KEY POINTS:
Boris Yeltsin, who has died aged 76, will forever be remembered through one image in a defining moment in Soviet and Russian history: a silver-haired man in a suit on top of a tank. From there on August 19, 1991, he defied hardline plotters against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reforms.
It is part of the Yeltsin enigma that within days he had, through unilateral directives, taken control of huge chunks of the Soviet Government, publicly squashed Gorbachev and begun ruling Russia by arbitrary decree. His fate and that of Gorbachev were closely entwined, so much so that their states followed parallel paths. Every step forward was marked by half a step back in the face of opposition from the entrenched establishment.
The big difference lay in personality. Gorbachev on top of a tank? Not likely. Gorbachev responded to Baltic independence demands with a half-hearted crackdown; Yeltsin twice tried to curb the Chechen insurrection by storm.
The Russian President never did anything by halves, whether it was drinking, health struggles, or taking on challengers. One moment the country would appear to drift with no one at the helm. Yet the next he would be back to confound opponents who thought their time had come.
Yeltsin was at his most effective when under the most pressure. An attention to self-preservation may bear out the judgment of those who were suspicious of his motives long before he became the first democratically elected Russian President.
History is likely to judge that Russia's evolution suffered throughout Yeltsin's tenure because the President was engaged in a long-drawn-out power struggle for which, like most revolutionaries, he was far better suited temperamentally than managing a country. But he will always be remembered as a knight in red-starred armour.
