Yeltsin and Family Return

...Many of the glowing passages reconstruct events Yeltsin himself did not participate in (i.e...

...In several respects, the balance of power among them will determine his future course...

...Or he could be remembered as the first post-Communist leader who squandered Russia's chances of becoming a liberal democracy and a capitalist economy...

...He also forged ahead on some downright Herculean tasks...

...Many thought Putin would push the family out after winning the 2000 presidential election, yet so far he has done little to weaken it...

...Indeed, only if one keeps that objective in mind can one really understand the book...

...Afterward newspapers ran stories about "Yeltsin's Staying Power...

...You can tell that he loved the drama, the suspense, and the idea of quitting on the eve of the millennium...

...His place in history, however, is still unclear...

...Yeltsin relishes doing the unexpected and catching everyone off guard...

...This image of a powerful, confident leader is vital in a work meant to signal to the rest of Russia's political elite that the Yeltsin family intends to go on playing a central role in Russian politics...

...with the exception of President Bill Clinton and a few others, he had almost no friends left among the world leaders...

...the current chief of staff of the presidential administration, Aleksandr S. Voloshin...

...The book also partially explains how another set of critical decisions regarding the August 1998 financial crisis avoided a constitutional problem...

...Financial tycoon Boris A. Berezovsky, who was very close to the family, gets a mixed rating as a onetime useful ally Yeltsin could not stand on a personal level...

...He is said to be "an absolute Bolshevik in his temperament and approach" who did not abide by the rules at privatization auctions, and who would "always get into fights...

...Other key members include four deputy chiefs of the presidential administration—Viktor Ivanov, Dmitry Medvedev, Igor Sechin, and Dmitry N. Kozak—and the current head of the FSB, Nikolai P. Patrushev...

...Russians and observers of Russia have changed their views about him radically over the course of the last decade...

...The book's most difficult task, naturally, is characterizing Putin...

...Yeltsin heaps praise on the new leader, saying that he is decisive, strong, the right man at the right time...

...You see, too, how much he truly enjoyed dealing with personnel decisions (the cadre question) and hated policy or bureaucratic matters...

...Former allies from the 1996 election, such as Igor Y. Malashenko and Vladimir V Gusinsky, the embattled head of the independent station NTV, are labeled traitors for forgetting that Yeltsin saved them...

...He describes in great detail how he decided to resign early to the surprise of his closest associates...

...Three groups constitute the alliance that now backs President Putin...

...Yeltsin does add some details on his thinking regarding a postponement of the 1996 elections...

...The third group jockeying for position in Putin's coalition is the family...

...But the main objective of this new book is not to aid historians...

...On December 31, 1999, the day he suddenly resigned, his approval rating was 3 per cent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 per cent...

...Even the Western media ignored his departure...

...Most people have never heard of them, but they are important political figures in Russia today...

...Why did he bring Communists into his government in 1998...

...Why did he resign so unexpectedly in December 1999...

...Two financial tycoons, or oligarchs, Roman Abramovich and Aleksandr Mamut, are also considered members of the family...

...Not that it is totally devoid of memoirlike qualities...

...Within the government, the key leaders of this group are Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Aleksei L. Kudrin, Minister of Economy and Trade German O. Gref, and Presidential Advisor on the Economy Andrei N. Illarionov...

...A whole chapter devoted to criticizing Russia's generals seems to be a warning to Putin about relying too heavily on FSB and military officers...

...Midnight Diaries makes clear how the family functions, who is in and who is out, and why it would be a mistake to move against it...

...BEFORE completing their assessment of Yeltsin, historians will want to know the reasons for his decisions...

...There are passages that shed light on key decisions, and many sections demonstrate Yeltsin's unique style of decisionmaking...

...When Clinton appeared that morning to comment on Yeltsin's retirement, most American national networks chose instead to cover live the fireworks display in BeijingMany would argue that Yeltsin's pathetic passing from power correctly reflected his pitiful performance as Russia's first democratically elected president...

...Moscow's Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov and former Prime Ministers Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Yevgeny M. Primakov and Sergei V Stepahsin are ridiculed...

...He was never as powerful as many assumed, it is maintained...

...He probably had only a few international calls to make...

...Midnight Diaries outlines the family's ideas, opinions of specific politicians, and plans for the future...

...The campaign appeared to work...

...One group consists largely of officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) —as the successor to the KGB is called— who have close personal relations with Putin...

...Russian democratic institutions are weak, the economy is still stagnant, corruption and crime remain rampant...

...Ultimately, Chubais emerges as a son who fell out of favor with papa Yeltsin and was then denounced by other members of the family...

...Yeltsin's latest memoir, Midnight Diaries, does not provide the same degree of insight into his thought processes...

...The kind of adjectives that will modify his legacy will only become clear after the resolution of these lingering issues...

...They often contain important insights into the making of history and how major figures would like to be remembered...

...The best memoirs offer some retrospective normative reflections on good decisions and bad ones...

...As I suggested earlier, this is much less a memoir than a book about contemporary Russian politics...

...He took some disastrous steps that had detrimental consequences for his people and his country...

