Yeltsin

Dusko Doder

Aron's book will serve as the first useful guide to Kremlin politics during most of Yeltsin's tenure in office.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Arriving just months after Boris Yeltsin's surprise resignation, Aron's biography is a timely reminder of the events that first made Yeltsin a hero to his people and then eroded his promising reputation, leaving him a political disappointment to much of the world. Even more remarkable than the timeliness of this excellent book is its prescience. The final chapter discusses the financial collapse of August 1998 and uses that crisis as a springboard for the author's weighty conclusions about Yeltsin's legacy. And yet, even though it leaves off six months before Yeltsin's actual political end, Aron's biography perfectly captures the pathos of the televised New Year's address in which a tired and beaten warrior handed over his regalia with apologies and self-criticisms: in an eerily prophetic line, Aron describes Yeltsin as "fatally wounded by his own errors by his inability to deliver miracles to make freedom, heal the sick, punish the corrupt and feed the poor--the man at the rope became too weak and too sick to manage the revolution and to justify his people's trust." Strongly sympathetic to his subject, Aron tends to play down Yeltsin's well-known faults (among them, irascibility, egoism, political inconsistency) and to praise his admirable qualities (initiative, courage, a determination to dismantle the old Communist system). He treats Yeltsin's loudest opponents, both on the Left and the Right, with liberal scorn. But the sheer weight of the author's extensive research and academic analysis (Aron is director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute) gives the lively history an objective and scholarly tone. Intelligently argued and often moving, this book is recommended for anyone interested in contemporary Russia. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Aron, born in Moscow and now director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, has written a weighty volume (in content and size) on the hottest topic of the last quarter of the 20th century--the fall of the Soviet Union. Focusing on the personalities (Yeltsin and friends) that have attempted to remake Russia, this work is a massive apology for its post-1989 history. Aron disputes the current Western press view of Yeltsin as an alcoholic and works hard to show that Yeltsin--who's been overcoming adversity from the time he was nearly drowned by a tipsy batushka at his baptism--has faced difficulties from the beginning of his presidency. "As the pace of the revolution quickened," Aron argues, "Boris Yeltsin's personal history became more tightly entwined with his country's history." Now with Yeltsin's early retirement, scholars will begin a closer examination of his impact on the emerging Russian democracy. His epitaph will likely read, "He made irreversible the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism." Not the last word on the Yeltsin presidency but recommended for public libraries.--Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Syst., Iola Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Kellert

Ambitious and perfectly timed . . . Aron sets out to reclaim Yeltsin from the cartoonists . . . It is a complex and nuanced political portrait, not adoring but unabashedly admiring. . . . A godsend.
—The New York Times Book Review