When he came to power in 1985, Gorbachev had promoted a tall, energetic but reckless new leader named Boris Yeltsin to Moscow party chief and Politburo member. Almost the same age as Gorbachev, Yeltsin was the son of a builder who had been repressed by Stalin. Growing up in Sverdlovsk, he rose to local party secretary by 1976. Yeltsin was the opposite of Gorbachev: while the latter was contemplative, legalistic, sometimes verbose, often witty, and brave, Yeltsin was bombastic, emotional, courageous—and an alcoholic. The two soon clashed and Gorbachev sacked Yeltsin in 1987, giving him a public dressing-down. But, both opportunistic and idealistic, Yeltsin was ahead of Gorbachev in realizing that the Soviet Union and communism itself would and should soon fall. Yeltsin embraced liberal democracy—yet it also suited him. He was elected president of the Russian Republic in 1989, giving him potential legitimacy unavailable to Gorbachev. In July 1990 he dramatically resigned from the Communist Party.
In the following months, the strain started to show as ethnic turmoil and bloodshed intensified in the Caucusus and Soviet security forces seemed to be out of control, killing protesters in Lithuania. The Politburo and security service, the KGB, plotted to overthrow Gorbachev: in August 1991, a committee of incompetent drunken communist leaders and Chekists arrested Gorbachev on his Black Sea holiday and sent tanks into Moscow, but crowds defended the White House offices of Yeltsin. Yeltsin bravely climbed onto a tank outside to defiantly address the crowds. The coup fell apart but its real victim was Gorbachev, who had lost his prestige.
When Gorbachev tried to regain the momentum, Yeltsin ended the monopoly of the Communist Party and then conspired with the elected presidents of the other Soviet republics to end the Soviet Union. Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day 1991, thus ending the Soviet Union, which broke up into its independent republics. Gorbachev realized that communist oligarchy was wrong and after his fall he sincerely embraced liberal democracy but it was too late.
Yeltsin dominated Russia in the 1990s and, initially, his enthusiasm and openness were refreshing. Almost for the first time in its history, Russia enjoyed totally free elections, a totally free press, a free economy, a free investigation of history and of state crimes—and all these were Yeltsin’s achievements. But he was fatally flawed: alcoholic, inconsistent and capricious, he ruled like a tsar through cronies and henchmen such as his sinister bodyguard General Korzhakov and his billionaire financial adviser Boris Berezovsky. Yeltsin’s privatization of the Russian economy was hopelessly mismanaged, making billionaires of the so-called Oligarchs, over-powerful businessmen like Berezovsky.
In 1993, communist hardliners in Parliament threatened the entire democratic project with an armed revolt which Yeltisn defeated by ordering the storming by special forces of the White House in Moscow. The following year, faced with rebellion and the assertion of independence by Chechnya, Yeltsin invaded the little republic. As they committed atrocities on a vast scale, killing thousands of innocent civilians and utterly destroying cities such as Grozny, Russian forces were humiliated by dynamic Chechen fighters. Yeltsin was forced to retreat, withdraw Russian forces from Chechnya and infamously recognize Chechen independence—an unprecedented Russian humiliation. The decay of financial corruption, Kremlin intrigue, economic chaos, mafia disorder and resurgent repression unleashed by the Chechen war discredited his real achievements.
By 1996, Yeltsin, ill and isolated, faced a new election which he seemed likely to lose: his billionaire cronies, the Oligarchs, mobilized their fortunes to help him win re-election but now even democracy was tainted. The next three years saw economic meltdown and Yeltsin’s personal decline as he sacked prime ministers with imperial whimsy and embarrassed his country with acts of drunken buffoonery.
In 1999 he chose a young, ambitious and severe ex-KGB officer and cabinet minister named Vladimir Putin to be his successor and dramatically resigned the presidency. Putin proved more than equal to the task: he restored the power of the state and the prestige of Russia as a great power, crushed mafia corruption and broke the influence of the Oligarchs. At the same time he demonstrated his discipline and vigor by again attacking Chechnya with brutal and bloody competence, crushing the rebellion at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. Putin promoted his colleagues from the security services who now dominated Russian government and business, diminished democracy and press freedom, ended the election of local governors and personified a new Russian form of authoritarian government that he called sovereign democracy. During two terms in the Kremlin, Putin utterly dominated Russia in a way Gorbachev and Yeltsin had never done: he was able to hand over the presidency to an aide, Dmitri Medvedev, while remaining the country’s ruler as prime minister. In 2012, he was able to return to the presidency, despite popular protests at widespread corruption and the regime’s authoritarianism. Putin may turn out to be the dominant Russian leader of the early 21st century.
ELVIS
1935–1977
The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin’ now, man, for more years than I know … They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind ’til I goosed it up.
Elvis Presley, in an early interview
Elvis, the King. Thus the United States, that most republican of nations, dubbed its favorite musical son, ensuring that his preeminence would remain inviolate. He didn’t invent rock ’n’ roll, he didn’t write many songs, he never toured abroad, and he has since been eclipsed in almost every bald statistic of popular-music success. But all that is irrelevant. His sublimity of voice—startling in its reach from raunch and rebellion to the angelically tender—his devastating good looks, and the pulsating charisma of the performer entranced millions. He was a global star, and, by carrying the black music of blues and gospel to a white audience in a way that was unthinkable before, he enabled the musical synthesis that remains the bedrock of popular music today.
Elvis Aaron Presley had a poor Southern upbringing and was much closer to his lively and impressive mother than his shirking, petty-criminal father. He was a shy teenager, often bullied for being a mother’s boy. When he left school, he started driving trucks, just as his father did. But it was not long before his remarkable voice came to the attention of the record producer Sam Philips. Philips was looking for a white man to sing “Negro” songs, and when he heard Presley’s self-funded singles, recorded in 1953 as a birthday present for his mother, Philips felt he had found his man.
In 1954 Presley recorded “That’s All Right,” a blues song. Radio stations in Tennessee immediately began playing it, and Presley went on a tour of the Southern states. He came up against the ingrained prejudice of many white Americans opposed to seeing blacks and whites mixing together or sharing culture. But even this generations-old legacy of separateness could not compete with the adoration from the young and more color-blind fans that Presley began to attract. By 1956 pressure from white teenagers had forced radio stations nationwide to play Elvis’ singles—hits such as “Heartbreak Hotel” (1956), “Love Me Tender” (1956) and the title song to the film Jailhouse Rock (1957)—and he remained completely frank about his musical influences. In some quarters black critics accused him of stealing their music; in contrast, Little Richard called Elvis “a blessing,” who “opened the door” for black music. What was undeniable was that his momentum was unstoppable.