Biography of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin | Russian President
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( the village of Butka , Butkinsky District , Ural Region , RSFSR , USSR – April 23, 2007 , Moscow , Russia ) – Soviet and Russian party , statesman and politician. First President of the Russian Federation (1991-1999) ; in November 1991 – June 1992, he simultaneously headed
the ” government of reformers ” . From March to May 1992, he acted asMinister of Defense of the Russian Federation .
Deputy of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 10th and 11th convocations (1979-1989); member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1984-1988). People’s Deputy of the USSR and member of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1989-1990). People’s Deputy of the RSFSR and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1990-1991).
Member of the CPSU (1961-1990), member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1981-1990); In the party he held the posts of First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU (1976-1985), Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1985-1986) and First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU (1985 -1987).
He went down in history as the first popularly elected head of Russia , a radical reformer of the socio-political and economic structure of Russia. The period of Yeltsin’s rule was marked by the August putsch and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, price liberalization and privatization in early 1992, confrontation with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , impeachment attempts in 1993 and 1999, the dispersal of the Supreme Soviet and the adoption of the 1993 Constitution , the first Chechen war(1994-1996) and the beginning of the second Chechen war , as well as the default in 1998.
Childhood and youth
Born on February 1, 1931 in the village of Butka, Ural Region (now in Talitsky District, Sverdlovsk Region ) into a family of dispossessed peasants. This is what Yeltsin himself writes in his memoirs. The right to be called Yeltsin’s homeland, however, is disputed by the neighboring village of Basmanovskoye . As the biographer of the first president Boris Minaev writes , the Yeltsins really lived in the village of Basmanovo, “but the ‘maternity hospital’, that is, the village hospital, was located in Butka,” and it was there that Boris Yeltsin was born . Yeltsin later recalled:
.. The Yeltsin family, as it is written in the description that our village
council sent to the Chekists in Kazan, rented land in the amount of five
hectares. “Before the revolution, his father’s farm was kulak, had a water
mill and a windmill, had a threshing machine, had permanent laborers, had up
to 12 hectares of sowing, had a self-tying reaper, had up to five horses, up
to four cows … ”Had, had, I had … That was my fault – I worked a lot,
took a lot on myself. And the Soviet government loved modest, inconspicuous,
non-protruding. She did not like strong, smart, bright people and did not
spare.
In the thirtieth year, the family was “evicted”. Grandfather was deprived of
his civil rights. They imposed an individual agricultural tax. In a word,
they put a bayonet to the throat, as they knew how to do it. And the
grandfather “went on the run” …
Boris Yeltsin’s paternal grandfather –
Ignatiy Yekimovich Yeltsin (1875-1936) – a wealthy peasant, a kulak, in 1930 he
was exiled to Nadezhdinsk (now Serov), the Ural region. Paternal grandmother –
Anna Dmitrievna Yeltsina (1887-1941).
Mother of Boris Yeltsin – Klavdia Vasilievna Yeltsin (virgin Starygina, 1908-1993 ), from the peasants , a dressmaker .
Boris Yeltsin’s father – Nikolai Ignatievich Yeltsin ( June 27, 1906 – May 30, 1977 ), a builder. On April 28, 1934, Nikolai was arrested along with his brother Andrian and four other workers, they were accused of “conducting systematic anti-Soviet agitation among
the workers, aiming at the disintegration of the working class and the introduction of dissatisfaction with the existing legal order. Using the existing difficulties in nutrition and supply, they tried to create unhealthy moods, while spreading provocative rumors about the war and the imminent death of Soviet power. They campaigned against the loan , actively opposed aid to the Austrian workers.” May 23, 1934 was convicted three PP OGPU in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic under Article 58, paragraph 10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation) to stay in the labor camp for a period of 3 years . On May 28, 1934, together with his brother , he was convoyed to the Dmitlag of the NKVD, where he served a sentence on the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal , worked in general and auxiliary work in the Taldom district .
While Nikolai Ignatievich was serving his sentence, the Yeltsin family – his wife Klavdia Vasilievna and son Boris, evicted from the barrack, were sheltered by the wife of Vasily Petrovich Petrov, a doctor who was serving his sentence from Kazan, Elizaveta Ivanovna Petrova. KV Yeltsin registered in the house number 32 on Sixth Soyuznaya Street (in 1956 the house was moved to Karagandinskaya Street, in 1999 BN Yeltsin’s wife NI Yeltsin visited it).
On September 29, 1936, NI Yeltsin was released from prison ahead of schedule for exemplary behavior, in early October 1936 he returned to Kazan and settled in the same house. Here, in 1937, Nikolai and Klavdia Yeltsin had a second son, Mikhail, whose godmother was the daughter of Vasily and Elizabeth Petrovs, Nina. In 1937, the Yeltsins returned to the Urals, where NI Yeltsin worked as a foreman at the construction site of a chemical plant in Berezniki, and a few years later became the head of the construction department at the plant .
Yeltsin spent his childhood in the city of Berezniki, Perm region , where he graduated from school (modern school No. 1 named after A. Pushkin). According to the official biography of Yeltsin and media reports, he did well in his studies, was the head of the class, but had complaints about his behavior, was pugnacious . However, the article by Y. Borisenok and V. Erlikhman argues that Yeltsin “did not shine with good marks” . After finishing the seventh grade, Yeltsin confronted the class teacher who beat the children and forced them to work at home.For this he was expelled from school with a “wolf ticket”, but, having applied to the city party committee, he managed to achieve the opportunity to continue his studies at another school .
On his left hand, Yeltsin was missing two fingers and a phalanx of the third . According
to Yeltsin, he lost them as a result of the explosion of a grenade, which he tried to open . This version was questioned by Sergey Kara-Murza and Yuri Mukhin . Due to the lack of fingers, Yeltsin did not serve in the army.
According to his autobiography, completed on April 8, 1955, in 1949 he entered the Ural Polytechnic Institute named after SM Kirov at the Faculty of Civil Engineering , in 1955 he graduated from it with the qualification “civil engineer” in the specialty ” Industrial and civil construction “… In his autobiography, Yeltsin reports that in 1952,” due to illness, he missed a year of study ” . In “Confessions on a given topic,” Yeltsin wrote that the theme of the diploma work: ” TV Tower “.In fact, Yeltsin’s thesis was devoted to the construction of a ladle chain for unloading waste materials from coal mines and, according to historian Timothy Colton, was not “anything outstanding” .
In his student years, he was seriously involved in volleyball , played for the national team of the city, became a master of sports of the USSR . In 1952 he was a coach of the women’s volleyball team of the Molotov region , which took part in the zonal competitions for the championship of the RSFSR (the team took 6th place) .
Professional and party activities of Boris Yeltsin
In 1955, he was assigned to the Uraltyazhtrubstroy trust, where he mastered several construction specialties in a year, then worked on the construction of various objects as a foreman, head of a section. In 1957 he became the foreman of the construction management of the trust . In 1961 he joined the CPSU . In 1963 he was appointed chief engineer of the Sverdlovsk house-building plant. Since 1966 – Director of the Sverdlovsk
DSK. In 1963, at the XXIV conference of the party organization of the Kirovsky district of the city of Sverdlovsk, he was unanimously elected a delegate to the city conference of the CPSU. At the XXV regional conference he was elected a member of the Kirov regional committee of the CPSU and a delegate to the Sverdlovsk regional conference of the CPSU.
In the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU
In 1968 he was transferred to party work in the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU , where he headed the construction department. In 1975 he was elected secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU, responsible for the industrial development of the region. Boris Yeltsin’s predecessor as secretary of the
Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU, Ya.P. Ryabov, said in an interview:
It so happened that several of my friends studied with Yeltsin. I decided to ask their opinion about him. They said that he was power-hungry, ambitious, that for the sake of a career he was ready to step over even his own mother. “And if you give him an assignment?” – I ask. They say: “Any task of the authorities, he will break into a cake, but will complete it.”
– Ya.P. Ryabov
In 1976, on the recommendation of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was elected first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU (the actual head of the Sverdlovsk Region ), he held this position until 1985. By order of Yeltsin, the twenty-three- story building , the highest in the city, of the regional committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , was built in Sverdlovsk . He organized the construction of a highway connecting Sverdlovsk with the north of the region, as well as the resettlement of residents from barracks to new houses. Organized the execution of the Politburo decision on the demolitionof the Ipatiev house (the place of execution of the royal family 1918), which was not carried out by his predecessor Ya.P. Ryabov, achieved the adoption of the Politburo’s decision on the construction of a subway in Sverdlovsk . Significantly improved the supply of food to the Sverdlovsk region, intensified the construction of poultry farms and farms. During Yeltsin’s leadership of the region, milk coupons were abolished . In 1980, he actively supported the initiative to create MHK and the construction of experimental settlements in the villages of Baltym and Patrushi.The Baltym Cultural and Sports Complex became the subject of pride, the building of which was recognized as “having no analogues in construction practice”. While at party work in Sverdlovsk, Boris Yeltsin received the
military rank of colonel stock.
In the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
1978-1989 – Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (member of the Council
of the Union). From 1984 to 1988 – Member of the Presidium of the USSR Armed
Forces. In addition, in 1981 at the 26th Congress of the CPSU he was elected a
member of the CPSU Central Committee and was a member of it until he left the
party in 1990. In 1985, after the election of Mikhail Gorbachev General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee , was transferred to work in Moscow (on the recommendation of EK Ligachev ), in April, led by the construction department of the CPSU Central Committee , and was elected in June 1985, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee on construction issues.
In the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU
In December 1985, he was recommended by the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee for the post of first secretary of the Moscow City Committee (MGK) of the
CPSU. Having assumed this position, he began a personnel purge of the party and
Soviet apparatus of the capital, relieving many of the leading workers of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU and the first secretaries of district committees from their posts. He became famous for his personal checks of stores and warehouses, the use of public transport. Organized food fairs in Moscow. Under Yeltsin, a new General Plan for the Development of Moscow began to be worked out, a ban on the demolition of historic buildings was introduced, and City Day began to be celebrated.
At the XXVII Congress of the CPSU in February 1986, he was elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU , remained in this position until February 18, 1988.
In the fall of 1987, he began to publicly criticize the party leadership. On October 21, he spoke rather sharply at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU (criticized the style of work of some members of the Politburo, in particular Yegor Ligachev , the slow pace of perestroika , among other things, he announced the emergence of Mikhail
Gorbachev’s ” personality cult “), after which he asked to be relieved of his duties as a candidate member Politburo. After that, he was subjected to counter criticism, including from those who previously supported him (for example, the “architect of perestroika” Alexander Yakovlev ).In the end, he was forced to repent and admit his mistakes:
Apart from some expressions, on the whole I agree with the assessment. The
fact that I let the Central Committee and the Moscow City Organization down
by speaking today is a mistake.
The plenum passed a resolution to consider Yeltsin’s speech “politically erroneous” and invited the Moscow City Committee to consider the issue of re-election of its first secretary. The transcript of Yeltsin’s speech was not published in a timely manner in the
press, which gave rise to many rumors. Several fake versions of the text appeared in ” samizdat “, much more radical than the original. The author of one of them was the editor-in-chief of “Moskovskaya Pravda” Mikhail Poltoranin . Poltoranin was not present at the plenum where Yeltsin spoke, the transcript has not yet been published. Therefore, the speech written by Poltoranin was very inconsistent with the real speech of Yeltsin.In particular, knowing about people’s dislike for Raisa Gorbacheva , Poltoranin said that
according to Yeltsin, she called him with categorical instructions about party affairs. Poltoranin published this speech at his home and reproduced it in several hundred copies. The speech was published the night before Poltoranin’s speech at the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee, which was to be held on the initiative of the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee. 700 Soviet newspaper journalists arrived to meet with Poltoranin. Before the speech, Poltoranin gave them the text of the speech.
On November 3, Yeltsin sent a letter to Gorbachev asking him to keep him as first secretary of the Moscow City Committee.
On November 9, due to a heart attack, he was admitted to the hospital. According to some testimonies (for example, the testimony of MS Gorbachev , NI Ryzhkov and VI Vorotnikov ) – due to an attempt to commit suicide (or to feign a suicide attempt).
On November 11, at the Plenum of the IGC, he repented again, admitted his mistakes, but was relieved of his post as First Secretary of the IGC. However, he was not completely demoted, but remained in the ranks of the nomenklatura, there were proposals to send him as an ambassador to some African country.
On January 14, 1988, Yeltsin was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the USSR State Construction Committee – USSR Minister.
On February 18, by the decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, he was relieved of his duties as a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (but remained a member of the Central Committee).
In the summer of 1988, he was elected a delegate to the XIX All-Union Party Conference from the Karelian republican party organization . On July 1,
Yeltsin spoke at a party conference and again proposed to remove Ligachev from
the Politburo, criticized the privileges of the party elite, argued that Brezhnev alone cannot be blamed for the “stagnation”, but the entire Politburo is to blame “as a collective body. ” In conclusion, Yeltsin asked to cancel the decision of the October plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which recognized his speech at the plenum as erroneous.
