Public opinion about Yeltsin

Boris Yeltsin remains a controversial figure in history. However, there is no doubt that he changed the life of the country and each of its citizens.

Writer Viktor Shenderovich does not expect objectivity from his contemporaries .

V. SHENDEROVICH: “They love only the dead,” Pushkin said, but not even the dead right away. But not the dead right away either.

I think that Yeltsin’s historical role will truly be appreciated by posterity in all its inconsistency, completeness, and grandeur.

Today's Russians act quite like the biblical Hams, who rejoice in the nakedness of their Father.

I think that we only have to understand what Boris Yeltsin did at the turn of these eras.

V. KARA-MURZA: It is already clear that Yeltsin laid the foundation new Russia. He knew the secret of people's love, and remained alive and cheerful in the memory of most.

However, Yeltsin also knew a lot about popular hatred. The new country he created was often quick to condemn its founding father.

The contrasts in the nature of the first president are emphasized by journalist Artemy Troitsky .

A. TROITSKY: Yeltsin, of course, in highest degree a controversial figure, and, let’s say, personally, I cannot clearly define my feelings for him. That is, he did something very good, and something he did very bad.

I believe that perhaps his undoubted and perhaps only merit was that he seemed to sincerely want to be a democrat, and sincerely wanted Russia to be a free country.

Therefore, let’s say, unlike all the authorities that followed him, Yeltsin had a “sacred cow” called “Freedom of Speech.”

And now you can say whatever you want about Yeltsin, about his anti-democracy, about his tyranny, and so on and so forth, but what is certain is that there was freedom of speech under him.

V.KARA-MURZA: While Yeltsin remained in power, many people scolded him. But by leaving the Kremlin, he showed both his critics and his supporters that there are more important things than the lust for power.

Economist Sergei Aleksashenko assesses Yeltsin’s activities for posterity to judge .

S. ALEXASHENKO: Big things are seen from a distance, and it seems to me that both the role of Boris Yeltsin and the role of Mikhail Gorbachev, who will turn 80 on March 1, will have to be comprehended, perhaps not even by the next generation, but in another one or two generations of Russians . Because the memories of the country that was here, in this place, there, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, are too vivid. Too many people in our country believe that the changes that have occurred over these 20 years have only been for the worse. And, of course, there cannot be any compromise here between young and old, between winners and losers.

It seems to me that the assessment of historical ones is realistic, both Gorbachev and Yeltsin are historical personalities. They undoubtedly played a colossal role in the history of Russia. Therefore, their descendants will evaluate them, not us.

V. KARA-MURZA: The meaning of democracy began to be understood precisely under Yeltsin. By my own example he demonstrated what self-respect and reputation were.

In history he remained a man who made mistakes, but who can be respected.

The human qualities of a leader are put in first place in the figure of Yeltsin by historian Nikolai Uskov .

N. USKOV: For me, this is, firstly, the most humane leader of our country. Honestly. True, I don’t remember a single leader, either before the revolution, and even more so after the revolution, who had such a human face and the ability, in general, to show tact in some situations. And restraint - not to take revenge, in general, are rare qualities for Russian leaders.

Plus, he is humane in everything else, yes, he is a person. This was visible, sometimes it even caused some (inaudible), but, nevertheless, this is the most humane Russian leader, it seems to me. Plus, of course, he gave and guaranteed many rights, without which I personally cannot imagine my life.

But whether he was able to create a state that ensures the country’s movement along the path it once chose, there are now more and more doubts about this. Apparently, some mistakes were made by him personally and those around him. But great political figures can only be judged after many, many years have passed.

V. KARA-MURZA: Yeltsin was looking for a political path largely by touch.

Being from the Soviet nomenklatura according to his biography, he turned out to be a phenomenally freedom-loving person by nature.

The writer Dmitry Bykov foresees a gradual awareness of Yeltsin’s role.

D. BYKOV: Now they are aware of the bad aspects of his activities much better than the good ones. Well, it always happens. As you know, good always has a long enough life. Good wins over long distances.

Now we see better shadow sides Yeltsin's activities. They undoubtedly were. I think that in 20 years we will rate it much higher.

V. KARA-MURZA: Yeltsin sincerely believed that as soon as the country was released from the clutches, it would immediately turn into a prosperous state.

The path turned out to be much longer and more difficult.

Journalist Maxim Shevchenko is not surprised by the range of assessments of the figure of the country’s first president.

M. SHEVCHENKO: Boris Nikolaevich was Difficult person, with a difficult life path. Many of his actions are assessed directly from diametrical positions, and therefore, like one of the leaders of Russia in the twentieth century, he cannot be assessed unambiguously.

