Yeltsin, Boris

Yeltsin, Boris [Єльцин, Борис; Jelcin], b 1 February 1931 in Butka, Sverdlovsk oblast, RSFSR, d 23 April 2007 in Moscow, Russian Federation. Soviet Communist Party functionary, candidate member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), supporter turned challenger of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika policies, initiator of the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and first president of the (post-Soviet) Russian Federation. His two terms in office, while struggling to cling to power, were marked by his partially successful transformation of the Russian Federation into a liberal democracy with a market economy. Upon resigning his post as president at the end of 1999, he turned over the reins to his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin.

After graduating from the Urals Polytechnical Institute, Yeltsin worked in construction, joined the CPSU, went into Party work, and in November 1976 became First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk oblast committee replacing his patron, Yakov Riabov. An effective ‘boss’ who endeavored to make life better for ordinary people, he became frustrated by the Soviet system’s over-centralization. His prominence as an effective manager, even if in unorthodox ways sometimes, came to Mikhail Gorbachev’s attention and he was invited to come to Moscow. There he was first appointed within the Party’s bureaucracy as a Central Committee (CC) department head, then as CC Secretary in charge of construction, and ultimately First Secretary of Moscow municipal committee to clean up after the corrupt twenty-year tenure of Viktor Grishin. He became a candidate (non-voting) member of the Politburo on 18 February 1986. As a populist and liberal he was not happy with the bureaucracy and privileges of the Party nomenklatura, nor with the slow pace of perestroika. He began to spar about the latter with Gorbachev and to speak out publicly, criticizing the Soviet leader and even calling for his resignation. This caused a storm within the Party hierarchy. In October 1987, he was accordingly dismissed as Moscow’s First Secretary, but next month thanks to the leniency of Gorbachev appointed to a sinecure position in the State Committee for Construction with rank of USSR Minister. On 24 February 1988, he was dismissed from the Politburo.

In mid 1988, Gorbachev introduced and the Party congress approved a major institutional change: to establish an elected Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD) replacing the USSR Supreme Soviet, a decorative rubber-stamp assembly tightly controlled by the CPSU. Semi-free elections to this new body were held in March 1989. Despite obstruction from various officials, Yeltsin entered the race for a seat representing all of Moscow and secured 89.4 percent of the vote owing to his popularity as champion of reform as well as vocal opponent of the Party establishment. Within the USSR CPD he gained prominence and was elected to the smaller, full-time legislature, the (new) Supreme Soviet, where he joined the reform-minded Democratic Platform. In the fall of 1989, Yeltsin toured the United States of America; deeply impressed by its high standard of living, he reflected on the economic failure of the Bolshevik experiment. In March 1990, he was elected from Sverdlovsk to the RSFSR CPD and in May elected as chair of its own Supreme Soviet or full-time legislative assembly. Under his leadership the RSFSR CPD on 12 June 1990 adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty. It claimed legislative primacy on its own territory challenging the jurisdiction of its USSR counterpart. This set a precedent for the Ukrainian SSR and other Soviet republics soon to be followed by them all. At the 28th Congress of the CPSU in July 1990, Yeltsin announced that he was turning in his Party card. He was giving up on the Communist Party and would now campaign for democratic reform of Russia in the legislative-governmental arena. On 19 February 1991, following his recognition of the Baltic States’ sovereignty, he called on Mikhail Gorbachev to resign.

Gorbachev, in an attempt to preserve the Union, called for a referendum throughout the USSR for 17 March 1991, to approve his Union Treaty. Yeltsin, using his position as chair of the Supreme Soviet introduced an additional question for the RSFSR to create a presidency to be elected by the citizens of Russia. In June 1991, Yeltsin was duly elected as president with 59 percent of the vote promising to transform Russia into ‘a prosperous, democratic, peace-loving, and sovereign state.’ He advocated that Russia rid itself of its empire, clashed with Gorbachev on economic policies, and issued Decree No. 14 which outlawed Communist Party cells in governmental institutions. He stood up to the coup plotters of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) in August, ordering their arrest and prosecution. The abortive coup delegitimized both Gorbachev and the CPSU. In its wake, Yeltsin suspended the Communist Party, impelled Gorbachev to dissolve the Central Committee as well as to resign as General Secretary, and confiscated all of the CPSU’s property. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as USSR President on 25 December 1991.