You know that my speech at the October Plenum of the Central Committee of
the CPSU was recognized as “politically erroneous.” But the questions raised
there, at the plenum, were repeatedly raised by the press and raised by the
communists. These days, all these questions were practically heard from this
rostrum both in the report and in speeches. I believe that my only mistake
in my speech was that I spoke at the wrong time – before the 70th
anniversary of October.
<…> I am acutely worried about what
happened and ask the conference to cancel the plenum’s decision on this
issue. If you deem it possible to cancel it, you will rehabilitate me in the
eyes of the communists.And this is not only personal, it will be in the
spirit of perestroika, it will be democratic and, I think, will help it by
adding confidence to people.
Election as People’s Deputy of the USSR
On March 26, 1989, Yeltsin was elected People’s Deputy of the USSR in the national-territorial district No. 1 ( Moscow city ), receiving 91.53% of the votes of Muscovites, with a turnout of almost 90%. Yeltsin was opposed by the government-backed general director of ZIL, Yevgeny Brakov . In connection with the election, Yeltsin was relieved of his duties as Minister of the USSR (while retaining the post of First Deputy Chairman of the State Construction Committee of the USSR). During the elections at the Congress, Yeltsin did not go to the Supreme Soviet , but Deputy A.I. Kazannik renounced his mandate in favor of Yeltsin (in October 1993, Yeltsin will appoint himProsecutor General of the Russian Federation ).
From June 1989 to December 26, 1990, Boris Yeltsin was a member of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He was elected chairman of the USSR Armed Forces Committee on Construction and Architecture and became a member of the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces. One of the leaders of the Interregional Deputy Group . In 1989, Yeltsin became the hero of several scandalous incidents. In the summer, invited to the United States , he allegedly spoke drunk – the reprint of an article by V. Dzucconi about this incident from the Italian newspaper La
Repubblica in Pravda was perceived in his homeland as a provocation of the party leadership against the “dissenting” Yeltsin and led to massive protests and resignation of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper V. G. Afanasyev . Yeltsin himself explained his behavior with a dose of sleeping pills, which he took in the morning, suffering from insomnia. In September, a strange incident occurred with Yeltsin in the Moscow region, and in addition, he was in a car accident: on September 21, a car “Volga “, on which he was traveling, collided with” Zhiguli “, while Yeltsin received a bruised hip.
On March 4, 1990, Yeltsin was elected People’s Deputy of the RSFSR from Sverdlovsk.
On April 25, 1990, during an unofficial visit to Spain, Yeltsin was involved in an aircraft accident, suffered a spinal injury and was operated on. A month after the incident, during the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, hints appeared in the press that the accident was organized by the KGB of the USSR . It has been argued that the numerous rumors that arose in connection with this accident influenced the outcome of the elections.
Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR
On May 29, 1990, Yeltsin was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (on the third attempt, gaining 535 votes against 467 votes from the “Kremlin candidate” A.V. Vlasov ). Under Yeltsin’s leadership, the Supreme Soviet adopted a number of laws that influenced the further development of the country, including the Law on Property in the RSFSR.
On June 12, 1990, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR adopted the Declaration on State Sovereignty of the RSFSR , which provided for the supremacy of Russian legislation in relation to the Union. This dramatically increased the political weight of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, who previously played a secondary, dependent role. June 12 in 1991 became, according to the resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, a state holiday of the Russian Federation .
On July 12, at the XXVIII Congress of the CPSU, Yeltsin criticized the party and its leader Mikhail Gorbachev and announced his withdrawal from the CPSU.
In August – October 1990, the “parade of sovereignties” of the union republics was followed by the “parade of sovereignties” of autonomous entities and even some regions within the RSFSR. A declaration on the state sovereignty of the Karelian ASSR was adopted, the state sovereignty of the Komi ASSR, the Tatar ASSR, the Udmurt and Yakut-Sakha ASSR, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the Adyge Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Adyge Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), the Buryat ASSR, the Bashkir ASSR, the Kalimysh ASSR, the Czechoslovak ASSR, the Bashkir ASSR, the Kalimysh ASSR, was proclaimed , Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Gorno-Altai Autonomous Okrug (Gorno-Altai Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), Irkutsk Oblast, etc.
In these and other documents of that period, the republics were proclaimed bearers
of sovereignty… At the same time, however, the question of complete state independence and secession from the RSFSR, as a rule, was not raised, relations
with the federal center were supposed to be settled in the future by concluding
agreements with it.
A number of media outlets ascribe to
Boris Yeltsin the phrase “take as much sovereignty as you can swallow,” which he
allegedly uttered during a visit to Ufa in August 1990. In the original, the
phrase sounded differently: “we say to the Supreme Soviet, the government of
Bashkiria: you
take that share of power that you yourself can swallow .”
USSR President Gorbachev in
December 1990 proposed a draft of a new Union Treaty. On December 24, 1990,
the IV Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR decided to consider it
necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign
republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will
be fully ensured.
On February 19, 1991, Boris Yeltsin, in a
television speech after the events in Riga and Vilnius , during which the Soviet
leadership resorted to military force, criticized these actions and for the
first time demanded the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and the transfer of
power to the Federation Council ,
which consists of the leaders of the union republics. Two days later, at a
meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, a “letter of six” was read out
(deputy chairmen of the Supreme Soviet S.P. Goryacheva and B.M. Isaev , chairmen
of both chambers V. B. Isakov and R. G. Abdulatipov and their deputies A. A.
Veshnyakova and V. G. Syrovatko), who criticized Yeltsin’s authoritarian style
in guiding the work of the Supreme Soviet. RI Khasbulatov (first deputy
chairman) , however, actively spoke in defense of Yeltsin, and the deputies did
not give this appeal a move.
On March 17, at the All-Union referendum,
the preservation and renewal of the USSR was supported by the majority of
citizens, excluding the population of six republics
( Lithuania , Estonia , Latvia , Georgia , Moldova , Armenia ),
in which the highest authorities refused to hold a referendum. A working group
(with the participation of the RSFSR), within the framework of the
so-called Novoogarevsky process, in the spring and summer of 1991, developed a
project to conclude a new union as a soft, decentralized federation .
President of the RSFSR / Russian Federation Election
On June 12, 1991, Yeltsin was elected president of the RSFSR , receiving 45,552,041 votes, which amounted to 57.30 percent of the number of voters, and significantly ahead of Nikolai Ryzhkov ,
who, despite the support of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ,
received only 16.85 percent votes. Together with Boris Yeltsin, Vice
President Alexander Rutskoi was elected . The main slogans of Yeltsin’s election
campaign were the fight against the privileges of the nomenklatura and the
maintenance of Russia’s sovereignty within the USSR.
These were the first nationwide
presidential elections in the history of Russia (Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev took office as a result of a vote at the Congress of USSR People’s
Deputies).
On July 10, Boris Yeltsin took the oath
of allegiance to the people of Russia and the Russian Constitution and took
office as president of the RSFSR. After taking the oath, he gave a keynote
speech, which he began energetically and emotionally, with an understanding of
the solemnity of the moment.
<blockquote>
It is impossible to convey in words
the state of mind that I am experiencing in these minutes. For the first
time in Russia’s thousand-year history, a president solemnly swears
allegiance to his fellow citizens. There is no higher honor than that which
is given to a person by the people, there is no higher honor for which the
citizens of the state are elected. <…> I am optimistic about the future and
ready for energetic action. Great Russia is rising from its knees ! We will
definitely turn it into a prosperous, democratic, peaceful, legal and
sovereign state. The work that is difficult for all of us has already
begun. Having gone through so many trials, clearly understanding our goals,
we can be firmly convinced: Russia will be reborn!
</blockquote>
The toastmaster at the inaugural banquet
was Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia .
In connection with Yeltsin’s assumption
of the office of president, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR
relieved him of his duties as chairman of the Supreme Soviet and terminated his
deputy powers. He formally remained a People’s Deputy of the USSR until the
collapse of the Union.
The first decree that Yeltsin signed as
president was the decree “On priority measures to develop education in the
RSFSR.” The document, prepared with the active participation of the Ministry of
Education of the RSFSR, headed by E. D. Dneprov , outlined a number of measures
to support (mainly financial) the education system, which were clearly
declarative. Much of what was stated in the decree was never fulfilled, for
example, the promise “to send annually abroad for training, internships,
advanced training at least 10 thousand students, graduate students, teachers and
scientific-pedagogical workers.”
On July 20, Yeltsin signed a decree “On
the cessation of the activities of the organizational structures of political
parties and mass social movements in state bodies, institutions and
organizations of the RSFSR”, which became one of the final accords of the policy
of departization and de-ideologization.
August putsch and aftermath
On August 15, the final version of the
“Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States” was published. Members of the new
union were to be nine out of the fifteen union republics of the former USSR, as
stated by Mikhail Gorbachev in a televised address August 3, 1991, August 20 a
new union contract had to sign Belarus , Kazakhstan , the
RSFSR , Tajikistan and Uzbekistan , and in the fall to they could be joined
by Azerbaijan , Kyrgyzstan , Ukraine and Turkmenistan .
The signing of the new Union Treaty was
thwarted by the August coup of the State Emergency Committee . On
August 19, after the announcement of the creation of the State Emergency
Committee and the isolation of Mikhail Gorbachev in Crimea, Yeltsin led the
opposition to the conspirators and turned the House of Soviets of Russia (“White
House”) into a center of resistance. Already on the first day of the coup,
Yeltsin, speaking from a tank in front of the White House, called the actions of
the State Emergency Committee a coup, then promulgated a number of decrees not
recognizing the actions of the State Emergency Committee.
The coup attempt led to the fact that
almost all the remaining union republics and some autonomies proclaimed
independence. After the failure of the State Emergency Committee, work on a new
Union Treaty was continued, but now it was about creating the Union of Sovereign
States as a confederation.
On August 23, Yeltsin signed a decree on
the suspension of the activities of the Communist Party of the RSFSR, and on
November 6 – on the termination of the activities of the CPSU .
On September 5, the V Congress of People’s
Deputies of the USSR adopted the “Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms” and
announced a transitional period for the formation of a new system of state
relations, preparation and signing of the Treaty on the Union of Sovereign
States . At the suggestion of M.
S. Gorbachev, the congress actually dissolved itself, adopting the law “On the
bodies of state power and administration of the USSR in the transition
period.” The draft law proposed to make a decision on the inexpediency of
holding regular congresses of people’s deputies of the USSR during the
transitional period, however, when voting, the people’s deputies rejected this
proposal.
On September 6, the State Council of the
USSR , in violation of the USSR Law “On the procedure for resolving issues
related to the secession of a union republic from the USSR”, recognized the
secession of the three Baltic republics ( Latvia , Lithuania and Estonia ) from
the USSR.
The collapse of the USSR
On November 14, the leaders of seven of
the twelve union republics
( Russia , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Tajikistan , Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan )
and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made a statement of their intention to
conclude an agreement on the creation of the JIT. The signing of the agreement
was scheduled for December 9th.
Meanwhile, on December 1, a referendum on
independence was held in Ukraine ,
the participants of which supported the Declaration of Independence of
Ukraine on August 24, 1991. Boris Yeltsin immediately made a statement on the
recognition of Ukraine’s independence, saying, in particular: “<…>We
are convinced of the possibility and necessity of the early establishment of new
interstate relations between Russia and Ukraine, with confidence in the
preservation of the established traditions of friendship, good neighborliness,
mutual respect between both peoples, strict observance of obligations, including
those on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and their limitation, human
rights and others. generally recognized norms of international law. <…>
Mutually beneficial and balanced cooperation between Russia and Ukraine can and
should become an example of bilateral relations between the republics of the old
Union. New opportunities are opening up for close interaction with other
republics, the formation of a truly equal community of sovereign states<…>
“. Yeltsin announced his intention to establish diplomatic relations with
Ukraine and conclude a comprehensive bilateral agreement with it.
On December 5, Yeltsin met with Gorbachev
to discuss the prospects for the JIT in connection with the proclamation of
Ukraine’s independence. After the meeting, he told reporters that “without
Ukraine, the union agreement loses all meaning.”
On December 7, Yeltsin met in
Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Belarus) with the newly elected President of
Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk and Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of
Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich (according
to the latter, the meeting was supposed to discuss the issue of oil and gas
supplies). The Russian delegation brought with them a draft of a new treaty
prepared in opposition to the agreement on the JIT. Taking it as a basis, on
December 8, the heads of the three states signed the so-called Belovezhskaya
agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, in the
preamble of which it was stated that “the USSR as a subject of international law
and geopolitical reality ceases to exist.” The agreement was signed despite the
results of the referendum on the preservation of the USSR . The central
government, headed by Gorbachev, was by this time paralyzed and could no longer
oppose the actions of the leaders of the republics.
Boris Yeltsin, as Ruslan Khasbulatov recalls ,
insisted on the early ratification of the agreement on the creation of the CIS,
citing many problems arising from the uncertainty in this matter.