V. KARA-MURZA: Lifetime non-recognition is the lot of all reformist politicians.

It is no secret that Yeltsin made unpopular decisions undemocratically. And yet, it was he who saved democracy, which risked falling victim to the supporters of the restoration.

“Yeltsin played an exceptional role against his own will,” publicist Leonid Radzikhovsky is convinced .

L. RADZIKHOVSKY: The objective role of Yeltsin in 91-93 is colossal in Russian history, there is simply no one to compare it with. But this great, exceptional role still went to a man who was far from great and not exceptional. And this gap between an extraordinary role and a very ordinary person was very clearly manifested many times, especially in the second part of Yeltsin’s reign.

V. KARA-MURZA: Yeltsin maintained freedom of the press, although many tried to persuade him to “break its neck,” realizing that it would bring political cataclysms to Russia by notifying citizens about the mechanism of decisions made.

“Only descendants are able to appreciate the merits of the first president of Russia,” says journalist Fyodor Lukyanov. .

F. LUKYANOV: Contemporaries will not be able to understand Yeltsin’s role in history, because his activities swept through the lives of all his contemporaries with such a powerful roller coaster. And it will be easier to evaluate his activities from a certain distance, when the emotions that are inevitable in the event of such fractures and fractures subside, and the overall picture becomes clearer - what was possible, what was impossible. And whether Yeltsin’s role was decisive, or whether he walked, in general, by the will of circumstances, is now very difficult to judge.

The attitude towards Yeltsin depends on whether we perceive our current country, the Russian Federation, as a self-sufficient, full-fledged state, then Yeltsin is its creator. And then the attitude towards him should be respectful. Or, as is happening in many ways now, we believe that this is some incomprehensible fragment of the state that should have existed, but which was destroyed. Then Yeltsin is a destroyer.

I think that over time, the first thing is inevitable, when we somehow get used to the fact that this is our country, and we cannot constantly look back at the past.

V.KARA-MURZA: Politician Vladimir Ryzhkov considers the final characterization of the Yeltsin era premature .

V. RYZHKOV: Deng Xiaoping once said, when asked how he assessed the Great French Revolution, which is too early to say. It seems to me that our generation, and perhaps even the next generation, will not be able to evaluate figures such as, say, Mikhail Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin in a balanced manner.

Now this is causing huge controversy and polarizing opinions. It seems to me that too little time has passed to give an objective assessment.

V.KARA-MURZA: Absence consensus about the figure of Yeltsin is obvious to journalist Alexander Minkin .

A. MINKIN: I don’t believe that there is any general Russian opinion about Yeltsin. Some people consider him a democrat, which is surprising, because he is, after all, the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU Central Committee. What kind of democrat? (Laughs).

Some people think that he ruined the country.

I believe, and he himself believed, that his worst mistake was starting the Chechen war. This is such a catastrophic mistake that even worse, if anything could be worse than the collapse of the USSR, then this war in Chechnya was even worse.

These two wild ones are absolutely from the same series, when they are looking for momentary benefits, momentary - now we will organize a small victorious war.

And this war, which Grachev promised to end in two hours, has been going on for 16 years.

If anyone thinks it’s over, good luck!

V.KARA-MURZA: “The modern generation, the generation of politicians, is not able to appreciate the scale of Yeltsin’s personality,” says economist Mikhail Khazin. .

M. KHAZIN: Yeltsin was a politician. And modern appraisers are not politicians, they are, at best, administrators, like, for example, Medvedev or Putin, and at worst, they do not understand at all what Yeltsin was doing. What he did and how he did it.

And since I participated, albeit briefly, in this process, I can say that this was a man much less simple than they often say about him, and a man who in this sense became a victim, well, first of all , their purely human qualities, and, secondly, really a victim of illness. That is, he could not do what he wanted.

In this sense, you can make claims against him, but there’s no getting around it. This is in a sense an objective reason.

V.KARA-MURZA: “Objective circumstances interfere with a cold-blooded assessment of the personality of the first president of Russia,” believes journalist Valery Fadeev.

V. FADEYEV: The time of transition to another country, to a different socio-political system was too harsh. And this tough time happened quite recently.

We need to give people time, and this time is measured in decades, for Yeltsin to take his place in history and in the history books.

V.KARA-MURZA: The owner of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Konstantin Remchukov, does not expect immediate objectivity regarding Yeltsin.

