YELTSIN

If Russia, in Churchill’s words, is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, this splendid biography by Aron (Russian

Studies/American Enterprise Institute) does much to unwrap the mystery of one of Russia’s most enigmatic statesmen. Opinion in the West about Yeltsin has veered from incomprehension through idolatry almost to contempt. While showing Yeltsin’s conspicuous faults, it is Aron’s great virtue to reveal his even more impressive virtues: Even as an apparatchik, Yeltsin showed an enormous capacity for work, was demanding, incorruptible, and almost disdainful of the privileges to which he (as a member of the nomenklatura) was entitled. But his supreme virtue has been his courage: his unprecedented criticism of the corruption of the old guard at the 70th Party Conference in 1987; his steadfast refusal to bow to attempts to discipline him; the memorable moment when (with Gorbachev in detention and the Communist hardliners seemingly in control) he rallied the democratic forces by his speech from a tank; the economic revolution which, in the teeth of diehard opposition, he brought to Russia; and, perhaps most remarkable of all, his insistence—in the face of plummeting polls, pessimistic advisers, and his own illness—on holding democratic elections as scheduled in 1996, ultimately winning against all odds. In between there were some inglorious moments: the brutal and incompetent war in Chechnya; the periods of passivity, depression, and apathy (reminiscent, Aron says, of a manic-depressive cycle); and the times when a corrupt group "under the pseudonym Yeltsin" seemed to run the country. But for all these failings, Yeltsin (whom Aron compares to De Gaulle and Lincoln) has provided, in the most tolerant and the least aggressive regime in Russian history, "the irreducible tripartite core of a modern democracy": a free press, free opposition, and free elections. In richness of information, analysis, and judgment, Aron illuminates not only a great man but a supremely critical period

of Russian history.