On December 12, the agreement was ratified
by the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR . The
legality of this ratification even then raised doubts among some members of the
Russian parliament, since, according to the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978,
consideration of this document was under the exclusive jurisdiction of the
Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR, since the Agreement affected the
state structure of the republic as part of the USSR and thus entailed changes in
the Russian Constitution.
On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of the
RSFSR adopted a decision to denounce the union treaty of 1922 and to recall
Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR . This
decision paralyzed the work of one of the chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR – the Council of the Union , depriving it of a quorum.
On December 21, most of the union
republics joined the CIS, having signed the Alma-Ata Declaration and the
Protocol to the Agreement on the Establishment of the CIS.
On December 24, Boris Yeltsin informed the
UN Secretary General that the RSFSR continues the USSR’s membership in all UN
bodies (including the UN Security Council ). Thus,
Russia is considered the original member of the UN (since October 24, 1945 )
along with Ukraine ( Ukrainian SSR ) and Belarus ( BSSR ).
On December 25, with the resignation of
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin received full presidential
power in Russia. He was given the residence in the Kremlin and the
so-called nuclear briefcase .
In April 1992, the VI Congress of People’s
Deputies of the RSFSR refused three times to ratify the Belovezhskaya Agreement
and to exclude from the text of the Russian Constitution the mention of the
Constitution and laws of the USSR, which later became one of the reasons for
the opposition of the Congress of People’s Deputies to President Yeltsin and
further led to the dispersal of the Congress in October 1993 of the year . The
USSR Constitution and the laws of the USSR continued to be mentioned in Articles
4 and 102 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation – Russia (RSFSR) of 1978
until December 25, 1993, when the Constitution of the Russian Federation , adopted
by a popular vote, came into force , which did not contain any mention of the
Constitution and laws of the USSR …
In September 1992, a group of People’s
Deputies of the RSFSR headed by Sergei Baburin sent a petition to the
Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to check the constitutionality of
the resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR dated December 12, 1991 “On
ratification of the Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent
States.” This appeal was never considered.
1991-1992 years
In the early autumn of 1991, it became
clear that the USSR was unable to pay its foreign debt. The negotiations that
began with creditors led to the signing at the end of October of a memorandum of
understanding on the debt to foreign creditors of the USSR and its
successors. Eight out of fifteen Soviet republics admitted their joint
responsibility for this debt. Foreign banks, for their part, demanded an urgent
transition to market reforms. In the fall of 1991, Yegor Gaidar’s “economic
program” was born… President Yeltsin announced its main provisions on October
28 in a keynote speech at the V Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian
Federation. It involved privatization, price liberalization, commodity
intervention, and ruble conversion. In proclaiming this course, Boris Yeltsin
assured his fellow citizens that “it will be worse for everyone within about six
months.” This will be followed by “lower prices, filling the consumer market
with goods, and in the fall of 1992 – stabilization of the economy, a gradual
improvement in people’s lives.”
On November 6, the government of the RSFSR was
formed , which Yeltsin personally headed until June 1992. Yegor Gaidar was
appointed his first deputy. Leningrad economist Anatoly Chubais became the new
chairman of the State Property Committee of Russia instead of the resigned M.D.
Maley , who back in 1991 developed a privatization program that involved the
creation of a private sector in Russia while maintaining the commanding heights
in the economy .
On November 21, following the results of
the second round of negotiations with the G7 countries on foreign debt, the
Soviet Union was granted a short-term reprieve on its debt obligations. On
December 5, the Treaty of Succession in Respect of the State Debt and Assets of
the USSR was signed. This agreement determined the sum of the total debt of the
USSR – $ 93 billion – and the share of each of the 15 republics in the repayment
of the Soviet debt. The share of Russia was 61.3%, or about $ 57 billion. Seven
republics (Azerbaijan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and
Estonia) refused to sign this agreement. The main condition for granting another
deferral on debt obligations was “cooperation with the International Monetary
Fund” (IMF) in the implementation of “market reforms”. As Ruslan Khasbulatov
stated,
The starting point for shock therapy is
price liberalization. It was planned to release prices from December 1, 1991,
but under pressure from other union republics that had a common ruble zone with
Russia, this was postponed until December 16, and then postponed to early
January 1992.
On December 3, a decree “On measures to
liberalize prices” was signed, and on December 19, a corresponding decree of the
RSFSR government was issued, which entered into force on January 2,
1992. Already in the first months of the year, the market began to fill up with
consumer goods, but the monetary policy of issuing money (including in the
former Soviet republics) led to hyperinflation, a sharp decline in real wages
and pensions, devaluation of bank savings , and a sharp drop in living
standards. Hyperinflation was stopped only in 1993.
One of the first serious economic
decisions made by Yeltsin was the decree on free trade ,
signed on January 29, 1992. This document effectively legalized entrepreneurship
and led to the fact that many people took up small street trading in order to
survive in the difficult economic conditions caused by market reforms.
Yeltsin’s other decrees initiated voucher
privatization and loans-for-shares auctions , which led to the concentration of
most of the former state property in the hands of a few people (the so-called
” oligarchs “). In addition to
hyperinflation, the country faced problems such as production slump and
non-payment. For example, non-payment of wages , as well as pensions and other
social benefits have become widespread . The country was in a deep economic
crisis.
A political crisis was added to the
economic problems of the early 1990s. In some regions of Russia, after the
collapse of the USSR, separatist sentiments intensified. On June 8-9, 1991,
the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was proclaimed by separation from
the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , which declared
independence the following month.
In the Declaration of State Sovereignty,
adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Tatar ASSR on August 30, 1990, in contrast
to almost all other autonomous Russian republics (except for
Chechen-Ingushetia), it was not directly indicated that the republic was part of
the RSFSR and the USSR.
On December 26, 1991, in connection with
the Belovezhsky agreement on the termination of the existence of the USSR and on
the formation of the CIS , the Declaration on the entry of Tatarstan into the
CIS as a founder was adopted.
In February 1992, the Tatar authorities of
that same year it was announced a March 21 referendum in which the question was
raised about the fact that Tatarstan sovereign state and subject of
international law , building its relations with the Russian Federation and other
republics and states on the basis of equitable treaties.
On March 13, 1992, the Constitutional
Court of the RSFSR recognized as inconsistent with the Constitution of the RSFSR
a number of provisions of the
Declaration on State Sovereignty of the Tatar SSR dated August 30, 1990,
limiting the operation of the laws of the RSFSR on the territory of Tatarstan,
as well as the resolution of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Tatarstan
dated February 21, 1992 “On Holding a Referendum Of the Republic of Tatarstan on
the state status of the Republic of Tatarstan “in terms of the wording of the
question, which stipulates that the Republic of Tatarstan is a subject of
international law and builds its relations with the Russian Federation and other
republics and states on the basis of equal treaties. However, the referendum
took place, and 61.4% of the voters answered his question in the affirmative.
In February 1992, the deputies of the
Supreme Soviet of Karelia , which had experience of existence within the USSR as
a union Karelo-Finnish SSR , tried to put on the agenda of the next session the
issue of the possibility of the Republic of Karelia’s secession from Russia.
federal laws on the territory of the republic.
Boris Yeltsin managed to convince the
heads of the regions to sign an updated Federal Treaty – on March 31, 1992, it
was signed by the President and the heads of the regions (except for Tatarstan
and Checheno-Ingushetia), and on April 10 it was included in the Constitution of
the RSFSR.
VI Congress of People’s Deputies and changes in economic policy
On April 6, 1992, the VI Congress of
People’s Deputies of Russia opened, which Yegor Gaidar called “the first frontal
attack on reforms.” The government spending cuts undertaken since the beginning
of the year led to the formation of opposition to the reforms in the form of the
industrial and agrarian lobby, which had wide influence in the Supreme Soviet
and at the Congress. On April 11, the Congress adopted a resolution “On the
Progress of Economic Reform in the Russian Federation”, in which it pointed out
a number of problems in the economy and suggested that the President of Russia
make significant adjustments to the tactics and methods of economic reform.
In response, the government headed by
Yegor Gaidar handed over a letter of resignation to the president and announced
it in the Congress press center. The statement read in particular:
<blockquote>
The set of demands stated by the Congress dooms the country to
hyperinflation, which means the suspension of the privatization process and
the curtailment of the agrarian reform. Proposals to reduce taxes and
simultaneously increase social and other benefits are unfeasible and can
only lead to the collapse of the financial system. <…> The inevitable
result of the implementation of the decisions of the Congress will be a
catastrophic drop in living standards, hunger, social upheaval and chaos.
<…> We do not consider ourselves entitled to follow the path of
irresponsible populism, when, under the pretext of protecting the
population, it is robbed as a result of accelerated inflation.
</blockquote>
On April 15, the Congress made concessions
and adopted the Declaration “On Supporting Economic Reform in the Russian
Federation”, in which it supported the government’s actions aimed at fundamental
transformations of the economy, and the resolution of April 11 proposed to be
carried out “taking into account the actual economic and social conditions”.
However, the president and the government
were also forced to make compromises. Fulfilling the agreements reached at the
Congress, Boris Yeltsin brought in representatives of the “red directors”
– Vladimir Shumeiko , Georgy Khizhu , into the government ; without Gaidar’s
knowledge, the head of Gazprom, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was appointed deputy prime
minister for the fuel and energy complex .
If the first attempt at financial
stabilization, based on cuts in government spending and the introduction of new
taxes, in April-May led to a decrease in inflation, then under pressure from the
Supreme Council and directors of enterprises, the government was forced to
soften its tight monetary policy. As Andrei Nechaev writes , “by
May 1992, we were faced with the fact that the financial obligations imposed on
us could be covered by only a third of the real sources of budget revenues . //” //The
government raised the salaries of the striking miners, at the insistence of the
Supreme Soviet, 600 billion rubles of soft loans were allocated to resolve the
non-payment crisis. In July, the leadership of the Central Bank changed. The new
head of the Central Bank Viktor Gerashchenkodid not support the cost-cutting
course promoted by Gaidar, carried out the offsetting of debts of enterprises,
based on a one-time credit issue of about 1 trillion rubles. This had a
temporary effect and led to an increase in inflation. In the fall, the problem
of non-payments arose again. According to Yevgeny Yasin, “with the arrival of
Gerashchenko to the Central Bank, the first attempt at financial stabilization
was finally thwarted.” In the summer, the seasonal factor also affected the
increase in expenses: loans were allocated to ensure the Northern delivery, the
Supreme Council approved the decision on large-scale loans to agricultural
producers for harvesting. The growth of money supply and inflation accelerated
(from 8.6% in August to 22.9% in October). Since the fall, the government has
been forced to sharply cut spending again to prevent hyperinflation. The budget
deficit decreased from 10.8% of GDP in August to 4,
Constitutional crisis (1992-1993)
On December 10, 1992, the day after the
Congress of People’s Deputies did not approve Yegor Gaidar ‘s
candidacy for the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers, Yeltsin sharply
criticized the work of the Congress and tried to disrupt its work, urging his
supporters to leave the meeting. A political crisis has begun . After
negotiations between Yeltsin, Ruslan Khasbulatov and Valery Zorkin and
multi-stage voting, the Congress of People’s Deputies on December 12 adopted a
resolution on stabilizing the constitutional order, and Viktor Chernomyrdin was
appointed chairman of the government .
After the Eighth Congress of People’s
Deputies, at which the resolution on the stabilization of the constitutional
order was canceled and decisions were taken that undermine the independence of
the government and the Central Bank, on March 20, 1993, Yeltsin, speaking on
television with an appeal to the people, announced that he had signed a decree
introducing “ special control mode “. The next day, the Supreme Soviet appealed
to the Constitutional Court, calling Yeltsin’s appeal “an attempt on the
constitutional foundations of Russian statehood.” Constitutional Court of the
Russian Federation, not yet having a signed decree, recognized Yeltsin’s actions
related to the televised address as unconstitutional, and saw grounds for
dismissing him from office. The Supreme Soviet convened the IX (Extraordinary)
Congress of People’s Deputies. However, as it turned out a few days later, in
fact, another decree was signed that did not contain gross violations of the
Constitution. On March 28, the Congress made an attempt to remove Yeltsin from
the presidency. Speaking at a rally on Vasilyevsky Spusk in Moscow, Yeltsin
vowed not to comply with the decision of the Congress, if it is still
adopted. However, only 617 out of 1,033 deputies voted for impeachment , with
the required 689 votes.
The day after the failure of the
impeachment attempt, the Congress of People’s Deputies called an all-Russian
referendum for April 25on four issues – on confidence in President Yeltsin, on
the approval of his socio-economic policy, on early presidential elections and
on early elections of people’s deputies. Boris Yeltsin urged his supporters to
vote “all four yes”, while the supporters themselves tended to vote
“yes-yes-no-yes”. According to the results of the referendum on confidence, he
received 58.7% of the vote, while 53.0% voted for economic reforms. 49.5% and
67.2% of those who took part in the voting voted in favor on the issues of early
presidential and people’s deputies elections, respectively, however, no legally
significant decisions were made on these issues (since, according to the laws in
force, for this purpose, “ more than half of all eligible voters should have
voted in favor. 64.05% of voters took part in the referendum).
