup. "There is no panic. There is no despair," he told the Russian parliament in the middle of the crisis. "We hope the days of the junta are numbered. They must be removed from power." The coup attempt collapsed just hours later.

Gorbachev may have been rescued from ouster, but Yeltsin made sure the Soviet leader's days in office were numbered. During a televised session of the Russian parliament, Yeltsin forced Gorbachev to read documents that implicated Gorbachev's Communist allies in the failed coup attempt. The Soviet Union ceased to exist by year's end.

Perhaps if Yeltsin had left office in 1992 he would be remembered now -- both at home and abroad -- exclusively for his bravery and leadership. But any historic biography of Boris Yeltsin must also include: