BORIS YELTSIN WOULD HAVE BEEN EIGHTY-THREE TODAY

BORIS YELTSIN 

February 1, 1931-April 23, 2007 

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT 

BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH YELTSIN 

In Harbin, China 

November 11, 1997 

TWENTY-TWO YEARS AFTER THE FIRST DAY OF THE AUGUST COUP IN THE USSR

DAY ONE 

GORBACHEV 

IN FOROS 

August 18, 1991 

BORIS YELTSIN (l.) and  

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (r.) 

Shake Hands at Yeltsin's First Inauguration 

as Russia's First President 

July 10, 1991 

Some background to the coup that helped precipitate the breakup of the Soviet Union: 

As of June 12, 1991, Russia had a popularly elected president, for the first time in its history.  As the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, though, Russia was one part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which had its own president, Mikhail Gorbachev, who, however, had not sought, and did not have, a popular mandate.  Gorbachev did attend, and speak at, Yeltsin's inauguration on July 10 (above). 

After the election, Yeltsin set about building up his Moscow as a power base and Russia as a sovereign entity, claiming resources the "Center" had hitherto controlled.  In August he made a tour of Tyumen', a major oil and gas province of Russia.  The day the coup began, Sunday, August 18, he was back in the Moscow region.  Gorbachev was vacationing in Foros.  It was there that the State Committee for the State of Emergency, or coup plotters, did or did not arrest the head of the Soviet state and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  In any event, they announced that Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) was ill. 

Day One. 

BORIS YELTSIN IN THE NEWS TODAY II

WHAT ELECTIONS 

CAN BRING 

BORIS YELTSIN VOTING 
IN THE 1991 RUSSIAN 
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 
(the first) 
Moscow, June 12, 1991 

Pausing in casting his ballot to help 
the photographers get their pictures 

Yeltsin won 

Today Boris Yeltsin is the news as a comparison point in a Forbes piece by Melik Kaylan on "Understanding Egypt": 

"The last decade has introduced to the world the novel phenomenon of the genuinely re-elected dictator, the populist who gets successive mandates largely because he controls all information, much of the economy, starves opponents of funds, because he has delivered a measure of stability and because the alternative looks worse. The alternative might be what went before – Boris Yeltsin in Moscow...." 

Well.... 

BORIS YELTSIN IN THE NEWS TODAY

BORIS YELTSIN 

CHECKS IT OUT 

BORIS YELTSIN INSPECTS THE BOOKS 
Sakhalinskaya Oil Platform 
Sea of Okhotsk, off the City of Okha 
Sakhalin Island, Sakhalin Oblast', USSR 
August 1990 

From today's Washington Post obituary of Kongar-ol Ondar, a "master of throat singing" from the Russian republic of Tuva: 

He mesmerized audiences with his ability to produce two or more notes simultaneously — a low, steady drone overlaid with higher-pitched tones that to the unaccustomed ear sounded like a radio gone haywire. 

His talent was so extraordinary that when he sang for Yeltsin in 1994, the Russian leader looked into his mouth in search of a device that could produce such music. 

From Russia Redux, Chapter Six:  Yeltsin "was never kabinetnyi, never one to be desk-bound."  He "liked to be out in the field, seeing things first hand." 

TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY, BORIS YELTSIN MADE A TRIP TO ORËL (ORYOL), RUSSIA

PRESIDENT YELTSIN 

MAKES AN INSPECTION TRIP 

AND COMMEMORATES 

THE BATTLE OF KURSK 

August 4, 1993 

BORIS YELTSIN (center) WAVING TO THE 
CITIZENS OF ORËL (ORYOL), RUSSIA 

EMERGING FROM THE SECOND LIMOUSINE IS 
YEGOR STROYEV, GOVERNOR OF ORËL 

Among the issues of the day 
The competition with Rutskoi and Khasbulatov 
The currency exchange crisis 
The harvest 
Land reform 
A new Constitution 
Yeltsin's health 

The story coming in 
RUSSIA REDUX 

SPEAKING OF "SHIRTSLEEVES SUMMITS" ... HERE'S ONE "WITHOUT NECKTIES": YELTSIN AND HASHIMOTO

A SUMMIT 

"WITHOUT NECKTIES" 

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT 

BORIS YELTSIN AND 

JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER 

RYUTARO HASHIMOTO 

Krasnoyarsk, Russia 

November 1997 

To be continued 

in 
RUSSIA REDUX  

BORIS YELTSIN BECOMES HEAD OF THE RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT, MAY 29, 1990

BORIS YELTSIN 

ELECTED CHAIR OF 

THE RUSSIAN CONGRESS 

OF PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES 

May 29, 1990 

BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH YELTSIN 

CHAIRING THE 

RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF 

PEOPLE'S DEPUTIES 

Elected President of Russia 

the following year 

"Mikhail Gorbachev was literally up in the air at the moment of the election, on a ten-hour flight to Canada for a first-ever visit by a top Soviet leader.  Back in Moscow, '[w]hen the final count was announced...to the tense and excited gathering at the Grand Kremlin Palace, deputies got to their feet to give [Yeltsin] a standing ovation.'  Or rather, half of them did.  Outside hundreds of his supporters were waiting, 'waving red-white-and-blue prerevolutionary Russian flags and carrying pictures' of Yeltsin."  -- from Chapter Six of SIC TRANSIT, by Gwendolyn Stewart