After the referendum, Yeltsin focused his
efforts on drafting and adopting a new constitution. On April 30,
the Izvestia newspaper published the presidential draft of the Constitution, on
May 18, the start of the Constitutional Council was announced, and on June 5,
the Constitutional Council met for the first time in a meeting in Moscow. After
the referendum, Yeltsin practically ceased all business contacts with the
leadership of the Supreme Soviet, although for some time he continued to sign
some of the laws he adopted, and also lost confidence in Vice President
Alexander Rutskoy and relieved him of all assignments, and on September 1, he
was temporarily removed from office on suspicion corruption, which after 3
months was not confirmed.
Termination of the activity of the Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet
On the evening of September 21, 1993,
Boris Yeltsin, in a televised address to the people, announced that he had
signed Decree No. 1400 “On Phased Constitutional Reform in the Russian
Federation,” ordering to terminate the activities of the Congress of People’s
Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, and to schedule elections for December 11-12. a
new representative body of power to be created, the Federal Assembly of the
Russian Federation… The
Constitutional Court, which met on the night of September 21-22, found in the
decree a violation of a number of articles of the Constitution in force at that
time, and established the existence of grounds for removing the president from
office. The Supreme Council, on the basis of Articles 121.6 and 121.11 of the
Constitution (Basic Law) of the Russian Federation – Russia (RSFSR), adopted a
resolution to terminate the powers of President Yeltsin from 20:00 on September
21, 1993 after the signing of Decree No. 1400, and on their transfer to Vice
President Alexander Rutskoi. However, Boris Yeltsin de facto continued to
exercise the powers of the President of Russia.
Since September 22, by order of Yeltsin,
the building of the Supreme Council was blocked by the police and disconnected
from water and electricity. Thus, the deputies found themselves in a state of
siege.
The Supreme Soviet announced the
convocation of the X (Extraordinary) Congress of People’s Deputies on September
22. According to the speaker of the Supreme Council Ruslan Khasbulatov, those
executive authorities that submitted to Yeltsin detained deputies from the
regions and prevented their arrival in other ways. In reality, the Congress
could only open on the evening of September 23rd. Yeltsin’s supporters argue
that the quorum, which required 689 deputies, was not reached at the
Congress. According to the leadership of the Supreme Council, there were 639
deputies, the presidential side spoke only about 493. Then it was decided to
deprive those who did not appear in the White House, after which they announced
that the quorum had been reached. According to other sources, 689 people arrived
at the congress. The congress approved a parliamentary resolution to terminate
the powers of President Yeltsin.
On September 24, at a meeting of the X
Extraordinary (Extraordinary) Congress of People’s Deputies, Resolution No.
5807-1 “On the political situation in the Russian Federation” was adopted. In
it, the actions of former President Yeltsin were assessed as a coup d’etat , all
legal acts signed by him from 20:00 on September 21 were recognized as illegal,
and the president himself was asked not to aggravate his guilt before the people
and the law and voluntarily cease his anti-constitutional actions. …
The Congress of People’s Deputies, at the
suggestion of the regions and the Chairman of the Constitutional Court Valery
Zorkin, adopted a resolution “On early elections of People’s Deputies of the
Russian Federation and the President of the Russian Federation”, in which it
decided, in particular, to hold the indicated elections no later than March
1994, subject to the normal constitutional activity of the bodies
representative, executive and judicial power; and ensuring pluralism of opinions
in the media. The Supreme Council was instructed to prepare the relevant
regulations within a month to ensure the holding of simultaneous early
elections. Also, the parliament had to set the date for the elections itself.
On September 27, in an interview with the
Ostankino television company, Yeltsin said that he would not make any
compromises with any authorities against the simultaneous early elections of the
president and people’s deputies.
The confrontation between Yeltsin, the
law enforcement forces loyal to him and supporters of the Supreme Soviet
escalated into armed clashes. On October 3, Yeltsin declared a state of
emergency. Supporters of the Supreme Soviet took by storm one of the buildings
of the Moscow mayor’s office on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment (the former CMEA
building), from where the Interior Ministry officers fired at the demonstrators
who approached the parliament building. Then the supporters of the Supreme
Soviet, led by Albert Makashov, went to the Ostankino television centerfor the
purpose of providing them with ether. For unclear reasons, the soldiers of the
pro-government unit “Vityaz”, who were in the building of the television center,
opened fire on supporters of the parliament. Yeltsin, at the suggestion of the
deputy chief of the security service of the President of the Russian Federation,
Gennady Zakharov, gave the order to storm the building of the Supreme Soviet
using tanks. In the early morning of October 4, troops were brought into Moscow,
followed by the shelling of the House of Soviets by tanks, and after 17 hours –
the surrender of its defenders. In the course of these events on both sides,
according to the investigation, 123 people were killed, 384 were injured, among
the dead there is not a single People’s Deputy of Russia. Two of the deputies
(Yuri Elshin and Vyacheslav Fedotov), who were helping the wounded, were
slightly injured.
On October 6, 1993, the Vesti program of
the RTR TV channel announced the removal of 36 corpses from the White House.
On October 7, 3 days after the storming of
the House of Soviets, a press conference was held at the Ministry of Internal
Affairs of the commander of the internal troops Anatoly Kulikov and the
dismissed Rutskoi, but who continued to hold the post of Minister of Internal
Affairs Viktor Yerin . During this
press conference, journalists were told that 49 corpses had been removed from
the building of the Supreme Soviet. On the morning of the same day, the
investigation team of the General Prosecutor’s Office was admitted to the House
of Soviets. However, the investigators did not find corpses there and therefore
the investigation materials do not say anything about the victims in the
parliament building. The State Duma Commission did not rule out the removal of
corpses from the building of the Supreme Soviet. The information that there were
those killed inside the House of Soviets is confirmed by a letter from the
Minister of Health of the Russian FederationEduard Nechaev addressed to Prime
Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin No. 01-1 / 3016-3 dated October 6, 1993, which
states that “work is currently underway to extract and identify the victims from
the House of Soviets,” as well as the recognition of the commandant of the
seized parliament building Lieutenant General Arkady Baskaev , that in the
period from 6 pm on October 4, 1993 “20-25 wounded and killed were taken out by
ambulance teams from the building”.
After the dissolution of the Congress and
Parliament, Yeltsin for some time concentrated all power in his hands and made a
number of decisions: on the resignation of Rutskoi from the post of vice
president (according to Article 121.10 of the current Constitution, the vice
president could only be removed from office by the Congress of People’s Deputies
on the basis of the conclusion of the Constitutional Court), on the suspension
of the activities of the Constitutional Court, on the termination of the
activities of Soviets at all levels and changes in the system of local
self-government, on the appointment of elections to the Federation Council and
nationwide voting, as well as by its decrees cancels and changes a number of
provisions of the current laws.
In this regard, some well-known lawyers
(including the chairman of the Constitutional Court, Doctor of Law Prof. Valery
Zorkin ), statesmen, political scientists, politicians, journalists (primarily
from among the political opponents of Yeltsin) noted that a dictatorship had
been established in the
country . For example, Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former chairman of the Supreme
Soviet and an active participant in the events (from among Yeltsin’s opponents),
writes:
<blockquote>
Grossly trampling on the current Constitution, the President and his
entourage announced the termination of the activities of the highest
representative bodies of power provided for by the Basic Law of Russia – the
Congress of People’s Deputies and the Supreme Soviet of the Russian
Federation. Thus, a dictatorship was established in the country.
</blockquote>
In February 1994, the participants in the
events were released in accordance with the decree of the State Duma on amnesty
(all of them, except Rutskoi, agreed to the amnesty, although they were not
convicted). Among the initiators of the amnesty was Yeltsin’s ally Sergei
Shakhrai. Yeltsin demanded that the amnesty be prevented. In the report of the
State Duma commission for additional study and analysis of the events of
September 21 – October 5, 1993, with reference to the former member of the
presidential council, appointed on October 5 by Yeltsin to the post of
Prosecutor General Alexei Kazannik, it is argued that Yeltsin and his entourage
offered Kazannik to try Rutskoy, Khasbulatov and other persons who opposed the
dispersal of the Congress and the Supreme Soviet, under Art. 102 of the Criminal
Code of the RSFSR (Premeditated murder under aggravated circumstances), which
provided for the death penalty. Kazannik answered Yeltsin that there was no
legal basis for the application of this article. This fact is confirmed by
Rutskoy in his memoirs.
According to one of the defenders of the
White House, People’s Deputy of Russia Ilya Konstantinov :
“Yeltsin’s secret order to eliminate opposition leaders existed, and this is not
a myth. Yeltsin wanted, but could not finish off the opposition, because the
executors did not want to take on extra blood. Korzhakov writes about the same
that he did not want to kill anyone. If Boris Nikolaevich had the opportunity,
knowing his temper, we can assume that he would have dealt with many. On October
4, an oral order was given to liquidate a dozen people, including me. “
On November 16, 1993, Boris Yeltsin, in an
interview with film director Eldar Ryazanov, said
that the Supreme Council had adopted a special resolution on the execution of
his family members. In response to this statement, members of the dispersed
parliament, Sergei Baburin and Ivan Fedoseev, filed a lawsuit against Yeltsin
and the Ostankino television company for the protection of honor and dignity.
In September 1995, criminal case No. 18 /
123669-93 on the events of October 3-4, 1993 was terminated. According to the
former head of the investigation team, Leonid Proshkin, the amnesty that closed
this criminal case suited everyone because, against the will of the leadership,
the investigators of the Prosecutor General’s Office investigated the actions of
not only the supporters of the Supreme Soviet, but also the troops on the side
of Yeltsin, who were largely responsible for the current situation and in the
dire consequences of the incident. Proshkin also said that the Yeltsin
administration put pressure on the Prosecutor General’s Office, hiding evidence
from investigators.
From a legal point of view, the events of
October 1993 were contrary to the Constitution in force at that time. Prior to
these events, serious disagreements arose between the President and the Supreme
Council. Back in March 1993, Yeltsin planned to introduce the so-called OPUS (a
special procedure for governing the country) in the event that the deputies
expressed no confidence in the president. However, this was not necessary.
Constitutional reform
On December 12, 1993, elections to the
Federation Council and the State Duma took place, as well as a nationwide
referendum on the adoption of a new draft Constitution . On
December 20, the Central Election Commission of Russia announced the results of
the referendum: 32.9 million voters (58.4% of active voters) voted “for”, 23.4
million against (41.6% of active voters). The Constitution was adopted, since in
accordance with the decree of President Yeltsin of October 15, 1993 No. 1633 “On
holding a nationwide vote on the draft Constitution of the Russian Federation”
in force during the referendum, an absolute majority of votes is required for
the new Constitution to take effect. Subsequently, there were attempts to
challenge the results of this vote in the Constitutional Court of the Russian
Federation, but the Court refused to consider the case.
The new Constitution of the Russian
Federation gave the President significant powers, while the powers of Parliament
were significantly reduced. The Constitution came into force after publication
on December 25 in Rossiyskaya Gazeta . On January 11, 1994, both chambers of the
Federal Assembly began work, and the constitutional crisis ended.
In early 1994, Yeltsin initiated the
signing of an agreement on public accord and an agreement on the delineation of
powers with Tatarstan , and then with other subjects of the Federation.
freedom of speech
After the fall of the CPSU and the
collapse of the USSR, in the initial period (1991-1993) of Boris Yeltsin’s
presidency, the level of freedom of the media remained at the level of
1990-1991.
Known in 1994-2002, the television program
” Dolls ” specialized in satire on prominent politicians and government
officials, including Yeltsin himself.
On July 10, 1992, the Mayak radio
station reported that the VGTRK management banned the broadcast of the program
“Moment of Truth” by Andrey Karaulov with the arrested vice-president of the
collapsed USSR Gennady Yanayev, for the reason that “the confession of the
former vice-president will not interest the viewers.” In an hour-long interview,
filmed in May 1992, Yanaev spoke about the events of August 19, 1991. For
example, the documents of the State Emergency Committee were developed on behalf
of Mikhail Gorbachev: in April 1991, the President of the USSR instructed the
KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the army to prepare documents in case
the state of emergency, which then formed the basis of the GKChP action program,
and that his heart “cannot rest, that three children were killed”. Andrei
Karaulov told the Kommersant newspaper correspondent that Oleg Poptsov went to
the ban because “he doesn’t want to spoil relations with the rightists,” and
recalled the difficulties with airtime for his programs, which featured
journalist Alexander Nevzorov and former chairman of the USSR Council of
Ministers Nikolai Ryzhkov. Also, Gorbachev, by decision of the VGTRK leadership,
dropped out of the list of future interlocutors of Karaulov. According to the
chairman of the VGTRK Oleg Poptsov, Karaulov “conducted several conversations
very well”, but the program with Yanaev “is weak, the prisoner’s answers are
banal, and the author himself repeats in questions.” Therefore, it is necessary
“to do more directing, look for new moves and plow.” At the same time, Poptsov
indirectly confirmed to the Kommersant correspondent that the issue of
broadcasting the program depends not only on its artistic merit:
In March 1993, the 600 Seconds program
did not go on the air; instead of the traditional anti-presidential storyline, a
report was shown about a rally in support of Yeltsin on Palace Square. The
program was not released by order of the Director of the Federal Television
Service (FCS) Bella Kurkova… The program staff reported that an hour before
the broadcast, the control room and broadcast studio were blocked by the
police. The editors of the programs made a statement to Yeltsin, which said that
“this completely discredits your decrees, in particular, the decree on freedoms
for the media.” The actions of the Federal Television Service were called “a
gross forgery”, and its leadership – “slaves, cowards and scoundrels”, “the same
as their president.” Chairman of the Supreme Council Committee on Mass
Media Vladimir Lisin called the suspension of the program the introduction of
political censorship. After the dispersal of the Congress of People’s Deputies
and the Supreme Soviet of Russia in the fall of 1993, the program was closed by
the authorities.
Since September 25, 1993, the programs
” Man of the Week ” with the participation of Vice-President of Russia Alexander
Rutskoy , ” Red Square ” with the participation of the Chairman of the
Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin ,
“Vremechko” were removed from the air or were subjected to censorship
restrictions , where the people’s Deputy of the RSFSR Oleg Rumyantsev , as well
as other programs where criticism of Yeltsin was heard. As Kommersant wrote , in
violation of the Law on Mass Media, the publication of Rossiyskaya Gazeta and
other publications established by the Supreme Council was suspended . Former
press secretary of Yeltsin Pavel Voschanov noted: “This regime does not need a
free press.”
Talking about the events of
September-October 1993, the journalists of the American television company CBS
noted that Boris Yeltsin controlled Russian TV and, as a result, Russian
citizens did not receive full information about the events. Many of the shots
shown in the West were not shown in Russia, and Russian MPs (including members
of the Russian parliament – the Supreme Soviet) were not able to appear on
television.
During Yeltsin’s dispersal of the Russian
parliament in the fall of 1993, at least ten newspapers in Moscow were closed
down, and preliminary censorship of other publications was introduced for two
days, which obliged them to submit their materials for verification to the
government before publication.
By mid-1996, the opposition had virtually
lost access to television.
As the former head of Boris Yeltsin’s
security service, Alexander Korzhakov , recalls ,
when in December 1994 Yeltsin did not like how NTV showed the war in Chechnya,
he ordered him to deal with the owner of the television company, Vladimir
Gusinsky. After that, officers of the Main Directorate of Security of the
Russian Federation from the special unit for the protection of the president
came to Gusinsky’s office (the former building of the CMEA opposite the White
House) and Gusinsky had to leave for London for six months. The fact of pressure
on the TV company from the Yeltsin Kremlin is confirmed by Gusinsky himself, as
well as by the former general director of NTV, Igor Malashenko .
The Wall Street Journal and the Washington
Post wrote that the period of
Yeltsin’s presidency was an era of free speech and was characterized by the
absence of censorship. The same opinion is shared by a number of liberal Russian
politicians. For example, Boris Nemtsov said: “Yeltsin gave you and me freedom,
and we should be grateful to him for that, he hated censorship, and there was
freedom of speech in the country.” Oleg Naumov wrote that “choosing between
censorship and freedom of speech, Yeltsin was unconditionally for freedom of
speech.” However, there are liberals who hold a different point of view. For
example, Grigory Yavlinsky wrote in 1999: “Under Yeltsin, one can speak of
freedom of the press very conditionally: enslavement of the media by financial
groups is a phenomenon of the Yeltsin period.”
Chechen conflict
In the spring of 1991, being Chairman of
the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and a candidate for president of Russia, Yeltsin
visited Checheno-Ingushetia as part of a business trip to Russia timed to
coincide with the elections. He expressed his support for the republic’s
sovereignty in general terms, repeating his well-known thesis: “Take as much
sovereignty as you can bear.” In some autonomies, this was perceived as a call
to action. In July 1991, the rebel general Dzhokhar Dudayev proclaimed the
independent Chechen Republic (Nokhchi-Cho).
<font 16px/sans-serif;;#444444;;#ffeaea>In September 1991, Dudayev’s people
dispersed the Supreme Soviet of Chechen-Ingushetia in Grozny, chaired by Doku
Zavgayev , a supporter
of the State Emergency Committee . The
Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Russia Ruslan Khasbulatov then sent them a
telegram “I am pleased to learn about the resignation of the Armed Forces of the
republic.” For some time Yeltsin closed his eyes to what was happening in the
Caucasus region. As a result, after the collapse of the USSR, separatist
sentiments began to flourish in some autonomous republics within Russia.
Even after Dudayev stopped paying taxes
to the general budget and banned Russian intelligence officers from entering the
republic, the federal center officially continued to transfer money to
Dudayev. In 1993, 140 million rubles were allocated to the Kaliningrad region ,
and 10.5 billion rubles to Chechnya.
Thus, in 1999, the State Duma deputy from
the Yabloko party Tamara Zlotnikova accused Yeltsin of numerous cases of
kidnapping in the Chechen Republic: “He, President Yeltsin, is guilty that in
the year when the entire world community celebrated 50 the anniversary of the
Declaration of Human Rights, and he, President Yeltsin, announced the year of
human rights protection in Russia, in Russia at the turn of the third millennium
the slave trade was revived, serfdom was revived. I mean those 500 of our guys
who were captured, and every day this number of captives, unfortunately, does
not decrease, but increases … It is he, President Yeltsin, who is to blame for
the fact that one of my voters on the Day of International Workers’ Solidarity
received a call from Chechnya, from Grozny,
Moscow tacitly supported the anti-Dudaev
opposition, but did not intervene in the civil war that began in the
autonomy. At the end of November 1994, the armed opposition made another attempt
to storm Grozny , which failed, despite the support of Yeltsin’s special
services. After that, Yeltsin made a decision: federal troops will be sent to
Chechnya. Subsequent events in the Kremlin were called “the restoration of
constitutional order in the Chechen Republic.”
On November 30, 1994, Boris N. Yeltsin
made a decision to send troops into Chechnya by signing a secret decree No. 2137
“On measures to restore constitutional legality and law and order in the Chechen
Republic.” The first Chechen war began .
On December 11, 1994, on the basis of
Yeltsin’s decree “On measures to suppress the activities of illegal armed groups
on the territory of the Chechen Republic and in the zone of the Ossetian-Ingush
conflict”, troops began to enter Chechnya. Many ill-considered actions led to
large casualties both among the military and among the civilian population: tens
of thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands were injured. It often
happened that during a military operation or shortly before it, an order to
release it came from Moscow. This made it possible for the Chechen fighters to
regroup their forces. The first assault on Grozny was ill-conceived and led to
large casualties: more than 1,500 people died and went missing, 100 Russian
servicemen were captured.
In June 1995, during the seizure of
the hospital and maternity hospital in Budennovsk by a detachment of militants
led by Sh. Basayev , Yeltsin was in Canada, and decided not to stop the trip,
giving Chernomyrdin the opportunity to resolve the situation and negotiate with
the militants, returned only after the completion of all events , dismissed the
heads of a number of law enforcement agencies and the governor of the Stavropol
Territory. In 1995, at the Constitutional Court of the Russian FederationThe
legality of decrees No. 2137 and No. 1833 (“On the main provisions of the
military doctrine of the Russian Federation” in terms of the use of the RF Armed
Forces in resolving internal conflicts) was challenged by a group of deputies of
the State Duma and the Federation Council. In the opinion of the Federation
Council, the contested acts constituted a single system and led to the illegal
use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, since their use on the
territory of the Russian Federation, as well as other measures prescribed in
these acts, are legally possible only within the framework of a state of
emergency or martial law. The request emphasizes that these measures resulted in
illegal restrictions and massive violations of constitutional rights and
freedoms of citizens. In the opinion of a group of deputies of the State Duma,
the use of acts contested by them on the territory of the Chechen
Republic, entailing significant casualties among the civilian population, is
contrary to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and international
obligations assumed by the Russian Federation. The Constitutional Court
terminated the proceedings on the compliance of Decree No. 2137 with the
Constitution of the Russian Federation without consideration of the merits,
since this document was declared invalid on December 11, 1994.
In August 1996, Chechen fighters drove federal
troops out of Grozny. After that, the Khasavyurt agreements were signed .
1996 presidential election
According to the former head of the
presidential administration, Sergei Filatov, Yeltsin initially did not plan to
participate in the 1996 presidential elections, but due to the victory of the
Communist Party in the 1995 State Duma elections, he changed his mind: “In
August 1995, the president and I had a serious conversation about this topic. He
then told me that he did not want to go for a second term, that he was tired and
missed his family very much. I objected to him: “Boris Nikolayevich, but you
understand that if not you, then there will be Zyuganov.” <…> As you know, the
Communists won the 1995 parliamentary elections. Yeltsin summoned me to his
office on January 4, 1996 and said: “We fucked up the elections to the State
Duma. There is now the dominance of the communists. I didn’t want to go to the
presidential elections, but now there’s no other way. ”
By the beginning of 1996, Yeltsin, due to
the failures and mistakes of the economic reform and the war in Chechnya, had
lost its former popularity, and his approval rating dropped dramatically (to
3%); nevertheless, he decided to run for a second term, which he announced on
February 15 in Yekaterinburg (although earlier he had repeatedly assured that he
would not run for a second term). The main opponent of Yeltsin was considered
the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov ,
who advocated a change in the constitutional system, a revision of economic
policy, sharply criticized Yeltsin’s course and had a fairly high rating.
In March 1996, after the State Duma
passed a resolution on invalidating the Belovezhskaya agreement regarding the
termination of the existence of the USSR, Yeltsin instructed to prepare decrees
on the dissolution of the Duma, on the postponement of the presidential
elections and on the prohibition of the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation. However, Anatoly Chubais convinced Yeltsin to abandon these plans.
During the election campaign, Yeltsin
became more active, began to travel around the country with speeches, and
visited many regions, including Chechnya. Yeltsin’s electoral headquarters
launched an active propaganda and advertising campaign under the slogan ” Vote
or lose “, after which the gap in the ratings between Zyuganov and Yeltsin began
to rapidly narrow. Shortly before the elections, a number
of populist legislative acts were adopted (for example, Yeltsin’s decree on the
abolition of the draft in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation since
2000 ; soon this decree was changed by Yeltsin in such a way that all references
to the transition to a contract basis disappeared from it, and about the timing
of the transition. ). On May 28, Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin held talks with
a Chechen delegation led byZelimkhan Yandarbiev and signed a ceasefire
agreement. The election campaign led to the polarization of society, dividing it
into supporters of the Soviet system and supporters of the existing system. On
June 9, Yeltsin announced that he had heirs for
the year 2000 in mind , who were “growing rapidly.”
A number of journalists, political
scientists and historians (including Doctor of Historical Sciences Vyacheslav
Nikonov , who was then deputy chairman of the All-Russian movement for support
of Boris Yeltsin and who headed the press center of Yeltsin’s election
headquarters) believe that the 1996 campaign years cannot be called democratic
elections, due to the widespread use of the “administrative resource” (“in full”
– V. Nikonov), the multiple exceeding of the established limit on the funds
spent by Yeltsin’s election headquarters, falsifications, and also due to the
fact that almost all The media, with the exception of a few small-run communist
newspapers, openly supported Yeltsin.
As a result of the first round of voting
on June 16, 1996, Yeltsin won 35.28% of the vote and entered the second round of
elections, ahead of Zyuganov, who received 32.03%. Alexander Lebed received
14.52%, and after the first round, Yeltsin appointed him secretary of the
Security Council and made a number of personnel changes in the Government and
law enforcement agencies. In the second round on July 3, 1996, Yeltsin received
53.82% of the vote, confidently ahead of Zyuganov, who received only 40.31%.
According to Sergei Baburin ,
the fact of falsification of the election results was acknowledged by the
President of the Russian Federation in 2008-2012, Dmitry Medvedev, who, during a
meeting with representatives of unregistered parties on February 20, 2012,
allegedly stated: “It is unlikely that anyone has any doubts who won the 1996
presidential election. … It was not Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. ” The
presidential administration said that Medvedev did not say anything like that.
Between the first and second rounds of
voting, Yeltsin was hospitalized with a heart attack, but managed to hide this
fact from voters. He did not appear in public, but on television they showed
several video recordings of Yeltsin’s meetings filmed several months earlier,
but not previously broadcast, which were designed to demonstrate his “high
vitality.” On July 3, Yeltsin appeared at the polling station of a sanatorium in
Barvikha. Yeltsin refused to vote at his place of residence on Osennaya Street
in Moscow, fearing that he would not be able to withstand the long passage along
the street, stairs and corridor of this section.
Second term of President Yeltsin
After the elections, the persons who
headed and financed Yeltsin’s election campaign were appointed to the highest
government positions: Anatoly Chubais became the head of the presidential
administration of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Potanin became the first
deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation, Boris Berezovsky became the
deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council.