K. REMCHUKOV: The bulk of the people will water it for a long time. And we saw that even such a progressive site as “Echo of Moscow,” when about a year ago Tatyana Yumasheva began writing her memoirs about dad, how much dirt she, dad, and Naina Iosifovna received. And I emphasize: this is a site, in general, for a very progressive, politically thinking public. The rest of the public, in general, at the word “Yeltsin”, in my opinion, winces and warps. But this is the lot of many reformers. It will probably take centuries for any line in history to have the correct epithet.

V.KARA-MURZA: Journalist Nikolai Troitsky notes the difference in the views of his contemporaries on Yeltsin.

N. TROITSKY: For some, this is a person who gave “freedom” (in quotes), although freedom cannot be given. And, in my opinion, such a person, if we talk like that, was not he, but Mikhail Gorbachev.

And for others it is a destroyer, a destroyer, a villain. And they are also wrong, of course, because he, Yeltsin, did not have any criminal intentions, except for one thing. He had a very important intention: to take power, and then, as far as possible, not give it away.

But, on the other hand, he later left power voluntarily. And he left us a successor.

This figure also gives rise to different opinions.

V.KARA-MURZA: The polarization of opinions in the assessments of the first president of Russia is considered natural by the writer Mikhail Weller.

M. WELLER: Contemporaries consider Yeltsin’s role in Russian history to be ambiguous, of course.

Some say that it was he who gave freedom, democracy and opportunity, while others say that this... (a series of unprintable words) ruined it, drank it away, and so on.

I believe that Yeltsin’s role is so inscribed in history that it can no longer be erased from there.

V.KARA-MURZA: Writer Leonid Mlechin is depressed by the paucity of food for thought about the Yeltsin era .

L. MLECHIN: In fact, very little has been written and said about Yeltsin. Here is the author of one of the books dedicated to Yeltsin; there are very few such books. But little has been studied. This is the result of our rather meager intellectual community. Because, of course, Yeltsin’s personality itself, and what happened, and those events in which he played a key role - all this must be analyzed very seriously. But so far society is not coping.

Our intellectual community, the scientific community, cannot cope with this task.

V.KARA-MURZA: Historian Nikolai Svanidze considers the assessment of the reformer’s activities premature.

N. SVANIDZE: Contemporaries negatively assess the role of Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin.

Another question is that today this historical role cannot yet be assessed. And we know a lot of examples, one of the brightest is Stolypin, whom his contemporaries hated. And then the years passed, and he became one of the largest historical figures in the eyes of Russians. Therefore, it is too early to evaluate the activities of Boris Nikolaevich.

Echo of Moscow

The Declaration asserted the priority of the Constitution and laws of the RSFSR over legislative acts USSR, the principle of separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers and some other values ​​that laid the foundations of the future Yeltsin Russia.

The then newly elected Chairman of the Supreme Council and future first President Boris Yeltsin took an active part in those events. It was then, in June 1990, that the further development of events was largely predetermined.

Since 1992, June 12 is a public holiday in Russia. On Russia Day, we decided to remember Boris Yeltsin and discuss his role in the history of the country with the participants of the Snob project.

Yeltsin was the first and, it seems, the last autocrat in Rus', who not only never encroached on freedom of speech, but also did not allow his boyars to do so. Only in this form will he go down in our history as a political figure of the first magnitude. He, in fact, turned Perestroika into a revolution, managed to lead it almost bloodlessly (what a miracle!), returned Russia to the well-trodden road of civilization - and so powerfully and confidently that all attempts of the current elite to return the “scoop” back, although in general are successful, but still allow us to believe in the validity of the fundamental axiom of strength of strength: “every deformation is residual.”

If it were not for his notorious inclinations and if he trusted less in the opinions of “the best defense ministers in the world,” his reign might even have been triumphant. But what happened happened: we will be grateful for the fact that we received it through our efforts. It was a breath of freedom that lasted ten years, from the point of view of my generation - a real miracle, unpredictable and incredible. Now we know that such a miracle is possible, and this gives us hope.

Yeltsin is a reformer. As president, he never ruled Russia, he reformed it. Like all reformers, Yeltsin will never receive an unambiguous assessment in history. Like other reformers, Yeltsin is still loved by very few people. Much more people he is still hated and blamed. But the integrity of the individual and the contradictory nature of his actions will not leave anyone indifferent or indifferent. As always, contemporaries judge Yeltsin in a philistine way. In a country of political plankton and glamorous mold, Yeltsin managed not to sink to this level. He was not a mean, evil and vindictive president. His friends and comrades feared him, but his enemies did not fear him. He was too big to pettily and vindictively prove this to everyone except his predecessor. He made many large, but sincere mistakes and miscalculations, but did not commit small, but well-thought-out nasty things. He created representative democracy in the country, but completely destroyed it as soon as it became an obstacle to his power.

