Boris Yeltsin is dead
Me, I am willing to excuse him a lot. Many of the things that made him a public clown and even a public reproach are not so much his fault as the fault of the complete lack of a certain kind of governing culture in Russia, that takes a lot to grow even in countries of old liberal traditions. For instance, the notorious bouts of strange public behaviour - picking up a baton and playing conductor, or sleeping through what should have been a brief state visit to Ireland - whether or not due to drunkenness, are as much the fault of his aides as his own. The staff of any European or American politician are trained to avoid such public misfortunes, and to spin them out of sight when they happen. Whether or not Yeltsin was really a drunkard, he would hardly have been the first politician to be; but President Saragat of Italy (1964-1969), Senator Ted Kennedy, or British LibDem leader Charles Kennedy, all could count on one or two guys around them to keep them awake for important appointments and make sure that one or two suspicious appearances in public were not followed by a whole flock of equally suspicious ones. Yeltsin's failure in these matters of public image is the failure of his staff more than himself. And one might add that there have been a few Western leaders - beginning with Churchill - who had the chutzpah and the personality to get away with behaviour quite as buffoonish once in a while. To Yeltsin, such behaviour might even have seemed a justified reaction against Communist stuffiness. By the same token, where was a country and a ruling class that was taught from the cradle to consider private profit both anti-social and condemned by history, to look on capitalism in the blackest possible colours, is it imaginable that this same country and ruling class would move into a capitalist world without stumbling? That they would gain from a moment to the next a sense of the realities, the compromises, the written and unwritten rules, the real goals, of free enterprise and of the kind of government that supports it? A liberalized Russia was going to be, at least at the start, a dog-eat-dog Russia; when you study how difficult and conflictual the process was even in the USA and western Europe, and all the legislation it required, there is absolutely nothing surprising about the bruising and brutal early days of Russian liberalism.
But Yeltsin deserves our thanks for two things: the way he took power, and the way he left it. His famous stand against the Communist coup d'etat, visible and personal, atop a tank for the whole world's press to see, was not only one of the classic moments of the confrontation of freedom and tyranny, but an act of great personal courage. If he had lost, there is no doubt that he would have died swiftly and badly in the hallowed Communist way: and he knew it. And when he surrendered his power to a legally and democratically elected successor, it was the first time in a thousand years of Russian history that anyone did. His stewardship may have been erratic, but with those two gestures he did as much as anyone could possibly have to establish the rule of democratic law in Russia. That his successor has turned out rather less interested in such things cannot, in my view, be blamed on him. May the God in whom he declared his faith forgive his sins and bring him to everlasting life.
But Yeltsin deserves our thanks for two things: the way he took power, and the way he left it. His famous stand against the Communist coup d'etat, visible and personal, atop a tank for the whole world's press to see, was not only one of the classic moments of the confrontation of freedom and tyranny, but an act of great personal courage. If he had lost, there is no doubt that he would have died swiftly and badly in the hallowed Communist way: and he knew it. And when he surrendered his power to a legally and democratically elected successor, it was the first time in a thousand years of Russian history that anyone did. His stewardship may have been erratic, but with those two gestures he did as much as anyone could possibly have to establish the rule of democratic law in Russia. That his successor has turned out rather less interested in such things cannot, in my view, be blamed on him. May the God in whom he declared his faith forgive his sins and bring him to everlasting life.