Boris Yeltsin: Power and Survival?

Boris Yeltsin was President of the Russian Sovereign Republic from 1991 to 1999 and the central figure in the survival of the Soviet state after the August Emergency. His negotiation of the Novo-Ogaryovo Accords preserved a reformed union when complete collapse appeared imminent, yet his tenure also encompassed the catastrophic economic dislocations of the 1990s and the constitutional conflicts that nearly destroyed the new confederation.

Yeltsin rose to prominence as a regional party official in Sverdlovsk and moved to Moscow as a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. He became a visible figure during glasnost, criticizing the Communist Party apparatus and building a popular following. After his dismissal from the Politburo in 1988, he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989 with an overwhelming majority from Moscow. In 1990, the Russian Republic's newly created parliament elected him its chairman; a year later, in June 1991, he was directly elected President of the Russian Sovereign Republic with 57 percent of the vote. This electoral legitimacy distinguished him from Gorbachev, whose authority rested on his continuing position as General Secretary rather than popular election. It would become his principal advantage in the power struggle that dominated Soviet politics through 1992.

During the August Emergency, Yeltsin was in the Russian parliament building when the coup committee announced the suspension of Gorbachev's authority. Rather than negotiate with the coup plotters, he remained in the building, issued a statement denouncing the action, and called on citizens to resist. He was not arrested, and the security forces around the parliament did not move against him. The dramatic visibility of his presence at the barricades—standing on a tank to address the crowds—established him as the embodiment of opposition to the old order, even as the coup committee itself ensured that Gorbachev was held at Foros long enough for renegotiation rather than outright collapse.

The eighteen months of negotiation that followed presented Yeltsin with a choice that would define his presidency: to push for the complete dissolution of the Soviet state and the independence of Russia, or to participate in the construction of a looser union that would preserve some framework of coordination among the republics. He chose the latter course, but reluctantly and with constant pressure from his own circles for a clean break. His principal negotiator in the talks was Ivan Laptev, a jurist and policy adviser who conducted the detailed technical work of drafting federal structures and division of powers.

The resulting Novo-Ogaryovo Accords created a confederation in which the Russian Sovereign Republic retained substantial power while surrendering the monopoly on Soviet succession that a complete Russian independence would have secured. Economic and military assets would be shared among nine republics rather than passing wholly to Russia. The departed republics—the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova—would have no claim on Union institutions, but the Union itself would continue to exist as a negotiating entity. For Yeltsin, this was a settlement that satisfied neither his radical supporters nor the advocates of renewed centralism, but it was preferable to the chaos of complete state collapse and the economic burden that an independent Russia would inherit alone.

The early years of his presidency under the new union were marked by radical economic restructuring. In consultation with Yegor Gaidar, his chief economic adviser, Yeltsin pursued price liberalization beginning in January 1992. The shocks were immediate and severe: inflation accelerated, savings were wiped out, and industrial production contracted. By 1993, the conflict between Yeltsin's price liberalization and Gorbachev's continued insistence on central economic coordination reached a critical point. The Compromise of Sochi, negotiated in 1993–1994, created a dual-track pricing system that permitted both market and planned transactions to coexist. This arrangement satisfied neither camp but prevented the complete breakdown of Union economic coordination that unilateral action by either power centre would have precipitated.

Yeltsin's tenure was shadowed by recurring constitutional and health crises. In 1993, he dissolved parliament and ordered military assault on the White House when legislators attempted to limit his powers. In 1995, he suffered a heart attack. Multiple strokes followed between 1996 and 1999, his final year in office, progressively incapacitating him. Throughout these episodes, he retained the loyalty of his security apparatus and key regional governors, particularly those in the energy-producing zones whose support proved crucial to his political survival. His designated successor, Vladimir Putin, took office on the last day of 1999 in a carefully managed transition.

Yeltsin's legacy remained contested. His supporters credited him with preventing the restoration of authoritarian rule and introducing market mechanisms into a command economy. Critics argued that his abrupt price liberalization destroyed the living standards of ordinary workers, that his constitutional methods destroyed the vestiges of parliamentary constraint, and that his dependence on regional power brokers in the energy sector established the pattern of fractured federalism that would plague the Union thereafter. The Archives of the Russian Presidential Library preserve his papers and the documentary record of his presidency, though disputes over classification continue to restrict access to some materials.