According to all political laws and rules, Yeltsin should not have become president. But he became one. By Russian concepts he could not leave voluntarily, but he left without clinging to power, because he was a real, wild, wayward, stubborn, untamed political animal, and he felt with his skin that his time was up. Leaving the Kremlin, Yeltsin uttered words that the Kremlin walls had never heard: he asked the Russians for forgiveness. His death was the end of Russia's youth. She grew up, became an adult and, like all adults, gained the opportunity to look down on her past somewhat. And make adult, well-thought-out and therefore vile mistakes.

There were no Yeltsin reforms, it was inevitable: prices were lowered, and whoever could, simply dismantled the property - I don’t consider this to be deeds, it was rather some kind of connivance.

At the same time, Boris Nikolayevich had many good deeds, one of which, most importantly, laid the foundation of our statehood - it was the decision to divide the USSR into small states in accordance with the structure of the then union republics. This was the first decision that took place only thanks to his persistence and which determined what kind of country we live in now.

The second act, which was the key thing that he did, was the shooting of parliament, which laid the foundation of our political system. And for these two things we should remember him.

And the third story that happened with his participation is the war in Chechnya, which long years put an end to the light part of his heritage, emphasizing the dark one. But I hope that sooner or later we will still get to the bright part of his legacy. And it exists - he gave us freedom, but now it’s so difficult to remember.

Thinking about historical role Boris Nikolaevich, I realized that Boris Nikolaevich, apparently, deserves the same monument that Ernst Neizvestny erected to Nikita Khrushchev. Because the inconsistency of the figure of Yeltsin, a powerful, charming, charismatic figure, in my opinion, is due to the fact that Boris Yeltsin was the symbolic president of the Russian revolution of the early 1990s. Sometimes they say that he brought the ideas of freedom, this is not entirely true. I believe that this is Gorbachev’s merit, but the revolutionary affirmation of the transition to a new state, the rejection of communism is really Yeltsin’s achievement. The revolution really left such an imprint on Yeltsin and on the country, because the revolution, on the one hand, is a rush into the future, and I remember what passionate emotional consolidation the figure of Boris Nikolayevich evoked, and on the other hand, revolution is destruction, which is associated with recoil, backward movement, reaction. And this did not start under Putin, it also started under Yeltsin. The first signs of Russian authoritarianism appeared already in 1993; I would say that the shooting of parliament carried a kind of symbolic threat. Then the beginning of the Chechen war and Yeltsin’s entourage, which restored the autocratic Russian tradition and the method of selecting a successor. Then authoritarianism actually came out into the open, and in the Kremlin bedrooms it was already formed in the mid-1990s.

I have an ambivalent attitude towards the personality of Boris Yeltsin. On the one hand, unlike Putin, he was a man who gave us freedom, and outwardly Russia was a free democratic country. Yeltsin had an instinct for freedom. In principle, he could not have introduced gubernatorial elections, he could have canceled the elections in 1996 and remained in power in 2000 with the words “communists, danger,” but he did not. On the other hand, my ambivalence is due to the fact that, in general, Yeltsin turned out to be a weak leader at a time when the country needed a strong one. Strong, not in the usual patriotic sense of the word, when a strong leader means one who takes all the oil and gas for himself and spits on the people, but a strong leader who carries out reforms.

The essence of the paradox is that Yeltsin spent political reforms, which granted freedom to a poor people, accustomed mainly to depend on the state, and a socialist state at that. At the same time, Yeltsin did not carry out economic reforms that allowed the emergence of a class of owners among these people, sufficient for the people to understand that they need to vote not only for communists or Putin. Despite the name “reform government,” Gaidar’s reform is all a lie: there were no reforms. Cancel fixed prices on goods - this is not a reform; it happened in all former socialist republics, even in those in which no reforms were carried out. The same pressure groups remained in power. And the picture that emerged was that, on the one hand, there were no economic reforms, and on the other, there was complete political freedom. And the poor people, accustomed to the state, naturally voted for the one who promised them the biggest carrot. That is, the country needed economic reforms, but perhaps did not need democracy, because in poor countries democracy can be extremely dangerous, as the example of Venezuela and African countries shows, as the example of post-socialist Russia shows. There was democracy, but there were no reforms, as a result of which by 1996 Yeltsin was faced with the problem that if nothing was done about the elections, the communists would come to power: he had to rape the people and build a system in which the people, who in principle voted for the communists, voted for Yeltsin. This system was built, and then how magic wand, Putin picked up and used it for his own benefit.

We judge historical figures as generals for the battles they lost and won, but why this battle was lost is not very important. It turned out that the result of Yeltsin’s activities was the loss of the battle for Russia, and this was due to the tragic combination of political freedom and economic unfreedom.

