Zinoviev replied that Russian people had already seized power in 1917, but this had merely resulted in Stalin’s dictatorship. Yeltsin, he said, would kill the USSR, and the West would applaud him. In several years, however, Russian society would slide back to authoritarianism, and people would feel nostalgia for Brezhnev’s “golden age.” The host asked Yeltsin whether he wanted to replace Gorbachev as President of the USSR. Yeltsin replied with a smirk: “No. The future belongs to Russia.”14 Yeltsin lived up to his words, but Zinoviev’s verdict turned out also to be prophetic.
