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Boris Yeltsin: Russia's Abe Lincoln?
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19556 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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11 / 1991 |
2,499 Words |
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Alexandra Costa
Alexandra Costa is a former Soviet citizen who now lives in
the United States. She writes and lectures on Soviet affairs. |
The dramatic events of the failed hard-line putsch in the Soviet Union on August 19-21, 1991, brought to the forefront of world attention a larger-than-life figure--Boris N. Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation. For three days, the picture that flashed most often on television and in the print media was of Yeltsin standing atop a tank that had been sent to crush his supporters but had switched sides along the way, almost singlehandedly raising the nation against the unconstitutional coup.
Yet, in a major opinion poll conducted in the United States two days later, 74 percent gave the highest marks for performance during the coup to Gorbachev (who was being held incommunicado in his Crimean dacha during the entire period) and only 39 percent to Yeltsin. These results should not be surprising. Ever since Yeltsin's landslide 91 percent victory in the 1989 parliamentary elections that made him the most popular political figure in Russia today, the West has been apprehensive and often derisive in its attitude toward him. He has been called a populist, an intellectual lightweight, a buffoon, a cheap demagogue, and lately a Russian nationalist with an imperialistic bent.
At home, however, he inspires something close to adulation, and commands an unprecedented loyalty. On the night of August 20, over 500 people holed up with him in the building of the Russian parliament (all armed volunteers, along with his 30 or so bodyguards), knowing very well that the KGB's deadly antiterrorist Alpha squad was being readied to storm the building, but ready to defend the man who, for them, personified democracy and the future of Russia. Fortunately, for everybody inside the building and the 10,000 other defenders outside of it, for the first time the Alpha squad--an elite KGB unit that is the equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALS--refused to obey direct orders from their superiors, and the assault on the building was canceled. This was the turning point in the defeat of the coup.
The question is: Why is the West so apprehensive about Yeltsin? The answer may be very simple. Winston Churchill once called Russia "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." It is possible that the same may be said about Yeltsin. He is the quintessential Russian backwoods boy, an expression of the Russian character with which the West rarely has to deal. The Russian people intuitively know that he is one of them, as Russian as they come, and they trust him. The West, on the other hand, does not accept him because it does not know how to cope with him--and that makes people, especially politicians, here uncomfortable. We tend not to trust what we do not
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