The hero of his time

Boris Yeltsin was utterly unique. Russia's first democratically elected leader, he was also the first Russian leader to give up power voluntarily, and constitutionally, to a successor. But he was also profoundly characteristic of Russian leaders. Using various mixtures of charisma, statecraft, and terror, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander II, Peter Stolypin (the last tsar's prime minister), Lenin, and Stalin all sought to make Russia not only a great military power, but also an economic and cultural equal of the West.

Yeltsin aimed for the same goal. But he stands out from them in this respect: he understood that empire was incompatible with democracy, and so was willing to abandon the Soviet Union in order to try to build a democratic order at home.

At the height of Yeltsin's career, many Russians identified with his bluntness, impulsiveness, sensitivity to personal slight, even with his weakness for alcohol. And yet in the final years of his rule, his reputation plunged. Only in the last few months of his second presidential term, after he launched the second war in Chechnya in September 1999, did he and his lieutenants regain some legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian public, while causing revulsion among any remaining Western admirers.

Editor's Comment
Who watches the watchdog?

For a fact, in a democratic society such as Botswana, the media plays a crucial role of being watchdog, holding the powerful to account and exposing all possible wrongdoing for the benefit of the public.There has been a nagging question about who watches the watchdog after all? Perhaps, the investigations into alleged wrongful acts implicating those supposed to be playing the watchdog role will shed more light into what has happened such that the...

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