Former Russian President Yeltsin Leaves Complex Legacy

JEFFREY BROWN:

August 1991, Boris Yeltsin made his mark on world history. Standing atop a tank in Moscow and cheered on by some 50,000 supporters, Yeltsin denounced the coup orchestrated by hard-liners and the KGB to remove Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

At the time, Yeltsin was the elected president of Russia, one of 15 Soviet republics. He was also a rival of Gorbachev. The coup failed. And soon after, the Soviet Union was gone for good.

Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day, 1991. The hammer and sickle came down from atop the Kremlin to be replaced by a new Russian flag, and Boris Yeltsin became president of the Russian Federation, a nation much smaller in size than the Soviet Union, but still a nuclear power.

In the 1990s, Yeltsin's Russia underwent tremendous change, becoming more democratic and free, but worse off in such areas as health and life expectancy. The privatization of state-owned industries threw hundreds of thousands of workers out of their jobs and created a new class of wealthy oligarchs.

Yeltsin tried to maintain Russia's role as a world power, working with Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and being rewarded with membership in the G-7 group of industrial nations.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931, into a peasant family in the Ural mountains. He was a local Communist Party chief in the 1960s and '70s.

In 1985, Gorbachev brought Yeltsin to Moscow to become the city's Communist Party chief and to help implement economic reforms. Yeltsin soon became a popular leader, riding buses instead of limousines, visiting food stores to hear consumer complaints. He also criticized Gorbachev for not moving fast enough on political and economic reforms.

In November 1987, Gorbachev fired Yeltsin. But two years later, in the first elections for Soviet parliament, Yeltsin made a political comeback, winning a seat in the People's Congress. He continued to be critical of Gorbachev.

In a 1989 NewsHour interview, while visiting the United States for the first time, Yeltsin did little to mask the rivalry.

JIM LEHRER:

In this country, Gorbachev is seen by many in heroic terms, as a man of history, a man who is turning around a huge ship of state in a very dramatic way. Is that the way we should see him? How should Americans view Mikhail Gorbachev?

BORIS YELTSIN, Former President of Russia (through translator): You have some euphoria of the first two years of perestroika. You don't know the real state of affairs in the country. If you knew it, you would not be so euphoric now.

JIM LEHRER:

What should we be? If not euphoric, what?

BORIS YELTSIN (through translator):

More realistic, more realistic.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Russia's progress as a democracy under Yeltsin was not always smooth. A parliamentary rebellion in 1993 prompted Yeltsin to call out the military to crush his rivals.

In the mid-'90s, Yeltsin again turned to the army to stamp out a separatist rebellion in the Russian territory of Chechnya. Thousands have died in the still-unresolved conflict.

During his presidency, Yeltsin was dogged by charges of corruption, as well as rumors of heavy drinking, fostered by episodes like this post-luncheon news conference with President Clinton. In 1995, he suffered two heart attacks.

At the same time, the Russian economy was going through its sixth consecutive year of negative growth. Millions of Russian workers went for months without getting paid.

Yeltsin's re-election seemed in doubt, but he made a memorable campaign appearance to show his vitality. Yeltsin won re-election in July 1996, but from then on often disappeared from public view. In a surprise move, Yeltsin resigned on New Year's Eve 1999, working out a deal with his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, that he and his family would be immune from prosecution on charges of corruption.

The news of Yeltsin's death today came as U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was in Moscow for talks with President Putin.

ROBERT GATES, Secretary of Defense: I extend my sympathies to his family and condolences to the Russian people, and I think was an important figure in Russia's evolution toward democracy.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Yeltsin's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday. It will be a day of national mourning in Russia. Boris Yeltsin was 76 years old.