On 1 December 1991, the Ukrainian SSR, as it still was then, elected its first president and approved in a referendum Ukraine’s independent status. Recognizing that without Ukraine there could be no continuing or renewed Union of Sovereign States, as he had wanted it to be called, Yeltsin met with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus a week after the Ukrainian vote to consider an alternative to Gorbachev’s plan for rescuing the Union. Their accord, known as the Belavezha Agreement, effectively dissolved the USSR by annulling the original Union Treaty of 1922, and created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) which other ex-Soviet republics were invited to join. Ukraine’s new President, Leonid Kravchuk, was more interested in using the CIS as a means of civilized divorce than in prolonging the life of the USSR; Yeltsin was not interested in saving Russia’s empire, which the USSR had been.

Having arranged to rule by decree for twelve months (beginning in November 1991), and acting as his own prime minister, Yeltsin proceeded with a program of ‘shock therapy’ to introduce radical economic reform. His principal advisers in this enterprise were Yegor Gaidar, Gennady Burbulis, and Anatoly Chubais. They advocated ending price controls to achieve macroeconomic stabilization, cutting state subsidies to industry and agriculture so as to balance the budget, and privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to create a market economy with private enterprise and capital. On 2 January 1992, prices were liberalized. This resulted in hyperinflation, the evaporation of people’s pensions and life-savings, widespread impoverishment, and consequently a fierce anti-reform public backlash. All of this came on top of the downturn which had already accompanied Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika policies aiming to revive the command economy. Privatization was launched in August 1991 by distributing to every citizen vouchers which could be used to become shareholders of the newly-available private enterprises. The vouchers and the enterprises, however, gravitated to only a select few clever enough to capitalize on opportunities for personal enrichment. Yeltsin therefore adopted a stop-and-go approach to economic reform—backtracking or going forward as the opposition waxed and waned. Gaidar and company were accordingly regularly dismissed and recalled to duty throughout the 1990s. Regrettably, Yeltsin himself did not have his own economic policy or concept of the market economy.

Yeltsin’s efforts at economic reform in the Russian Federation were also stymied by a lack of clarity in the definition of institutional powers and an absence of consensus on the rules of the game among political players. This was personified by the actions of the chair of the unreformed Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, aided by the vice-president, Aleksandr Rutskoi. Invoking the then-current Soviet Constitution, they asserted that the CPD and Supreme Soviet were legally the Russian Federation’s supreme authority above the president, and legislated so as to frustrate Yeltsin’s decrees, particularly by controlling the National Bank. The Supreme Soviet, where the Communists and nationalists formed a majority of legislators, voted down every reform effort by Yeltsin and his team. An ongoing struggle for power ensued between the two branches of government, executive and legislative, which became even more acute after the expiration of Yeltsin’s emergency powers in November 1992. Bolstered by his win in the 25 April 1993 referendum on constitutional change, he continued to rule by decree, these coming into conflict with the laws issuing from the legislative chamber.

On 21 September 1993, Yeltsin issued Decree No. 1400, by which the CPD and the Supreme Soviet were abolished, a new State Duma was to be elected, and a referendum on a draft constitution to be held, the latter two in December. Khasbulatov responded by removing Yeltsin and replacing him with Rutskoi who immediately declared Yeltsin’s decree invalid. A violent conflict erupted between supporters of the president and those of his opponents, with Rutskoi openly urging people gathered in the streets outside to rebellion. The matter was resolved by Yeltsin’s shelling and storming of the White House, the rebels’ headquarters, resulting in their surrender. Elections to the State Duma proceeded on 12 December, as did approval of the new ‘superpresidential’ constitution modeled on that of the French Fifth Republic.