In August 1996, he sanctioned
the Khasavyurt agreements , and in
October made a decision to dismiss AI Lebed from all posts. November 5, 1996
Yeltsin had a surgery coronary artery bypass surgery of the heart, during which
the president of the duties performed by VS Chernomyrdin . Boris Yeltsin
returned to work only at the beginning of 1997. Due to various ailments, he was
later often hospitalized at the Central Clinical Hospital, where the suite
number 7 was permanently reserved for Yeltsin.
From 1997 to 1999, a military reform was
carried out , the beginning of which was laid by presidential decree No. 722 “On
the transition to the recruitment of the ranks and sergeants of the Armed Forces
and other troops of the Russian Federation on a professional basis.”
In 1997, Boris N. Yeltsin signed a decree
on the denomination of the ruble, held talks in Moscow with A. A. Maskhadov and
signed an agreement on peace and basic principles of relations with the Chechen
Republic. In March 1998, announced the resignation of the Chernomyrdin
government and, on the third attempt, under the threat of dissolving the State
Duma, ran the candidacy of S.V. Kirienko . After the default on August 17,
1998 , when, two days after Yeltsin’s decisive announcement on television that
the devaluationthere will be no ruble, the ruble was devalued and depreciated 4
times, he dismissed the Kiriyenko government and offered to return
Chernomyrdin. On August 21, 1998, at a meeting of the State Duma, the majority
of deputies (248 out of 450) called on Yeltsin to voluntarily resign, only 32
deputies supported him. In September 1998, with the consent of the State Duma,
Boris Yeltsin appointed E. M. Primakov to the post of chairman of the
government.
In May 1999, the State Duma
unsuccessfully tried to raise the issue of removing Yeltsin from office (the
five charges formulated by the initiators of the impeachment were mainly related
to Yeltsin’s actions during the first term). Before the impeachment vote,
Yeltsin dismissed the Primakov government, then, with the consent of the State
Duma, appointed S.V. Stepashin as chairman of the government, but in August he
also dismissed him, presenting for approval the candidacy of V.V. Putin , little
known at the time. and announced him as his successor. After the aggravation of
the situation in Chechnya, the attack on Dagestan , the explosions of
residential buildings in Moscow, Buinaksk and VolgodonskBN Yeltsin, at the
suggestion of V.V. Putin, made a decision to conduct a series of
counter-terrorist operations in Chechnya . Putin’s popularity grew, and in late
1999, Yeltsin decided to resign, leaving Putin as acting head of state.
Resignation
On December 31, 1999 at 12 noon Moscow
time (which was repeated on the main TV channels a few minutes before midnight,
before the New Year’s TV address), Boris N. Yeltsin announced his resignation
from the post of President of the Russian Federation:
<blockquote>
Dear friends! Dear ones! Today I am addressing you for the last time with a
New Year’s greetings. But that’s not all. Today I am addressing you for the
last time as President of Russia.
I
made a decision. I pondered it for a long time and painfully. Today, on the
last day of the outgoing century, I am retiring.
</blockquote>
Yeltsin explained that he was leaving “not
for health reasons, but for the totality of all problems,” and asked for
forgiveness from the citizens of Russia.
As can be seen from the above text of the
appeal, Yeltsin did not utter the words “I’m tired, I’m leaving”; however, these
words are often attributed to him
“After reading the last sentence, he sat
motionless for a few more minutes, and tears flowed down his face,” recalls
cameraman A. Makarov.
Chairman of the Government Vladimir Putin
was appointed acting president, who immediately after Boris Yeltsin’s
announcement of his own resignation made a New Year’s address to the citizens of
Russia. VV Putin on the same day signed a decree guaranteeing Yeltsin protection
from prosecution, as well as significant material benefits for him and his
family. Subsequently, the decree was canceled in favor of the adoption of the
corresponding Federal Law.
Criticism
In 1999, the Duma’s impeachment commission
announced that Yeltsin deliberately pursued a policy aimed at worsening the
living standards of citizens, accusing the president of genocide :
<blockquote>
The harsh living conditions of the Russian people and a significant
reduction in their numbers were the result of the measures that have been
implemented since 1992 under the leadership and with the active
participation of President Yeltsin … There are serious reasons to believe
that the decline in population was also covered by the president’s
intention. In an effort to ultimately achieve changes in the country’s
socio-economic structure and ensure, with the help of the emerging class of
private owners, the strengthening of his political power, President Yeltsin
deliberately went on to worsen the living conditions of Russian citizens,
inevitably leading to an increase in the death rate of the population and a
decrease in its birth rate …
</blockquote>
At the same time, a member of the
commission, a deputy from the Communist Party of
the Russian Federation, Viktor Ilyukhin, said: “Yeltsin deliberately did not
allow at least a minimal improvement in the material condition of the dying
peoples of Russia.”
However, the head of the Center for
Demography and Human Ecology, Anatoly Vishnevsky, described this statement as a
myth, pointing out that nothing special happened in the 90s that could affect
demography, and the increase in mortality rates is due to the fact that it is
compared with the times of Gorbachev. when it dropped dramatically as a result
of the anti-alcohol campaign.
American diplomat Joseph Burns criticized
Yeltsin’s ability to lead the country:
<blockquote>
Boris Yeltsin, who so boldly opposed the hardliners in August 1991 and
buried the Soviet system forever as the country’s leader, turned out to be a
weak, helpless leader, unable to restore order and rebuild Russian
statehood.
</blockquote>
Accusations of destroying the country’s defenses
On May 8, 1992, the conversion concept
was revised. In the new version of the concept, 60% of defense enterprises
switched to self-financing. Conversion began to go at a very fast pace, as a
result of which the state defense order decreased from 1991 to 1995 by 5 times.
In 1999, A. G. Arbatov, a deputy from the
Yabloko faction, said that since 1992, a sharp reduction in funding for defense
spending began, which was not accompanied by transformations in the army in the
military-industrial complex. According to Arbatov, until 1997 the military
reform was a “profanation”, and after the default of 1998, “in real terms, the
military budget was cut three times over the period 1998-1999.” Arbatov said
that the blame for this lies with Yeltsin: “In no other area did the President
concentrate such enormous powers in his hands as in the management of power
structures. And in none of them were the results so deplorable. ” At the same
time, Arbatov noted that Yeltsin should bear moral, not legal responsibility.
Foreign policy
Yeltsin’s foreign policy was aimed at
recognizing Russia as a sovereign state and was aimed, on the one hand, at
establishing relations with Western countries and overcoming the consequences of
the Cold War , on the other hand, at building new relations with former Soviet
republics, most of which became members of the CIS .
On December 24, 1993, Yeltsin was elected
chairman of the Council of CIS Heads
of State . During the reign of Boris N. Yeltsin, summits of the heads of state
of the CIS were held several times a year. In March 1996, Yeltsin, together with
President of Belarus A.G. Lukashenko , President
of Kazakhstan N.A.Nazarbayev and President of Kyrgyzstan A.A.Akaev, concluded an
agreement on deepening economic and humanitarian integration, and in April 1996
– an agreement on the Belarus. This association has changed its name and status
several times, but has not yet been fully implemented and exists more “on
paper”. In the last years of his reign, he advocated the creation of a single
economic space.
At the end of January 1992, Boris Yeltsin
came up with disarmament initiatives and announced that from now on, the weapons
of the former USSR would not be aimed at US cities.
In 1993, while on a visit to Poland ,
Boris Yeltsin signed the Polish-Russian declaration, in which he “understood”
Poland’s decision to join NATO . The
declaration said that such a decision does not contradict Russia’s
interests. Similar statements were made by Yeltsin in Slovakia and the Czech
Republic.
Strobe Talbot ,
in 1994-2001, a direct participant in the negotiations, in his memoirs pointed
out that in his foreign policy “Yeltsin agreed to any concessions, the main
thing is to have time between glasses …”. It is Boris Yeltsin’s passion for
alcohol that explains Clinton’s success in achieving his political goals. Here
is what Talbot writes about this in his book:
<blockquote>
Clinton saw Yeltsin as a political leader fully focused on one big task – to
drive a stake through the heart of the old Soviet system. Supporting Yeltsin
so that he succeeds in this task was, in the eyes of Clinton (and my own),
the most important goal, justifying the need to come to terms with many much
less noble, and sometimes just stupid things. In addition, the friendship
between Clinton and Yeltsin made it possible for the United States to
achieve specific, difficult goals that could not be achieved through any
other channels: the elimination of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the
withdrawal of Russian troops from the Baltic, obtaining Russian consent to
NATO expansion, engaging Russia to the peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.
</blockquote>
Yeltsin’s famous foreign policy steps were
also the following:
Withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany ;
- He
opposed the bombing of Yugoslavia, threatened to “redirect” Russian missiles
to the United States.
- He
Yeltsin government Vice President
- Rutskoy, Alexander Vladimirovich – from July 1991 to December 1993
(actually released by Yeltsin’s decree on October 3, 1993)
- Rutskoy, Alexander Vladimirovich – from July 1991 to December 1993
Heads of government
Silaev, Ivan Stepanovich – from June 1990 to September 1991
Lobov, Oleg Ivanovich – in
fact , I. about. Chairman from September to November 1991
- from
November 1991 to June 1992, President Boris N. Yeltsin himself headed the
Government
- from
Gaidar, Yegor Timurovich – I. about. Chairman
from June to December 1992
Chernomyrdin, Viktor Stepanovich – from December 1992 to March 1998
Kirienko, Sergey Vladilenovich – from April to August 1998
Chernomyrdin, Viktor Stepanovich – I. about. Chairman
from August to September 1998
Primakov, Evgeny Maksimovich – from September 1998 to April 1999
Stepashin, Sergei Vadimovich – from May to August 1999
Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich – from August 1999 to May 2000
Ministers of the Interior
Barannikov, Viktor Pavlovich – from September 1990 to September 1991
Dunaev, Andrey Fedorovich – from September 1991 to January 1992
Erin, Viktor Fedorovich – from January 1992 to June 1995
Kulikov, Anatoly Sergeevich – from July 1995 to March 1998
Maslov, Pavel Tikhonovich – I. about. Minister
in March 1998
Stepashin, Sergei Vadimovich – from April 1998 to May 1999
Rushailo, Vladimir Borisovich – from May 1999 to March 2001
Foreign ministers
Kozyrev, Andrey Vladimirovich – from October 1990 to January 1996
Primakov, Evgeny Maksimovich – from January 1996 to September 1998
Ivanov, Igor Sergeevich – from September 1998 to February 2004
Defense ministers
Kobets, Konstantin Ivanovich – from August to September 1991
from March 16 to May 18, 1992, Yeltsin himself acted as Minister of Defense
Grachev, Pavel Sergeevich – from May 1992 to June 1996
Kolesnikov, Mikhail Petrovich –
I. about. Minister from June to July 1996
Rodionov, Igor Nikolaevich – from July 1996 to May 1997
Sergeev, Igor Dmitrievich – from May 1997 to March 2001
Board results
During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin
- with
the help of Yegor Gaidar’s reforms , the transition to a market economy was
carried out, in connection with which, first of all, the problem of
commodity shortages and queues was resolved, and people began to receive
state property on a large scale in private ownership, the Soviet system was
replaced by the principles of liberal – democratic ideology;
- with
systems of parliamentarism and local self-government were formed, the
practice of elections to state authorities was established;
Russian citizens have a real opportunity to travel abroad, freedom of
religion, freedom of speech and other rights enshrined in the new popularly
adopted Constitution have been realized in practice , the Russian Orthodox
Church has been rehabilitated ;
Russia was admitted to the G8 and joined the Council of Europe .
Boris Yeltsin, as president, was
criticized for the unstable state of the economy, the decline in the standard of
living of citizens, the aggravation of social problems and the reduction in the
population due to this. However, despite the fact that the nineties are
massively called dashing , criminal statistics from different decades indicate
that for a number of indicators, the crime rate in the 2000s was higher than in
the nineties.
Figures from various spheres point to the
similarities between Boris Yeltsin and Ronald Reagan and call him the Alexander
II of the twentieth century.
Yeltsin after resignation
Participation in public events
- On
January 6, 2000, no longer being President, led the Russian delegation
during a visit to Bethlehem , planned during his reign.
- On
- On
April 5, 2000, at the age of 69, Boris Yeltsin became a pensioner. The head
of the Russian Pension Fund Mikhail Zurabov handed him a pension
certificate, issued on March 31, 2000 .
- On
- On
May 7, 2000, he took part in the inauguration ceremony of his
successor as President of Russia Vladimir Putin .
- On
- In
November 2000, he created the Yeltsin Charitable Foundation.
- In
- On
June 12, 2001, he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st
degree
- On
- In
2003 he was present at the opening of a monument to himself on the territory
of one of the Issyk-Kul boarding houses. The central peak of the Terskey
Ala-Too ridge , crowning the Kok-Zhaiyk (Zelenaya Polyana) mountain gorge in
one of the most beautiful places in Kyrgyzstan (before renaming, Oguz-Bashi
Central, the third highest peak of the ridge), is also named after
him . After retiring, he several times visited Issyk-Kul Lake with his
friend, Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev .
- In
- In
2004, the name of Yeltsin was assigned to the Kirghiz-Russian (Slavonic)
University , a decree on the founding of which Yeltsin signed in 1992.
- In
April 7-11, 2005 – B. Yeltsin’s visit to Azerbaijan took place. During the
visit, he met with President I. Aliyev and visited the grave of
ex-President H. Aliyev .
September 7, 2005 – while on vacation in Sardinia ,
he broke his femur. Delivered to Moscow and operated on. On September 17,
2005 he was discharged from the hospital.
February 1, 2006 – was awarded the Church Order of the Holy Right-Believing
Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy, 1st degree ( ROC ) in connection with his 75th
birthday.
- On
May 7, 2006, ex-President Yeltsin was a guest in the Kremlin in celebration
of the 70th anniversary of the Presidential Regiment.
- On
- On
August 22, 2006, the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, presented
Boris Yeltsin with the Order of Three Stars, I
degree “for recognizing the independence of Latvia in 1991, as well as for
his contribution to the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Baltic states
and the building of a democratic Russia.” At the ceremony, Boris Yeltsin
said that the resistance of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to democratic
sentiments in the Baltics was “a gross mistake.” The awarding coincided with
the 15th anniversary of the State Emergency Committee… Vike-Freiberga
stressed that Yeltsin was awarded for decisive actions during the putsch,
which allowed Latvia to restore its independence. The Russian communities of
Latvia, in turn, made a statement that by agreeing to accept the order,
Boris Yeltsin thereby “betrayed the Russian inhabitants of Latvia” and
“stood in solidarity with the undemocratic national policy” of the country.
- On
- On
December 2, 2006, he appeared in front of the public with his wife and
granddaughter Maria at tennis, at the Davis Cup final, where Russia defeated
Argentina.
- On
March 25 – April 2, 2007 traveled to Jordan to visit holy places. In Jordan,
Boris Nikolaevich rested at the Dead Sea, then visited Israel – that place
on the Jordan River, where, according to legend, Jesus Christ was baptized.
Opinions and assessments of his retired
position
According to the book published in 2009 by
former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov ,
initially after his resignation, Yeltsin was keenly interested in what was
happening, invited ministers to his dacha, asked how things were going; however,
Putin soon “politely asked” Kasyanov to arrange so that the members of the
government stopped bothering Yeltsin, referring to the fact that doctors do not
recommend such meetings; in Kasyanov’s opinion, this was essentially an order:
“Nobody else should go to Yeltsin’s.” in addition, at the insistence of Putin,
in 2006 the format of the celebration of Yeltsin’s 75th anniversary was changed
in order to control the contingent of invited persons.
According to Boris Nemtsov ,
being in retirement, Yeltsin was extremely annoyed that under Putin freedom of
speech began to curtail and the institution of elections was destroyed. He did
not speak about this publicly, but when he met with Nemtsov, he told him about
it more than once.
When asked about the change of the anthem
by Putin and the return to its modified Soviet version, Boris Yeltsin sadly
replied: ” red .” In retirement, Boris Nikolayevich did not like the policy
pursued, as Yeltsin’s widow claims , but he tried not to criticize Putin,
because from now on the new leader “means he is to lead.”
Death and burial of Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin died on April 23, 2007 at 15:45 Moscow time in the Central Clinical Hospital as a result of cardiac arrest caused by progressive cardiovascular and then
multiple organ failure, that is, dysfunction of many internal organs caused by a
disease of the cardiovascular system – said in an interview with RIA Novosti the head of the Medical Center of the Administrative Department of the President of Russia Sergei Mironov. At the same time in the news TV program ” Vesti”He said another cause of death of the ex-president:” Yeltsin suffered a rather pronounced catarrhal-viral infection (cold), which hit all organs and systems very hard, “Yeltsin was hospitalized 12 days before his death. However, according to the cardiac surgeon Renat Akchurin, who performed the operation on the ex-president, Yeltsin’s death “did not bode well.” At the request of Boris Yeltsin’s relatives, an autopsy was not carried out. Boris N. Yeltsin was celebrated at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior , which was open all night from April 24 to 25, so that everyone could say goodbye to the ex-president of Russia. “ Someday
history will give the deceased an impartial assessment ,”
said the Patriarch of Moscow Alexy II ,
who did not participate in the funeral service and funeral. There is an opinion
that the funeral service was not entirely according to church canons – the
funeral rite should include the words “servant of God”, but Yeltsin was buried
as “the newly reposed first president of Russia, Boris Nikolaevich.”
Yeltsin was buried on April 25 at
the Novodevichy cemetery with
military honors. All state channels broadcast the funeral live.
Boris Yeltsin’s assessments
Attitude towards Yeltsin in Russia
Public opinion
According to the “Public Opinion
Foundation”, 41% of Russia’s residents assess the historical role of Yeltsin
negatively, and 40% positively (in 2000, immediately after his resignation, this
ratio was 67% versus 18%)
According to the Levada Center , 67% in
2000 and 70% in 2006 assessed negatively the results of his reign, 15% and 13%,
respectively, were positive.
Views of the Russian authorities
In 2006, Russian President V. Putin said:
“You can assess the activities of the first president as you like. But, of
course, it was at the time when Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was leading Russia
that the people of our country, the citizens of Russia, received the main thing
for which all these transformations were carried out – freedom. This is a huge
historical merit of Boris Nikolayevich … How each of us, including myself,
acted in those conditions, one can only guess, “and in 2011 he noted that:”
Yeltsin believed in his heart in the ideals that he defended … Today in very
different people have gathered in this hall, but we all believe in Russia,
strive to build a modern, self-confident country, which Boris Nikolayevich
Yeltsin dreamed of. “
In 2011, Russian President D. Medvedev
noted: “An unbiased attentive reader cannot but appreciate the breakthrough that
was made in the 90s … Modern Russia should be grateful to Boris Yeltsin for
the transformations he carried out.”
In 2011, the head of the presidential
administration, S. Naryshkin, said: “Over the years, the significance and power
of Boris Nikolayevich as a political leader has only become clearer. New Russia
inherited a difficult legacy. It was necessary not only to overcome the most
difficult problems, but also to create Russian statehood. The role of the first
president was key: he took on the entire burden of responsibility. We owe much
of our current achievements to the first president of Russia. “
In 2011, the President’s Special
Representative for International Cultural Cooperation M. Shvydkoy said: “The
importance of Boris Nikolaevich cannot be overestimated, the 1990s predetermined
the 2000s, Boris Nikolaevich was proportionate to that great country called
Russia.”
Opinions of political scientists
In 2010, M. Urnov, Dean of the Faculty of
Applied Political Science at the Higher School of Economics, said: “Under
Yeltsin, political and economic competition developed in the country, a free
press and civil society were formed. People have ceased to be afraid of the
authorities, they have learned to say what they think in her eyes. Of course,
the transition from totalitarianism to democracy could not pass without
difficulties and mistakes. It is stupid to accuse Yeltsin of the collapse of the
Soviet Union – the elites of all the Union republics, who had long dreamed of
independence from Moscow, were interested in this collapse. The Belavezha
Accords may have been concluded too quickly, but the collapse of the USSR was
inevitable. The parade of sovereignties, the governor’s freedom – all this also
happened, but this was not Yeltsin’s fault … By the time Yeltsin came to
power, the economy was on the verge of death. The deficit of everything and
everyone grew, foreign exchange reserves tended to zero, and oil cost $ 8-12 per
barrel. Without decisive measures, the country could not be saved from hunger
… Thanks to privatization, by the end of the 90s, world-class companies
appeared in the country. In the 90s we did not have such monstrous corruption
… Yeltsin was completely non-vindictive, bloodthirsty. The oppositionists, who
took up arms in 1993, were kept in prison for a while, and then released … Of
course, Yeltsin’s rule will go down in the history of the country with a plus
sign. “
Opinions of politicians and public figures
The chairman of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov ,
said in 2011: “Under Yeltsin, there was no democracy. He will go down in
historical memory as one of the most terrible destroyers and destroyers of all
social achievements of the millennial state. “
Former first secretary of the Moscow City
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a supporter of the State
Emergency Committee, Yuri Prokofiev calls the time of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency
“Yeltsinism”, describing it as “a political regime that initiated and” guarantor
“such socio-economic changes that began to block the reproduction of life in the
world’s largest state territory “. “The main destroyer of spiritual and social
values in the country was Yeltsin. It was through his efforts to bring to
power in Russia a disgusting community of thieves, Russophobes and degenerates
”.
Personal qualities
Political scientists and the media characterized
Yeltsin as a charismatic personality, noted the unusual and unpredictable nature
of his behavior, eccentricity, lust for power, tenacity, cunning, vague and
amorphous ideological views. Opponents argued that Yeltsin was characterized by
cruelty, cowardice, rancor, deceit, and a low intellectual and cultural level.
Attitude towards Yeltsin in the West
A number of Western politicians and the
media are very ambiguous about the activities of Yeltsin. Yeltsin is credited
with, in particular, the final destruction of the USSR (opinion of The Financial
Times), the implementation of economic reforms , and the fight against the
communist opposition. In particular, Yeltsin is blamed for the incompetence of
his government, the creation of a class of “oligarchs” by selling state assets
for a pittance, the war in Chechnya, the flourishing of corruption and anarchy,
the falling living standards of the population and the economic decline, as well
as the transfer of power to Vladimir Putin , since According to a number of
Western sources, Putin’s rule is “less democratic” and represents a “return to
authoritarianism.”
Former US President Bill Clinton believed
that Yeltsin “did a lot to
change the world. Thanks to him, the world has changed for the better in many
ways . //” //Clinton gives
high marks to Yeltsin’s ability to make “certain compromises.” According to
Clinton, under Yeltsin, “Russia
was really developing democratic pluralism with a free press and an active civil
society . //” Clinton
recalled that in 2000 he expressed his doubts about Putin to Yeltsin: Clinton
was not convinced that Putin was “as committed to the principles of democracy
and ready to adhere to them as Yeltsin.”
The American newspaper The Wall Street
Journal wrote in an editorial:“Yeltsin’s
worst enemy was himself. Drunken antics not only undermined his health, but also
became symptoms of the incompetence of the Kremlin authorities. In 1992, he
briefly became involved in limited market reforms that gave capitalism a bad
reputation in Russia. He created “oligarchs” by applying a “loans for shares”
scheme (effectively selling the best assets to “his people” for a pittance) and
by carrying out a muddled privatization that his advisers, who had made a
fortune on it, persistently pushed through it. He failed to strengthen political
institutions and the rule of law. The Chechen war, which began in 1994, became a
military and political fiasco. <…> Russia has never – neither earlier, nor
later – knew such freedom as in Yeltsin’s 1990s, “// but
Putin, according to the publication, eliminated Yeltsin’s best achievements.
An editorial in The Washington Post stated:
“This man’s contribution to history is ambiguous, but his steps in defense of
freedom will not be erased from human memory. <…> Often sick, often looking
tipsy, he (Yeltsin) allowed corruption and anarchy to flourish in state
structures and beyond. The Russians worried about his stupid antics as a
shame. <…> In the next seven years, Putin annulled most of the liberal reforms
that his predecessor had fought for. “
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl called
Yeltsin “a great statesman” and “a loyal friend of the Germans.” German
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Yeltsin “was a great personality in Russian
and international politics, a courageous fighter for democracy and a true friend
of Germany.”
Journalist Mark Simpson wrote in The
Guardian : //“If Yeltsin, having
successfully overthrew the communist regime, instead of alcoholic chaos and
impotence, erected a strong Russia on its ruins, which would defend its own
interests and be an influential force in the world arena, his reputation in the
West would be would be completely different and some of those who now glorify
him would fall upon him. He would be hated almost as much as … Putin! ” //…
As the British magazine The Economist wrote , “Even
before he left office, most Russians across the country, from Kaliningrad to
Vladivostok, felt nothing but contempt for their president – partly due to
galloping inflation, non-payment of salaries , and plundering of the national
property oligarchs, but even more because of the humiliation to which he, in
their opinion, exposed the country with his drunken clown antics. “
Magazine editor Katrina Vanden
Hevel ( Eng. Katrina
vanden Heuvel ) disagrees
with the opinion of the democratic Yeltsin. According to her, “Yeltsin’s
anti-democratic policy after August 1991 polarized, poisoned and impoverished
this country, laying the foundation for what is happening there today, although
the responsibility for this rests solely with the current Russian President
Vladimir Putin . //” //Heuvel
believes that the actions of Yeltsin and a small group of his associates to
liquidate the USSR “without consulting parliament” were “neither legal, nor
democratic.” ” Shock therapy “, carried out with the participation of American
economists, she said, led to the fact that the populationlost their savings ,
and about half of Russians found themselves below the poverty line. Heuvel
recalls the shooting of the democratically elected parliament by tanks , in
which hundreds of people were killed and injured. According to her, the
representatives of the US administration then stated that they “would
support these actions of Yeltsin, even if they were even more violent . //” //The
journalist sharply criticizes the outbreak of the war in Chechnya , the 1996
presidential elections (accompanied, according to her, by falsifications and
manipulations, and financed by oligarchs who received loans-for-shares
auctions in return). As Heuvel summed up, Yeltsin’s rule, in the opinion of
millions of Russians, put the country on the brink of destruction, and not on
the path of democracy. Russia experienced the worst industrial depression in the
world in the 20th century. As one of the famous American Sovietologists Peter
Reddaway, in collaboration with Dmitry Glinsky, wrote, “for
the first time in modern world history, one of the leading industrialized
countries with a highly educated society eliminated the results of several
decades of economic development . //” Heuvel
believes that during the reforms, the American press mostly distorted the
picture of the real situation in Russia.