I think that a different path should have been taken: political unfreedom and consistent economic market reforms. I thought that in both 1991 and 1993, the soft treatment of both the State Emergency Committee and the rioters in the White House was a big mistake, and as a result they felt the weakness of this government. And I think that the introduction of gubernatorial elections was a mistake - as a result of this, Russia got a red belt, including the appearance of governors who prevented any reforms from being carried out. Now, for example, in Georgia and China there are no gubernatorial elections, and that’s okay. A country with a poor population does not necessarily need political freedom, which results in the mob electing a dictator.

Yeltsin is a controversial figure. In reality there was an honest attempt to create a free country. But not all people felt free, and the very low demand for democracy, the underdevelopment of people, and lack of education gave rise to all sorts of ugly manifestations, for example, popularly elected bandits came to the chairs of governors. For many Russians, “democracy and freedom” and “chaos and permissiveness” are synonymous.

What I think was right in essence, but wrong in execution, was privatization. The execution was incorrect, because the people's goods were sold very cheaply, and a lot of things fell into one person's hands. For more than 70 years there was no private property, and people did not learn to value it. But it’s better than if privatization had not been carried out. Then it would be a total nightmare.

After the collapse of the USSR, all production chains were broken, the rotten, stinking “scoop” went to hell. When they started robbing customs, industrial relations completely broken.

Yeltsin did not restrain the desire of the peoples to acquire the form that, unfortunately, they apparently deserved at that time.

Yeltsin honestly wanted to create a democratic state, but the path to democracy is long and thorny. It's like raising a child, it's a normal path to freedom. But now everything is going back to the most fucking, stinking, fucking “scoop” that you can think of. All means mass media popularize precisely that period, which was considered, and actually was, a period of stagnation and decay of the Soviet system, with patriotic midshipmen and thieving cops in the double-minded Soviet brain. You watch a patriotic midshipman on TV, and on the road you are fucked by a stealing cop.

There was quite a lot of confidence in him. I think that Boris Nikolaevich, unfortunately, did not have enough macroeconomic education or any vision. Perhaps because he was a heavy drinker, he spent little time making decisions during the latter part of his reign. And, of course, as a gullible person, there were all sorts of thieves and bandits hovering around him.

Under late Yeltsin, in the late 1990s, the people were motivated, the people learned to create. And this charge was enough almost until the defeat of such companies as YUKOS and so on began. Until the mid-2000s there was a creative, commercial, career charge, and there was very great motivation. In 2000, there was 10% GDP growth and a budget surplus at $28 per barrel. The result of the 1998 crisis was motivation to work, and the 2008-2009 crisis was the biggest demotivation.

Under Yeltsin, everything began to happen as it should have happened. There was relative freedom of speech, there was relative protection of capital. If there were terrorist attacks, they were not with as many victims as now. It wasn't so scary man-made disasters that are happening now. If the number of man-made disasters is compared with budget expenditures, then under Yeltsin there was small budget and small disasters. And now the spending budget is a hundred times larger - and there are more disasters.

The Yeltsin era is a path through shit to freedom. And now - the path along the red carpet to feudalism.

Five years ago, on April 23, 2007, Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin, the first president of Russian Federation.

Here are ten things Boris Yeltsin did as President of Russia that Russians remember most:

1. The first presidential elections in Russia

In August 1991, during an attempt coup d'etat.

On August 19, standing on a tank, he read out an “Address to the Citizens of Russia,” in which he called the actions of the State Emergency Committee a “reactionary, anti-constitutional coup” and called on the citizens of the country to “give a worthy response to the putschists and demand to return the country to normal constitutional development.”

After the failure of the putsch on November 6, 1991, he signed a decree to terminate the activities of the CPSU.

3. Collapse of the USSR

On December 8, 1991, Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich at the Viskuli government residence in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Belarus) signed an Agreement in which they proclaimed the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

4. Voucher privatization

5. Dissolution of the Supreme Council

On September 21, 1993 at 20.00, in a television address to citizens of Russia, he announced decree No. 1400 “On phased constitutional reform in the Russian Federation.” The decree, in particular, ordered to interrupt the implementation by the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation of legislative, administrative and control functions, not to convene the Congress of People's Deputies, as well as the Russian Federation.

The signing of the document led to political crisis the fall of 1993, which ended with an armed clash and the storming of the White House by army units on October 4.

6. Constitutional reform

The preparation and adoption of the Constitution took place against the backdrop of a confrontation between two branches of power - the executive, represented by Boris Yeltsin, and the legislative, represented by the Supreme Council.

