Boris Yeltsin

The Man Who Ended Soviet Rule

von Olly Cobs

80 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

On an August afternoon in 1991, a man climbed onto a tank outside the Russian parliament and defied an attempted coup that could have reversed six years of change. Within four months, the Soviet Union no longer existed.Boris Yeltsin's life traces one of the most extraordinary arcs in modern history. Born into a family persecuted by Stalin's collectivization campaign, raised in poverty in the industrial towns of the Ural Mountains, he rose through the ranks of the very Communist Party that had exiled his grandfather and imprisoned his father. He became a construction engineer, then a regional party boss, then one of the most senior officials in the Soviet Union, before a public break with Mikhail Gorbachev nearly ended his career entirely.What followed was a political resurrection few could have predicted. From electoral disgrace, Yeltsin returned to become the first democratically elected president in Russian history, and when hardline Communist officials attempted to seize power in August 1991, it was Yeltsin who stood against them, tank turret beneath his feet, in an image broadcast around the world. Four months later, he negotiated the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in a forest hunting lodge, bringing seventy years of centralized rule to a close.This book follows Yeltsin's complete story, from a childhood shaped by exile and hunger through his methodical rise in Soviet politics, into the drama of the Soviet collapse, and onward into the far more difficult work of building a new Russia in its place. It examines the economic shock therapy that transformed the Russian economy almost overnight, the violent constitutional crisis of 1993, the war in Chechnya, and the rise of the oligarch class that emerged from the privatization of Soviet state assets. It also follows the decline of Yeltsin's own health, his struggles with alcohol, and the calculated final act of his presidency: the selection of a little known former intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin as his successor.Readers seeking to understand the roots of contemporary Russia will find in Yeltsin's story the origins of much that followed, the concentration of presidential power, the influence of wealth on politics, and the uneasy relationship between democratic aspiration and authoritarian habit that continues to define the country today. This is a story of genuine courage and serious failure, often within the same decision, and of a man whose choices during a handful of pivotal years reshaped the map of the world.Boris Yeltsin offers a clear, thoroughly researched account of a life that began in a Soviet village and ended in the ruins of an empire, and of the difficult, unfinished country he left behind.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798175651769
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 19.09.2026
• Größe: 279 x 216 mm
• Verlag: Independently published