Boris Yeltsin’s surprise voluntary resignation on 31 December
1999, just a few hours before the start of the millennium
celebrations, analysts were quick to dub the decade of the 1990s
in Russia “the Yeltsin era.” For better or worse, Boris Yeltsin
will go down in history as one of the great figures of the
twentieth century. His rule was nothing if not controversial.
Like Gorbachev, there were two sides to Yeltsin: the radical
reformer condemning the privileges and political corruption of
the old nomenklatura and the apparatchik (i.e., a member of the
Communist apparat) who was thoroughly imbued with the ethos of
the old regime. sides were in constant tension. The tug-of-war
between the democratic and the authoritarian aspects of his
political personality has allowed Russian journalists to
describe Yeltsin as a “democrator,” a hybrid of democrat and
dictator. This hybrid nature of his charisma and leadership in a
distinctive way reflected the ambiguities of the country itself.
In his last televised address to