#6157
#6
From: Toivo Klaar <toivo.klaar@estemb.org>
Subject: RE: 6151-Yavlinsky at Harvard/Allison
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002
Graham Allison's offhanded remark about President Yeltsin, that "Yeltsin has gone back to his bottle or whatever" illustrates once more what to me is a completely undeserved refusal by many western former sovietologists to acknowledge Boris Yeltsin's achievements in opening Russia up. Certainly Yeltsin was not perfect and his policies were often quite erratic. His policy towards Estonia and our Baltic neighbours was not one we liked. All too often his 'great russian' instincts came to the fore. But nonetheless he is the man who stood on a tank in August 1991 and was instrumental in destroying what truly was an evil empire. Where Gorbachev tinkered Yeltsin acted. The result was the freeing of the Russian political landscape, of the Russian press - of a lot of Russian history - and also of Russian markets. His economic policies were not perfect, and often indeed quite flawed. But despite all flaws that he had he did bring along with him a conviction that there is merit in facing up to the evils of the past and in allowing free discussion of the future. Gorbachev was not ready for this and we all see where Russia is steering today. Thus we might find that the period of greatest individual freedoms in Russian history was in fact the Yeltsin era. And for this he does deserve credit.
Sincerely,
Toivo Klaar
Arlington, VA
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