7. Chechen campaigns

9. Denomination and default of 1998

On August 4, 1997, he signed a decree, according to which on January 1, 1998, the government and the Central Bank carried out a redenomination of the ruble - technically crossing out three zeros on the new banknotes.

On August 17, 1998, Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Sergei Kiriyenko together with Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Sergei Dubinin and Minister of Finance Mikhail Zadornov of Russia on external obligations and the devaluation of the ruble.

According to calculations made by the Moscow Banking Union in 1998, the total losses Russian economy from the August crisis. Of these, the corporate sector lost $33 billion, the population - $19 billion, and direct losses of commercial banks (CBs) reached $45 billion.

10. Resignation

On December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation from the post of President of the Russian Federation and by his decree appointed Vladimir Putin as acting President of the Russian Federation.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

According to the Public Opinion Foundation, 41% of Russian residents assess Yeltsin’s historical role negatively, and 40% positively (in 2000, immediately after his resignation, this ratio looked more depressing - 67% versus 18%).

According to " Levada Center“, 67% in 2000 and 70% in 2006 assessed the results of his reign negatively, 15% and 13%, respectively, positively.

As the British magazine wrote: The Economist», “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 wages , the plunder of the people's property by the oligarchs, but even more because of the humiliation to which, in their opinion, he subjected the country with his drunken clown antics."

In TV polemics it was noted [ by whom? ] that “under Yeltsin they really killed a lot” of journalists .

Attitudes towards Yeltsin in the West

A number of Western politicians and the media have very mixed assessments of Yeltsin's activities. Yeltsin is credited, in particular, with the final destruction of the USSR (opinion of The Financial Times), carrying out economic reforms, fight against communist opposition . Yeltsin is blamed, in particular, for the incompetence of his government, the creation of a class of “oligarchs” through the sale of state assets for next to nothing, the war in Chechnya, the rise of corruption and anarchy, the decline in the standard of living of the population and the decline of the economy, as well as the transfer of power 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 “he 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 “in Russia there was truly a development of democratic pluralism with a free press and an activecivil society » . Clinton recalled expressing his doubts about Putin to Yeltsin in 2000: Clinton was not sure that Putin was “as committed to the principles of democracy and willing to adhere to them in the same way as Yeltsin.” .

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 embraced the limited market reforms that gave capitalism a bad name in Russia. He created the “oligarchs” through a loan-for-equity scheme (essentially selling off the best assets to “his people” for pennies) and through a bungled privatization that was aggressively pushed through by his advisers, who got rich off of it. He failed to strengthen political institutions and the rule of law. Chechen War, which began in 1994, became a military and political fiasco.<…>Russia has never, neither before nor since, known such freedom as in Yeltsin’s 1990s.”, Putin, according to the publication, eliminated Yeltsin’s best achievements. .

In the editorial " The Washington Post“It was said: “This man’s contribution to history is ambiguous, but his steps in defense of freedom will not be erased from human memory.<…>Frequently ill, often appearing tipsy, he (Yeltsin) allowed corruption and anarchy to flourish in government structures and beyond. The Russians felt his stupid antics as a shame.<…>Over the next seven years, Putin reversed most of the liberal reforms that his predecessor had fought for.”

Former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl called Yeltsin a “great statesman” and a “faithful friend of the Germans.” Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel stated 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 V " The Guardian"wrote : “if Yeltsin, having successfully overthrown the communist regime, instead of alcoholic chaos and powerlessness, had erected a strong Russia on its ruins, which would defend own interests and was an influential force on the world stage, his reputation in the West would have been very different and he would have been attacked by some of those who now glorify him. He would be hated almost as much as... Putin!”.

Magazine editor " The Nation» ( en:The Nation) Katherine vanden Havel (en:Katrina vanden Heuvel) expresses disagreement with the view that Yeltsin’s rule was democratic. According to her, “Yeltsin’s anti-democratic policies after August 1991 polarized, poisoned and impoverished this country, laying the foundation for what is happening there today, although responsibility for this rests solely with current Russian President Vladimir Putin.”. Havel believes that the actions of Yeltsin and a small group of his associates to liquidate the USSR “without consultation with parliament” were “neither legal nor democratic.” " Shock therapy", carried out with the participation of American economists, according to her, led to the fact that the population lost my savings, and about half of Russians found themselves below the poverty line. Havel reminds of shooting down the democratically elected parliament by tanks, when hundreds of people were killed and injured. According to her, representatives of the US administration then stated that they “would support these actions of Yeltsin, even if they were of an even more violent nature”. The journalist sharply criticizes the start war in Chechnya, 1996 presidential elections(accompanied, according to her, by falsifications and manipulations, and financed by the oligarchs who received in return loans-for-shares auctions). As Havel 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 wrote: Peter Reddway in collaboration with Dmitry Glinsky, "for the first time in modern world history one of the leading industrialized countries with a highly educated society has reversed several decades of economic development.”. Havel believes that during the reforms the American press predominantly distorted the picture of the real situation in Russia .