...A November 2000 poll reported that 32 per cent of those questioned are sure Yeltsin still influences Russia's policy...

...Written soon after the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis that ended in armed conflict between the President and the Parliament, the quasi-confessional volume supplies numerous clues to how Yeltsin arrived at critical decisions...

...Most were in Moscow...

...Its de facto leaderis Sergei B. Ivanov, head of the Russian Security Council...

...It was officially published on Putin's birthday, forcing political leaders to choose between attending Putin's party in St...

...But Yeltsin emphasizes repeatedly that Putin is the creation of the family...

...The group played a central role in Russian politics over the past several years and has continued to do so under President Vladimir V Putin...

...Although these liberals do not have long-standing personal relations with Putin, they have the market ideas he supports and wants to implement...

...An excessive number of pages are devoted to highlighting the brilliant strategic actions of top family members like Voloshin, Yumashev, and particularly Dyachenko...

...But a last minute intervention by Tatyana Dyachenko and Anatoly B. Chubais, then a liberal reformer who had just been ousted from the government, persuaded Yeltsin to forgo the extraconstitutional act...

...The scale of change launched by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev created opportunities for Yeltsin to catapult to power and play his historical role...

...But if one wants to understand who the family is, who it likes and dislikes, and how it plans to operate, then Midnight Diaries is a must read...

...and several other exYeltsin ministers in the Putin government, including Minister of the Interior Vladimir Rushaillo, Minister of the Press Mikhail Y Lesin, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, and Minister of Railways Nikolai E. Aksenenko...

...Yeltsin not only wants everyone to know that he and the family are back in the game, but that those who fail to recognize the fact do so at their own peril...

...Boris Yeltsin—who has now produced three, starting with Against the Grain (1990)—knows what makes for a good memoir...

...His second one, The Struggle for Russia (1994), is especially illuminating...

...Petersburg or Yeltsin's party in Moscow...

...In many respects, it isn't a memoir at all...

...To accurately evaluate Yeltsin's legacy, though, the lists of his achievements and failures must be weighed within the larger context of his time...

...Democratic opposition leader Grigory A. Yavlinsky is derided yet again for refusing to join a Yeltsin government...

...Chief of presidential security Aleksandr V Korzhakov was the main proponent of the plan, andhis arguments almost prevailed...

...rather, it is a political document from Yeltsin's "family," as the inner circle of his former advisors is called...

...they are revisionist portrayals of current political players...

...Memoirs are supposed to help answer such questions...

...If he ever wants another job,hemightput the following achievements on the top of his résumé: destroyed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, peacefully dismantled the largest empire on earth, and introduced electoral democracy in a nation with a thousandyear history of autocratic rule...

...Yeltsin bequeathed to his successors several serious political and economic conundrums...

...The informal patron of the liberals outside of government is Chubais, currently the head of RAU-UES, Russia's giant electricity company...

...This message is an obvious warning to the President that he needs the family to stay in power...

...It consists of one real Yeltsin family member, his daughter Tatyana B. Dyachenko...

...But for the close observer of Russia the more revealing facet of Midnight Diaries is its portrayal of a leader sure of victory in conflicts with his political opponents...

...These are not memories of a leader...

...But the Yeltsin story is not that simple...

...Whether this influence will last or not is an open question...

...The measure of great women and men—for good or for ill—usually corresponds directly to the magnitude of their historical moment...

...It is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand post-Communist Russia and the author's role in the making and breaking of the new Russian state...

...Initially the revolution made him great, but eventually it undermined his greatness...

...the current Prime Minister, Mikhail M. Kasyanov...

...He could be remembered as the father of Russian democracy and the initiator of Russia's first century of annual double-digit economic growth...

...Even the release of the book was orchestrated to achieve full political effect...

...his former chief of staff and the real author of Midnight Diaries, Valentin Yumashev...

...In part, it did...

...Yeltsin ruled in a big revolutionary period...

...Where else in the world would a newly elected president retain the chief of staff from the previous administration...

...assistant professor of political science, Stanford University Without question, Boris N. Yeltsin has been one of Russia's most important political figures in the modem era...

...Days after staring down the August 1991 coup attempt, President Yeltsin boasted a 90 per cent approval rating at home, adorned the cover of every international weekly, and was christened a democratic hero by world leaders from Washington to Tokyo...

...The family's enemies get special attention as well...

...This same enormous change overwhelmed his ability to simultaneously confront the multiple challenges he faced...

...Perhaps most surprising is Yeltsin's strong criticism of Chubais, once considered a family member...

...Why did he abide by the election process in 1996...

...Above all else, the book is designed to show that the Yeltsin family, far from having retired, is alive and well as a major political force in Russia today...

...President Jacques Chirac's praise for Dyachenko during her visit to France to meet with his daughter...

...In contrast with his second memoir, here Yeltsin shows little remorse and selfdoubt...

...Most tragically, the war in the Caucasus continues with little prospect for a genuine settlement...

...The second group in Putin's coalition is the team of liberals, or "reformers" as they like to call themselves, serving in the government and presidential administration...