Yeltsin полностью

It is hard to describe the state I was in. . . . I was analyzing every step I had ever taken, every word I had spoken, my principles, my views of the past, present, and future . . . day and night, day and night. . . . I summoned up the images of hundreds of people, friends, comrades, neighbors, and workmates. I reviewed my relationships with my wife, children, and grandchildren. I reviewed my beliefs. All that was left where my heart had been was a burnt-out cinder. Everything around me and within me was incinerated. Yes, it was a time of fierce struggle with myself. I knew that if I lost that fight, everything I had worked for in my life would be lost. . . . It was like the torments of hell. . . . I later heard gossip that I had contemplated suicide. . . . Although the position in which I found myself might drive someone to that simple way out, it was not in my character to give up.¹

Confession was thrown together as a book in the fall of 1989, when Yeltsin was aiming for a political effect, and contains a certain amount of self-mythologization. There is some of that in this passage. From what I have heard from family members, however, Yeltsin’s torments were not feigned. His dissociation from reality was a kind of “moratorium,” as some psychoanalysts term it: a time away for cleansing and reorientation that in many cultures is reserved for the young.² It was necessary to Yeltsin’s recovery, personal and political.

As Boris Yeltsin exorcized his private demons, his Central Committee gambit was having far-reaching reverberations in the public square. That a ranking politico had summarily fallen from grace was standard stuff for those who knew their Soviet history. But the synergy with reforming communism gave a new twist to this Icarus crash. In the game of transitional politics, the short-term loser had seized what a game theorist would categorize as a “first-mover” advantage. Just as the Soviet Union steamed off into the uncharted waters of democratization, Yeltsin had established a strategic edge that would outbalance the penalties levied on him.³

A Russian who read between the lines in Pravda on November 13, 1987, could have extracted six claims about the political situation:

Obstructed reforms. Change in Soviet communism was being thwarted by know-nothings in the nomenklatura. Real as opposed to rhetorical change was going at a snail’s pace.

An impatient nation. Ordinary people’s hopes had been raised and their patience was wearing thin. They were a constituency for a different course.

Gorbachev in the middle. The originator of perestroika was a gradualist who knew about the impediments to reform but was unwilling to dislodge them.

A radical alternative. A maverick, Yeltsin, had championed a speedier course. This marked him for payback by vested interests.

Not just talk. The bellwether of change was not a chatterer but a doer. He had street smarts. He knew from the inside how the wheels turned, in the provinces and in the Kremlin. Forgoing an influential post demonstrated his willingness to give something up for the common good.

Something to hide. The authorities had persecuted Yeltsin for puncturing the verities of the regime. Now they were muzzling him and were not putting out a complete account.

For Mikhail Gorbachev, the short-term victor, some of these claims were more easily countered than others. When students in the capital city passed around pro-Yeltsin petitions and marched in the streets, the uniformed and secret police kept watch on them. Several hundred demonstrators gathered on November 14 in downtown Sverdlovsk; on November 15 Yurii Petrov, Yeltsin’s friend and the first secretary of the obkom, received a delegation and accepted a protest letter addressed to the Politburo. Afraid of rallies “in the guise of preparations for the New Year’s holiday,” the obkom would in December cordon off 1905 Square.⁴