But fear is not only degrading; it makes for poor governance. Yeltsin intuitively understood that fear and top-down, centralized decision-making were no way to rule a modern country, and he therefore insisted on reforming relations between citizens and the state.
失去了独立的思想基础，恐怖的气氛就会抬头，而这不但可耻，还可能导致管理混乱。叶利钦自然知道恐惧和自上而下、中央集权的决策绝不是统治现代社会的好方法，因此他坚持把改革公民和国家之间的关系作为重点。