the Eltsin legacy

Eltsin is dead. In the West, we liked him a lot - the Eltsin years are called years of "reform" and years of "strides toward democracy".

We're crazy.

After 1991, when Eltsin climbed onto that tank, things went downhill. We'll never know what the Gorbachev plan would have accomplished, because it was stopped - and Eltsin stopped that. Eltsin did indeed make that breakthrough possible, though again, we'll never know. They backed down from Eltsin and it's possible that Gorbachev would have been able to prevail.

But Eltsin's embrace of Western- advocated "shock therapy" resulted in wholesale looting of the country. Russia had years of negative economic growth - in 1998 the country went bankrupt. Bankrupt. That default sent shock waves through the world, not just the country. Oligarchs took power, and more 90% of the population lost everything they had ever had. People starved. Over a third of the population fell below the poverty line - the Russian poverty line. Life expectancy went down by more than a decade. A whole generation suffers from impoverished childhoods - disease and malnutrition. Crime soared. Eltsin prosecuted a brutal, brutal war in Chechnya. And we must never forget 1993, when Eltsin called the army out to shell a legitimately, democratically elected parliament - something I still can't believe we in the West treated like it was either no big deal or an actual positive.

The Eltsin legacy is Putin's Russia. Not merely in that Eltsin hand-picked him, but that only someone like Putin could have held the country together in any meaningful sense. Kremlin, Inc. is the answer to the rampant looting by the oligarchs, and Putin's crackdown on civil liberties is the natural outcome of a strong central government.

Eltsin is a towering and contradictory figure, but he was not good for Russia, despite his intentions.