Boris Yeltsin was married and had two daughters, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Wife - Naina Iosifovna Yeltsina (Girina)(up to 25 years old - Anastasia). Daughters - Elena Okulova and Tatiana Dyachenko.

Ticket 42: Policy of President V.V. Putin.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin(genus. October 7th 1952 , Leningrad) - Russian statesman and political figure; current (fourth) President of Russian Federation With May 7 2012. Chairman of the Council of Ministers Union State(With 2008). Second President of Russian Federation With May 7 2000 By May 7 2008(after the resignation of the President Boris Yeltsin performed his duties with 31th of December 1999 By May 7 2000). Has a legal education. Candidate of Economic Sciences.

Won on presidential elections on March 4, 2012, gaining 63.6% (according to official data, a total of 45,602,075 votes). March 7 2012 declared by the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation the elected President of the Russian Federation . May 7 2012 took office as President of the Russian Federation . The first person in the history of Russia to be elected president for a third term, and also to become president again, after another person.

In domestic politics, criticism of the “dashing 90s” peacefully coexists with an emphatically correct attitude towards their main thing acting person- the first president of Russia. What is the reason for this “strangeness”? On February 1, Boris Yeltsin would have turned 80 years old. Already during his lifetime, attitudes towards the first president of Russia were very ambiguous. Some considered him the savior of the country, others considered him its destroyer. And after Yeltsin’s death in 2007, passions did not subside, the disputes did not stop. Now a serious struggle has unfolded over the image of the first president. Moreover, unlike previous years, when mostly critical works were published about Yeltsin (their authors were either dismissed assistants or political opponents of the president), in the pre-anniversary year his well-wishers finally began to write about Boris Nikolayevich.

FATHER'S DAUGHTER

The blog of Tatyana Yumasheva (Dyachenko) became a real sensation in 2010. The daughter of the first president, who decided to tell “the truth about her father,” became a multi-thousand blogger in a few weeks - a result that other experienced Internet users have been achieving for years. Of course, in Yumasheva’s notes, her father appeared as an exclusively positive figure. The daughter's desire to rehabilitate her father in public consciousness quite understandable. However, it is unlikely that Yumasheva managed to achieve her desired goal. Too much in her words, contrary to the original plan, turned out to be not for, but rather against Yeltsin.
In this sense, the former Yeltsin Deputy Prime Minister and Press Minister Mikhail Poltoranin (by the way, who recently published a very harsh book about Yeltsin) is right when he told Profile that “it is better to have a hundred enemies than one friend like Tatyana Borisovna: aka with all his records he only confirms all the stereotypes that have developed in society.”
Moreover, sometimes, under the skillful pen of the president’s daughter, even established and not particularly disputed “stereotypes” (for example, that “under Yeltsin, unlike Putin, the authorities did not interfere in the work of the media”) are called into question. Take, for example, the story about the events of December 12, 2003, when the Yeltsins were invited to a reception in honor of Constitution Day in the Kremlin. On the evening of the same day, it turned out that television had decided not to show the ex-president and his wife on the news. “Dad was cut out of the report, as if he was not there,” writes Yumasheva. “Dad goes into his office in a rage, his blood pressure rises, his heart hurts, then he couldn’t come to his senses for another week, mom cried all evening, asking: “Is this really possible?” “I’m calling my old comrades, friends Kostya Ernst, Oleg Dobrodeev, presidential press secretary Alexei Gromov,” Yumasheva says innocently. It turns out that “they are all horrified, they say this can’t happen, complete nonsense, of course, no one gave any commands.” Thus, as a result of his daughter’s efforts, the ex-president still saw himself in the “box,” and the population learned that the notorious “Family” retained its influence even after Yeltsin’s resignation.

