Boris Yeltsin's Legacy

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a courageous man. He proved that in August 1991 when he mounted a tank in front of the so-called White House in Moscow to rally resistance against an attempted coup d'etat by members of the old Soviet guard. He risked his life for his people, helping to seal the fate of the USSR and pave the way for a democratic, post-Soviet Russia.

Germans, in particular, have many reasons to be grateful to Yeltsin. As the first democratically elected Russian president, he withdrew his country's troops from Germany. Most Europeans saw Yeltsin as a typically gruff, hard-drinking Russian leader. But he was also responsible for restructuring a decrepit state-run economy.

Germany, under former chancellor Helmut Kohl, supported Yeltsin's efforts with billions of marks in cheap loans since the state Yeltsin took over was essentially broke. But money wasn't always the answer to the problems faced by the world's largest geographic nation.

Yeltsin was not able to end corruption, and he didn't always make the best choices when appointing ministers and advisors. But the reforms he undertook were unprecedented, and it would be naïve to expect that they could have come off without any mistakes.

Under Yeltsin, Russia's image abroad was much better than it is today. Back then the Russian media was free to report on the problems facing the country. Today, the remit of most Russian newspapers and TV stations is merely to applaud the policies of the Kremlin.

Of course, Yeltsin too could be a hardliner. In October 1993, he ordered Russian troops to fire on the country's parliament, the Duma, after its members wanted to restrict his own power. One year later, he began the first of Russia's bloody campaigns against rebels in the province of Chechnya. And he allowed members of his family to illegal profit from his government.

Nor was Yeltsin a particularly good administrator. During his term in office, contradictions between state and regional laws often made parts of the gigantic country virtually ungovernable.

Yet for all his shortcomings, Yeltsin will go down in history as a man of principle, as someone who -- despite the lack of expert allies -- strove to found both a democracy and a free-market economy in Russia. Yeltsin was not afraid to stand alone in fighting for what he believed was right.

Miodrag Soric is DW-RADIO's editor-in-chief (jc).