The December 1993 State Duma elections produced a legislature with a majority of anti-Yeltsin parties, chiefly Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s misnamed Liberal Democrats plus Gennady Ziuganov’s die-hard Communists and their associates. Pro-reform parties were in the minority. This State Duma in February 1994 voted to grant amnesty to both the August 1991 putschists and the October 1993 insurrectionists (including Khasbulatov and Rutskoi)—much to the annoyance of Yeltsin. During most of 1994, due to health problems Yeltsin lapsed into inactivity and the pace of change in the Russian Federation slowed markedly. His approval ratings were dropping, relations with the West were deteriorating, the economy was in a parlous state, and his expectations of Western assistance were disappointed. In December, he launched a war against Chechnya, which had declared independence in 1991. This turned into a disaster. In the December 1995 State Duma elections, his opponents came out even stronger, with the parties of Ziuganov and Zhirinovsky just shy of a majority of the 450 seats. Yeltsin’s popularity was plummeting.

Despite having suffered three heart attacks within six months in 1995, Yeltsin announced in February 1996 that he would enter the contest for a second presidential term. His campaign—financed by the oligarchs—was marked by his generous distribution of gifts to voters while crisscrossing the country, a truce with Chechnya, and a promise of reform, freedom, and stability in the future. In the first round, Yeltsin obtained 36 per cent of the vote for Ziuganov’s 32; in the second round, it was 54 to 41; between rounds, Yeltsin suffered another heart attack. After the election, he underwent a seven-hour quintuple bypass operation in November, followed in January by pneumonia.

In his second term, President Yeltsin aimed for stability and the reactivation of reforms, but achieved only instability instead. Sensing that his prime minister and ministers were not up to bringing in a full-fledged market economy, he dismissed conservative premier Viktor Chernomyrdin in March 1998, and brought in the banker Sergei Kirienko. But following the August financial crash—involving defaults and devaluation—he dismissed Kirienko and recalled Chernomyrdin as acting premier. The crash came about as a result of failed efforts to prop up the state budget by measures such as issuing bonds (GKOs) and the ‘loans for shares’ scheme. When the government ran out of money it could not repay the bonds and state ownership of enterprises in potentially lucrative sectors of the economy was forfeited for insubstantial sums to the lenders, wealthy oligarchs with connections. It meant practically giving away state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and further weakening the state. Instead of his desired social democracy, Yeltsin’s economic reforms had devolved into ‘crony capitalism’ benefitting the few. In September, the spymaster Yevgeny Primakov was appointed prime minister. In May1999, when charges of corruption against Yeltsin and ‘The Family’ (a term for the intimate circle surrounding the president and collectively benefitting from the perks of office) were being prepared by the prosecutor general, Primakov was replaced by Sergei Stepashin, a former interior minister. He, in turn, was replaced in August by the unknown ex-KGB Lt Col and bureaucrat, Vladimir Putin. On New Year’s Eve, Yeltsin announced his resignation and designated Putin as his successor, asking him to ‘Look after Russia.’ Putin’s first official act was to give Yeltsin lifetime immunity from prosecution.

In retirement Yeltsin refrained from political involvement. His body lies in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

In domestic politics and policy, Yeltsin’s leadership has been faulted for a number of shortcomings. One was his refusal to build and lead a political party which might have supported his reform efforts in the legislature to assure their success. His argument was that he wanted to be a leader for ‘all of Russia,’ not solely a portion of it. Another was his failure to eliminate the KGB-FSB, with significant consequences subsequently. He also neglected to reform governmental institutions, relying instead on a succession of advisers and assistants to carry through the reforms, but without the necessary structural support. His populist posture by itself could not adequately be substituted for such elemental changes. Hence his reform agenda came to be assessed as having been only partially successful. Finally, by imposing a super-presidential model of government onto the transitioning polity he engendered inter-institutional conflict in place of the needed compromise and cooperation. His October 1993 decree of dissolution was clearly a lesson in rule of law in reverse. Nevertheless, his time in office was generally a step in the right direction—towards liberal democracy and a functioning market economy.