PERPENDICULAR BOOK
More serious research on the topic “how good the first president was” - the book “Yeltsin”, which was recently published in the “Life of Remarkable People” series. “A lot of bad things have already been said about Yeltsin, and someone should have written about him positively,” admitted its author, a former colleague of Yeltsin’s son-in-law Valentin Yumashev, writer Boris Minaev. Minaev used in his work already published memoirs, as well as interviews he himself took with those close to Boris Yeltsin. The author did not carry out any serious archival research, but before the book was published, he gave it to members of the first president’s family to read.
Minaev himself is confident that he “wrote not a servile book, but... a book perpendicular to the mood of society.” One can argue about “servability,” but a thick volume of 750 pages is truly “perpendicular.” However, not only the “mood of society,” which Yeltsin does not favor, but in some places – and historical truth.
For example, the fact that the first president was a drinker and that this weakness of his often influenced certain political events was well known both in the country and abroad. “I was not interested in this topic - it has been covered very widely,” says Minaev. In the book itself, he writes that the topic of Yeltsin’s drunkenness “began under Gorbachev.” “It was then that the idea began to be purposefully introduced into the people’s consciousness: Yeltsin is hard drinking man, writes Minaev. “The political order was gone, but the theme, hammered in through the efforts of Gorbachev’s propagandists, remained in the memory: as soon as the unpopular reforms began, it immediately came to mind.”
However, the author seems to forget that Yeltsin’s ill-wishers did not need to invent anything: the first president himself, in front of the whole world, gave reason to talk about his “weakness.” Either he conducted an orchestra in Berlin, or he made “friend Bill” laugh until he cried in Washington, or he simply slept peacefully on a plane in Shannon, instead of meeting with the Irish prime minister. What do “Gorbachev’s propagandists” have to do with it?

GREETINGS FROM SUCCESSOR
However, Minaev’s book is interesting not only because the author, contrary to the rules of the genre, writes a biography of Boris Yeltsin, being entirely on his side and trusting only positive information about his hero. Another notable feature is the foreword written by Vladimir Putin. According to rumors, Putin could not refuse the persistent requests of the ex-president’s family and took up his pen.
True, at the same time, the prime minister very skillfully avoids any assessments of Yeltsin’s rule, diplomatically noting that “not even our children” will have to give real assessments. Thus, Putin, in fact, “deprived” Yeltsin of those merits that he often spoke about at the beginning of his own reign, namely, merits in eliminating the totalitarian system and establishing democracy in Russia.
Such a drift is quite logical, he believes famous journalist and deputy State Duma Alexander Khinshtein, who himself wrote a very critical biography of Yeltsin. After all, in last years According to Khinshtein, the official discourse combined incompatible things: on the one hand, the concept of the “dashing 90s”, on the other, emphasized respect for their main character - Boris Yeltsin.
According to the observations of historian and publicist Leonid Mlechin, this situation suits both sides: the authorities, which can blame all problems on the “damned past,” and Yeltsin’s loved ones, for whom the most favored nation regime has been created. The campaign, which was launched by members of the first president's family and their loved ones, is entirely private. And yet it can play its role. After all, the struggle is not only and not so much for the minds of his contemporaries (many who remember the living Yeltsin have developed their own clear attitude towards him, and books and blogs cannot change it), but for how Yeltsin will remain in historical memory, in the minds of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

UNIVERSAL “END”
Probably, the struggle “for the image of Yeltsin in the future” will be very tough. Yeltsin's opponents do not skimp on extreme assessments. Thus, Mikhail Poltoranin in his recently published book “Power in TNT Equivalent” paints a picture of a large-scale anti-Russian and anti-Russian conspiracy, in the center of which, by the will of fate, was the first president of Russia. The collapse of Russia, according to Poltoranin, occurred through the efforts of the bourgeoisified Soviet nomenklatura and Western Masonic lodges. Yeltsin, with his unbridled craving for the external trappings of power, turned out to be the most convenient figure so that, under his cover, they could carry out their “dark deeds.”
On the contrary, Yeltsin’s supporters willingly attribute to him things that have no direct relation to him. Thus, recently politician Vladimir Ryzhkov said on the air of a radio station that “no matter how people feel about Yeltsin, the 90s, the very fact that we received the guaranteed right to freedom of entry and exit from the country is clearly regarded by people as one of the main achievements of the post-Soviet period.” Although this conquest, and Ryzhkov cannot but know about it, happened in the late 80s - under Mikhail Gorbachev.
However, both the authors of extreme negative assessments and those who try to speak about Yeltsin in words that are “perpendicular” to critical sentiments are confident that the pages of school textbooks will still end up not with truthful information about the Yeltsin era, but with the information that most closely corresponds to the current one. political situation. In other words, this or that myth about Yeltsin.
“The myth of Yeltsin” will be either a little more negative or a little less negative, believes sociologist Boris Dubin from Levada Center. Therefore, the efforts of the Yeltsin family will most likely be doomed not only to tactical, but also to strategic failure. “Yeltsin will continue to be perceived as a despicable figure, as a universal scapegoat for all our troubles,” regrets Leonid Mlechin. Well, we'll wait and see.
(PAGE)