Against the Grain-An Autobiography

by Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin

A combination of straightforward autobiography - his family background, education and career - and an account of the election campaign of 1989 when Yeltsin stood as a candidate for the Central Moscow Constituency and was elected with an 89 per cent majority.

Genres: Biography, Autobiography, Russian History

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

From 1991, economic reform and conflict with the legislature marked administration of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, Russian politician, president of the republic, until his resignation in 1999.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin first served.

Yeltsin came with a wave of high expectations to power. On 12 June 1991, a popular 57% of the vote first elected him. After a series of crises in the 1990s, Yeltsin never recovered his popularity. Widespread corruption, collapse, and enormous social problems characterized the era of Yeltsin. An approval rating of Yeltsin reached two percent before the time, when he left office.

Following the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1991, Yeltsin endorsed a program of price liberalization and privatization and vowed to transform socialist command into a free market. A result ably enriched a handful of persons and meanwhile arguably stamped out competitors.

In August 1991, Yeltsin won international plaudits for casting as a democrat and defying the coup attempt of the members of Soviet government opposed to perestroika. He as a widely unpopular, ineffectual, and ailing autocrat left office. He acted as his own prime minister until June 1992 or appointed men of his choice, regardless of parliament. Confrontations of Yeltsin with parliament climaxed in the constitutional crisis of October 1993, when people called up tanks to shell the white house and thus blasted out his opponents. Later in 1993, Yeltsin imposed a new constitution with strong powers, which referendum approved in December.

Yeltsin made a surprise announcement and left the hands of Vladimir Putin, just hours before the first day of 2000.

Reviews

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But what if I am the loser in tomorrow's election? What will that mean? That the party bureaucracy was after all the stronger, that injustice has triumphed? Nothing of the sort. Simply that I, too am human and that I have many failings."

Having lived for the first 31 years of my life behind the so-called "Iron Curtain", in the shadow of the Soviet ideology, I have a natural interest in Soviet affairs. So here's another one in my series of reads about 20th-century Soviet/Russian politicians. After biographies of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev (all reviewed on Goodreads) comes Boris Yeltsin: Against the Grain. An Autobiography (1990).

The autobiographical passages are interspersed between the account of Yeltsin's election campaign for the position of "people's deputy" in the Moscow region in 1989. He won the election, which was the first step of his full return to Soviet/Russian politics. Yeltsin had been a Soviet Communist Party member since 1961 and since 1985 he had been among the top Soviet leadership. He was a protégé of Mikhail Gorbachev who was seeking like-minded politicians to help him with the tasks of perestroika. Yet he was too independent to become a typical top functionary of the party. His ideas clashed with conservative members of the Politburo and even Gorbachev himself found him too radical. Yeltsin resigned from Politburo in 1987.

To me, one of the most important observations in the book is Yeltsin's assessment of Gorbachev, who had become the involuntary architect of the fall of the Soviet empire. On one hand he passionately praises Gorbachev and his contributions:

"What he has achieved will, of course, go down in the history of mankind. I do not like such high-sounding phrases, yet everything that Gorbachev has initiated deserves such praise."

Then he accurately diagnoses Gorbachev's main weakness:

"In particular, the state of the economy is catastrophic. There Gorbachev's chief weakness - his fear of taking the decisive but difficult steps that are needed - has been fully revealed."

Naturally, Yeltsin comes across as virtually a saint in the autobiography. He always tries the best course of action and works extremely hard for the benefit of the people and the country. Numerous times he tries to experience ordinary people's lives by commuting on public transportation and visiting grocery stores during acute food shortages. Yeltsin describes the extreme unfairness of the Soviet system, the elaborate system of privileges, which Stalin set up. All kinds of luxuries and Western goods are available for the party officials and nomenklatura; average people have access only to a limited range of very basic goods. The author's passion is palpable when we read his bitter observations.

The autobiography ends with an account of Yeltsin's short visit to the United States in 1989. He writes about the shock he experienced when he saw the availability of consumer goods in the US:

"When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons, and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people."

He also addresses the persistent rumors about him being frequently inebriated during the US trip and attributes his less than alert behavior to the insanely busy timetable of the visit, time zone changes, exhaustion, lack of sleep, and consequent use of sleeping pills. Naturally, no one will ever know the truth but Mr. Yeltsin's explanations sound quite convincing.

The autobiography ends in 1990. The readers who have little knowledge of Soviet/Russian affairs may want to know that Yeltsin resigns from the Soviet Communist party in 1990; in 1991 he is elected the president of the Russian Republic and later of the entire Russian Federation as the communist ideology seems to be dying. Yeltsin resigns in 1999 and dies in 2007.

Interesting if a bit chaotic read.

Three stars.

[Mitchell Dillard · Rating 3 out of 5]

To read this book, you should first understand what it is. This is a book covers Yeltsin’s early years to when he was (spoiler alert) elected to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union as a Moscow delegate and was then elected by the Congress of People’s Deputies to a seat on the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. This is important because it doesn’t contain any of his time as President, or when the really ‘fun stuff’ happens which would eventually start a few months after the timing of the book.

The issues that I have with this book is that he spends a bit too much time on his early stint in politics and tells many repetitious and dull stories of his childhood. It does help paint a picture of who he was, but I feel that a lot of the stories seem to be far stretches from the truth. For the most part, the way this reads is that Yeltsin could do no wrong. Admittedly, the first half of the book was at times torturous to read and I had almost given up on it.

Since Gorbachev’s perestroika was in full effect at the time of the writing of the book, a large portion of the book is devoted to discussing Yeltsin’s feelings about that. If you are interested in the man himself and his rise to power, definitely give it a read, otherwise I don’t think there is much to gain from it.

[Koen · Rating 2 out of 5]

A description of the formidable, never failing, person Boris Yeltsin. He smiles but I doubt his joy.
It reads but by small pieces.