Yeltsin

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE - Self-Reliance

CHAPTER TWO - Scripts

CHAPTER THREE - Only Forward

CHAPTER FOUR - A Boss with a Difference

CHAPTER FIVE - Megalopolis

CHAPTER SIX - The Mutineer

CHAPTER SEVEN - The Yeltsin Phenomenon

CHAPTER EIGHT - Birth of a Nation

CHAPTER NINE - A Great Leap Outward

CHAPTER TEN - Resistances

CHAPTER ELEVEN - Falling Apart, Holding Together

CHAPTER TWELVE - Boris Agonistes

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Governing the State

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Reconnecting

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Autumn of a President

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Endgame

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Aftermath

Coda - Legacies of an Event-Shaping Man

Acknowledgements

Notes

Index

Copyright Page

Praise for Timothy Colton’s YELTSIN

“Mr. Colton is not the first to undertake Yeltsin’s redemption. . . . But Mr. Colton has used the extra time to excellent effect. He has mined declassified Kremlin transcripts; fact-checked many memoirs; conducted extensive interviews with participants, including Yeltsin, shortly before his death last year; and synthesized a story that anyone curious about contemporary Russia will find illuminating.”

—New York Times

“Few Russian leaders have been stuck with such contradictory labels as Boris Yeltsin. Clown, hero, braggart and battering ram are just a handful of the commonest. Given his volatile personality and the fact that Russia’s first elected president played so dominant a role in his country’s path from communism, it is time he received more weighty treatment. Timothy Colton, professor of government and Russian studies at Harvard University, certainly has the credentials. His book is backed by a tremendous amount of research, including declassified material from the Soviet archives.”

—The Guardian (London)

“It’s fitting . . . that Yeltsin has sprung his last surprise by finding a biographer to rank him, justifiably, among the politicians with the greatest impact on the 20th century.”

—Time. com

“In this, the first published account of Yeltsin’s whole life, Timothy Colton casts the former Russian leader in a favourable new light. For Colton, Yeltsin—a loyal communist well into middle age—‘broke stride and linked his personal journey to larger trends,’ which saw him evolve from ‘knee-jerk populism’ to ending the Communist party’s monopoly of power and pursuing democracy. By staying ‘a half-step ahead of his rivals’ he won ‘the opportunity to preside over the birth of a nation and an attempt to construct a bold new future for it.’ These are big claims—and Colton makes them convincingly. . . . He has researched Yeltsin’s life with care and interviewed many key figures, including Yeltsin himself. . . . The Yeltsin years could have turned out a lot worse. . . . Yeltsin deserves credit. And he deserves a biography as good as Colton’s.”

—Financial Times

“A well-researched book with many interesting details drawn from [Colton’s] interviews with Yeltsin, his family, and a variety of other key players.”

—The Weekly Standard

“In this substantial biography, Professor Timothy Colton sets out to put Yeltsin back where he belongs: as a—even the—key political actor in late 20th-century Russia. To Colton, Yeltsin is a national leader and statesman of rare acumen and character who deserves a place right up there in the pantheon of great Russians. History, I have little doubt, will prove him right. There is much to admire in this account of Yeltsin. . . . [Colton] writes with insight on Yeltsin’s relations with communism and the Communist Party (not the same thing), suggesting that he was never really a believer, but no cynical careerist, either.”

—New Statesman (London)

“There have been excellent biographies of Yeltsin before, but none so thorough. . . . For the uninitiated, the book’s value is as a comprehensive portrait of one of the main figures of contemporary times—a portrait that is sympathetic but not uncritical. For the initiated, many of the most controversial but shrouded moments in Yeltsin’s career are, at last, clearly revealed.”

Affairs

“Quite readable and utterly absorbing.”

—Choice

“[A]n authoritative, impeccably researched and richly contextualized study of Yeltsin. . . . Colton is a masterful political historian; he weaves the story of Yeltsin’s life into the fabric of Soviet and Russian history, at every stage offering insightful descriptions of the time, the place and the people.”

—America

“Colton’s biography is the first major assessment to come along since Leon Aron’s Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life, which went to press shortly before Yeltsin unexpectedly stepped down from Russia’s presidency in the final hours of 1999. It benefits from the passage of time and perspective afforded by Putin’s eight subsequent years as president.”

—Wilson Quarterly