In 2007, journalist Mark Simpson wrote in The
Guardian :“Always a drunken
rascal who has driven most of his people to unimaginable poverty, while at the
same time fantastically enriching his clique. The president, who robbed an
entire generation by stealing their pensions, “let go” the standard of living
into free fall and cut the average life expectancy of Russian men for decades
… A man who began his populist career with campaigns against the relatively
modest corruption of party officials later became the head of the country in an
era of such large-scale corruption and banditry, which have no analogues in
history. <…> He not only grovelled in front of Western interests, but also
directed the almost final destruction of his country as a political and military
force in the world arena. He trampled Russia into the mud so that we don’t have
to do it ourselves// . “
Journalist ” of The Times » Rod Liddle on
the occasion of Yeltsin’s death in his paper paid much attention had he believed
partiality of the former president’s habits: //”No
more in Russian history could not save the state hundreds of liters of
formaldehyde, securely prospirtovav itself not just in life, but also in power.
” //…
An editorial in The Guardian on the
occasion of Yeltsin’s death noted: “But
if Yeltsin considered himself the founding father of post-communist
Russia, Thomas Jeffersonit didn’t
work out. The meeting, where the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus
worked on a plan for the collapse of the Union, ended in a drunken
quarrel. Russia’s democratic dawn lasted only two years, until the new president
ordered tanks to fire at the same parliament that helped him end Soviet
rule. Blood began to flow in the name of liberal democracy, which jarred some
Democrats. Yeltsin abandoned state subsidies for prices, taking it as a dogma,
and as a result, the inflation rate jumped to 2,000%. It was called “shock
therapy”, but there was too much shock and too little therapy. Millions of
people found that their savings evaporated overnight, while the president’s
relatives and his inner circle amassed huge personal fortunes, which they still
own today. <…>…
Attitude towards Yeltsin in the East
In 2001, President of the PRC Jiang Zemin
called B. Yeltsin “an old friend of the Chinese people.”
Family of Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin was married, had two
daughters, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
- Wife
– Naina Iosifovna Yeltsina (nee Girina, up to 25 years old – Anastasia).
- Wife
daughters
Elena Okulova (born 1957 ), husband Valery Okulov
Tatyana Yumasheva (born 1960 ), husband Valentin Yumashev
grandchildren
Elena’s children: Ekaterina Okulova (born 1979 ) and Maria
Zhilenkova-Okulova (born 1983 ), Ivan Okulov (born 1997 )
Tatiana’s children: Boris Yeltsin (born 1981 ); Gleb
Dyachenko (born 1995 ); Maria Yumasheva (b. 2002)
great grandchildren
Alexander Okulov (born 1999 ) (son of the granddaughter of Ekaterina
Okulova)
Mikhail (born 2005) and Fedor (born 2006) (children of the granddaughter of
Maria Zhilenkova-Okulova and her husband businessman Mikhail Zhilenkov)
Perpetuation of memory
- At
the beginning of the 21st century, the Ukrainian-Russian Institute of
Management and Business named after Boris Yeltsin worked in Kiev at the
Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (IAPM)
- At
- On
April 8, 2008, the main street of the business center of Yekaterinburg
City , January 9 street in Yekaterinburg, was renamed Boris Yeltsin Street .
- On
- On
April 23, 2008, at the Novodevichy Cemetery, a solemn ceremony was held to
unveil the monument to Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, made by the famous
sculptor Georgy Frangulyan . The
memorial is a wide tombstone made in the colors of the Russian flag –
white marble , blue Byzantine mosaic and red porphyry . An Orthodox cross is
engraved on the paving stones under the tricolor. The ceremony was attended
by the family of Boris Yeltsin, including the widow Naina Iosifovna ,
Russian President Vladimir Putin , Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov ,
First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, President-elect of RussiaDmitry
Medvedev , Chief of Staff of the President of Russia Sergei Sobyanin ,
members of the government, friends, colleagues and people who worked with
the first President of the Russian Federation.
- On
- On
April 23, 2008, the Ural State Technical University – UPI was named after
Boris Yeltsin.
- On
- On
the day of the anniversary of Yeltsin’s death , a memorial plaque was
erected on the wall of a house built by the father of the first president of
Russia in his native village of Butka , and one of the streets was renamed
Yeltsin Street.
- On
- In
May 2009, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library was opened in St.
Petersburg .
- In
- In
the city of Bishkek , Kyrgyzstan , the Kyrgyz-Russian (Slavic) University
was named after Boris Yeltsin during his lifetime.
- In
- In
the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan, a peak in the Pamirs bears
the name of the first president of Russia .
- In
- On
February 1, 2011 in Yekaterinburg, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary
of Boris Yeltsin, a monument by the sculptor Georgy Frangulyan was
unveiled near the future presidential center in Demidov Plaza
- On
- On
August 22, 2013, in Tallinn , in the very center of the Old Town ,
a bas-relief and a memorial plaque to Boris Yeltsin were installed on a
stone wall on Nunne Street near the Estonian government building . The
sculptural image bears an inscription in Estonian, Russian and English: “In
memory of the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin for his contribution
to the peaceful restoration of Estonia’s independence in 1990-1991.” The
bas-relief was opened by the speaker of the Estonian parliament Ene
Ergma and the widow of the first president, Naina Yeltsin. The opening
ceremony was also attended by the Minister of Education and Science of
Estonia Jaak Aaviksoo , the third President of the country Arnold Rüütel ,
the Mayor of TallinnEdgar Savisaar , former chairman of the Supreme Soviet
of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich , well-known Russian politicians of the
90s Gennady Burbulis , Fedor Shelov-Kovedyaev , other statesmen of the
present and past times.
- On
- On
November 25, 2015, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center was opened in
Yekaterinburg. More than 500 people were invited to the opening of the
center: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev,
leaders of states who worked with Boris Yeltsin, famous politicians,
cultural figures, and journalists. People who knew the first Russian
president closely – his classmates, members of the presidential team, and
Yeltsin’s relatives – also arrived.
- On
Awards and titles
Awards of
Russia and the USSR:
Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st degree ( June 12, 2001 ) – for
a particularly outstanding contribution to the formation and development of
Russian statehood
Order of Lenin ( January 30, 1981 ) – for
services to the Communist Party and the Soviet state and in connection with
the fiftieth birthday
2 Orders of the Red Banner of Labor :
in August 1971 – for
services in the implementation of the five-year plan
in January 1974 – for
the successes achieved in the construction of the first stage of the
cold-rolling shop of the Verkh-Isetsky Metallurgical Plant
Order of the Badge of Honor ( 1966 ) – for
the successes achieved in fulfilling the tasks of the seven-year
construction plan
Medal “In Commemoration of the 1000th Anniversary of Kazan” ( 2006 )
medal “For Valiant Labor. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the
birth of V. I. Lenin ” (November 1969)
Jubilee Medal “Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War
1941-1945.” (April 1975)
Medal “60 years of the Armed Forces of the USSR” (January 1978)
- gold
medal of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements (October 1981)
- gold
Medal “In memory of the people’s militia” (March 2012, posthumously) for his
high contribution to the perpetuation of the memory of those who died during
the Great Patriotic War, for the respect for the history of the Russian
state and for great services in preserving the names of those killed in
conflicts while defending the Motherland.
Foreign
awards:
Order of Francis Skaryna ( Belarus , December 31, 1999 ) – for
a great personal contribution to the development and strengthening of
Belarusian-Russian cooperation
Order of the Golden Eagle ( Kazakhstan , 1997 )
Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, 1st degree ( Ukraine , January 22, 2000 )
– for significant personal
contribution to the development of Ukrainian-Russian cooperation
Knight Grand Cross on the chain of the Order of Merit of the Italian
Republic ( Italy , 1991 )
Order of Three Stars, 1st degree ( Latvia , 2006 )
Medal “Bethlehem 2000” ( Palestinian Authority , 2000 )
Knight Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor ( France )
Order of Good Hope, 1st class ( South Africa , 1999 )
Remembrance Medal on January 13 ( Lithuania , January 9, 1992 )
Grand Cross of the Order of the Cross of Vitis (Lithuania, June 10, 2011 ,
posthumously)
Order “For Personal Courage” ( PMR , October 18, 2001 )
Departmental
awards:
Commemorative medal of A.M. Gorchakov ( Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
Russia , 1998 )
Olympic Gold Order ( IOC , 1993 )
Church
awards:
Order of the Holy Right-Believing Grand Duke Demetrius Donskoy, I degree
( ROC , 2006 )
Chevalier of the Chain of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher ( Jerusalem
Orthodox Church , 2000)
Ranks:
Honorary Citizen of the Sverdlovsk Region (2010, posthumously)
Honorary Citizen of Kazan (2005)
Honorary Citizen of the Samara Region (2006)
Honorary Citizen of Yerevan ( Armenia ) (2002)
Honorary Citizen of Turkmenistan
- USSR
Master of Sports in volleyball
- USSR
Other
regalia:
Krapovy beret ( September 1993 ) – for
his contribution to the development of special units of the internal troops
of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia
Boris Yeltsin’s books
Boris N. Yeltsin is the author of four
books (the last three were published in editorial processing by
journalist Valentin Yumashev , later the head of the administration and
Yeltsin’s son-in-law):
Boris N. Yeltsin. Middle Urals: the frontiers of creation. Sverdlovsk,
Central Ural Book Publishing House, 1981. – 160 pages.
“Confession on a given topic” (Moscow. Publishing house “PIK”, 1990) is a
small book in which an autobiography, political credo and a story about
Yeltsin’s election campaign in the elections of people’s deputies are
intertwined.
“Notes of the President” (1994) – a book written by the incumbent president,
it tells about the events of 1990-93, such as the presidential elections,
the August putsch (GKChP), the collapse of the USSR, the beginning of
economic reforms, the constitutional crisis of 1992-93, the events of
September 21 – October 4, 1993 (dissolution of the Congress of People’s
Deputies and the Supreme Soviet).
- The
Presidential Marathon (2000), a book published shortly after his retirement,
focuses on the second presidential elections and the second presidential
term.
- The
Filmography
Movies
” Project” Yeltsin ” ” ( Spinning
Boris ), 2003 , directed
by Roger Spottiswood – American film about the work of American PR
specialists at Boris Yeltsin’s headquarters during the 1996 presidential
elections.
Film incarnations
- ” Three August Days “, 1992 , directed by Jean Jung , the role of President
Yeltsin was played by Alexander Skorokhod .
- ” Three August Days “, 1992 , directed by Jean Jung , the role of President
- ” Police Academy 7: Mission in Moscow “, 1994 , directed by Alan Metter ,
Yeltsin was also played by Alexander Skorokhod.
- ” Police Academy 7: Mission in Moscow “, 1994 , directed by Alan Metter ,
- “ Shouldn’t we send … a messenger? “, 1998 , Victor Eliseev
- “The President and His Granddaughter “, 1999 , Oleg Tabakov . In
this picture, Yeltsin is the prototype of the President of Russia.
- “The President and His Granddaughter “, 1999 , Oleg Tabakov . In
- ” Unknown putsch “, 2009 , the role of Yeltsin was played by Vladimir
Novikov .
- ” Unknown putsch “, 2009 , the role of Yeltsin was played by Vladimir
- “ Yeltsin. Three days in August ”, 2011 , directed by Alexander Mokhov , the role of Boris Nikolaevich was played by Dmitry Nazarov .
- ” Margarita Nazarova “, 2015 , the role of the young Boris Yeltsin was
played by actor Sergei Marukhin.
- ” Margarita Nazarova “, 2015 , the role of the young Boris Yeltsin was
- ” This is how the stars were formed “, 2016 , the role of Boris Yeltsin was
played by Alexei Guskov .
- ” This is how the stars were formed “, 2016 , the role of Boris Yeltsin was
- ” Drunken Firm “, 2016 , the role of Boris Yeltsin was performed by Sergei
Koltakov .
- ” Drunken Firm “, 2016 , the role of Boris Yeltsin was performed by Sergei
Documentaries
- Tsar Boris (Great Britain, BBC , 1997).
- “President of All Russia” (Russia, NTV , 1999-2000).
- “B. N. ” (Russia, VGTRK , 2006).
- “Boris Yeltsin. Farewell to the era ”(Russia).
- “Boris Yeltsin. Life and Fate ”(Russia, VGTRK, 2011).
- “Boris Yeltsin. First ”(Russia, Channel One, 2011).
- “Boris Yeltsin. You cannot retreat ”(Russia, Channel One, 2016).