![]() Having said that, let's remember what his schooling was. He never renationalized the media, those kinds of things. So when things got dicey, you know, say with the media, he never shut down the media, for instance. And he most certainly did not under - on his clock - do some of the more authoritarian things that President Putin has done. ![]() ![]() And I think in terms of his objectives, there's no question that that's what he thought he was doing. And by that, he understood it mean democracy and capitalism and cooperation with the West. I think instinctually, he thought what he was doing was bringing Russia into the modern world. He was often characterized in the media as sort of a hard-drinking man, you know, big, red face, maybe even given to a sort of semi-totalitarian nature. ROBERTS: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Putin at the time - started again, and that war still continues. He ended that war in 1996.īut he, again, with his prime minister - Mr. And so he did a very important thing as well. And in order to win reelection in 1996, his pollsters most certainly told him that he had to end the war. And what was interesting or tragic about that first war is that I think that Yeltsin understood that that was a mistake. MCFAUL: And tragically, the use of force in Chechnya twice. That was the beginning of a much more tumultuous time for him as president, after August 1991. So, you know, I would like to have that on my resume as something I had done.īut, yes, after that, it was the difficult phase of trying to introduce market reforms in a population that didn't understand them, a congress that - a parliament that rejected them, and then resorting to the use of force against that parliament to try to keep them going forward. And one of them is Boris Yeltsin brings democracy to Russia after a thousand years of tyranny, or something like that. And I think on that day - the first week after that - he was on the cover of all the weekly magazines. I've written a book about this period, and I remember going through the press clips. MCFAUL: Well, absolutely, that was the high point. Do you think that was the high point? Was it sort of down hill from there? ROBERTS: Here in the U.S., a lot of us will remember him standing on top of the tank outside the Kremlin - or was it the Russian White House in 1991 - when there was an attempted coup against Gorbachev. And, you know, he did it okay, I guess, with those three big transformational things. How do you make a market? How do you make a democracy? How do you make an independent country out of an empire? These are really, really big, tough issues that anybody would have struggled with. ROBERTS: Which is ironic, considering that was the trade he started in. But he wasn't very good at construction - good at destruction, bad at construction. Those were tremendous achievements - let's not forget how much of the 20th century was centered around our dealings with the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Destroyed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. That is, he is the guy - as you just said -who destroyed communism. I think 10 to 20 years from now, depending on what happens to the future trajectory of Russia - Post-communist Russia - he could be remembered very fondly. I think today - for most Russians - he'll be remembered as a failed president. ROBERTS: Is it different for different periods, you think? MCFAUL: What period are we talking about? ROBERTS: So, how do you think Boris Yeltsin will be remembered? What is his legacy? Professor MICHAEL MCFAUL (Russia Scholar, Stanford University): Sure. Thanks so much for taking the time out from your conference. Michael McFaul is a Russia scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and he joins us on the line from a conference he's attending here in Washington. He was president of Russia for eight years, succeeding Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. As we mentioned, the man who oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union died today in Moscow.
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