Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union

by Vladislav M. Zubok

In Paris, Yeltsin took part in a popular talk show, debating against the Russian philosopher Alexander Zinoviev. The latter had been evicted from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and had just published Catastroika, a satire on Gorbachev’s reforms.13 Unexpectedly, the Russian dissident attacked Yeltsin as a populist and demagogue. When Yeltsin argued that a multi-party system in Russia would bring social justice, Zinoviev objected: “You can create one thousand political parties in the Soviet Union, and all of them would degenerate into political mafias!” The anchorman asked Yeltsin: “How do you view the future of the USSR?” Yeltsin responded that people would choose young and energetic leaders, who would fix everything, but “without a super-authoritarian power.”