In his international affairs, Yeltsin initially steered the Russian Federation in a firmly pro-Western direction. He expected that by supporting the foreign policy of the United States, the Russian Federation would receive financial assistance for its transition from communism. These hopes for good relations and economic benefits were disappointed as NATO’s expansion and the bombing of Serbia proceeded without Russian concurrence. Help from America was less than expected. By 1995, the amity was over.

There were nevertheless positive achievements in Yeltsin’s second term. While he refused to sign on to NATO’s Partnership for Peace in December 1994, Yeltsin agreed to join the Partnership two years later, with the Russian Federation participating only fitfully thereafter. The withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, along with demilitarization of the Russian economy, helped to lessen international tension. Russia’s inclusion in the G-8 in 1997 brought it into Western economic structures. The Russian Federation also opened its borders to its own and other countries’ citizens on an unprecedented scale. The country was becoming less belligerent towards the outside world as well as less threatening to its neighbors.

Yeltsin and Ukraine.
Like most Russians, Yeltsin’s attitude to Ukraine was not unambiguous, and an independent Ukraine was a serious dilemma. When a treaty between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR was signed in November 1990, Yeltsin pointed out that Russia was reserving the right to revise the borders between them if Ukraine declared independence. And in July 1991, he told US President George H. W. Bush that ‘Ukraine must not be allowed to leave the Union’ because that would leave Russians outnumbered by non-Slavs. This did not dissuade the Ukrainians from leaving, not even after Bush’s ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech. On 24 August 1991, in the wake of the failed coup in Moscow against Mikhail Gorbachev, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR approved the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence; Yeltsin responded by threatening to ‘re-consider’ the Crimea’s status and to take it back from Ukraine.

‘Until Ukraine signs the [new Union] Treaty, Russia will not sign it either,’ declared Yeltsin on 25 November 1991. Ukraine had no intention of signing on, which was confirmed by the results of the referendum one week later. Yeltsin was the first head of state to recognize Ukraine’s independence, although he had some reservations. When Leonid Kravchuk refused to sign on to the Union Treaty during the Belavezha meeting, Yeltsin sided with him, but this was a tactical move to sideline Gorbachev. The Belavezha Agreement did not mean that Russia would be treating Ukraine as an equal; Russia still had to control Ukraine, according to Yeltsin’s thinking. To Kravchuk, the Commonwealth of Independent States was a civilized divorce; to Yeltsin, a renewal of marriage vows.

In order to answer his nationalist critics Yeltsin attempted to compensate by intervening in the affairs of the ex-Soviet republics through the CIS, particularly by promoting economic integration. Typical of such domestic political temper was the Russian State Duma’s resolution in May 1992 to have the 1954 transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine declared illegal and cancelled. Thus treaties and agreements were signed with six ex-republics, including Ukraine, dual citizenship was pressed by Moscow on CIS member-states, and Yeltsin spoke of Russia’s ‘moral and political’ duty to provide their security and currency, even to police them if their instability threatened the Russian Federation’s security.

During 1994–96, several compromises were reached and fell apart between Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma on control over the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) and the port of Sevastopol in the Crimea. Eventually, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership was signed on 31 May 1997 by Yeltsin and Kuchma. Its terms obliged the two countries to ‘respect each other’s territorial integrity’ as well as ‘inviolability of the existing borders,’ and they promised thereafter ‘mutual respect, sovereign equality, peaceful settlement of disputes, non use of force or its threat.’ The future would tell a different story.

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Bohdan Harasymiw

[This article was written in 2024.]