XANDER BLAKELY
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FAQ 6. When you listened to the radio reports of a violent coup attempt against the Yeltsin government, what were your thoughts or fears? I was terrified, of course. I knew that many Russians harbored plenty of appropriate anger at the calamitous condition of their country, and I had long been afraid of an inappropriate manifestation of that anger. The first George Bush, a wildly successful president militarily speaking, had just been kicked out of the White House because the voters resented his inability to pull America out of a recession. Things were much, much worse in Russia in 1993—and not just economically—than they were in America in 1991. So it seemed entirely plausible that the vast majority of Russians, their simmering anger finally boiling over, would support the coup. Thankfully, they didn't. That doesn't support the case of Yeltsin as a great leader. Rather, it supports the case that Soviet leadership, still fresh in the average Russian's memory, was that much worse. Had that coup succeeded, I dread to think what would have happened. Many say that things couldn't have gone worse in Russia in the years following 1993, but they really could have been worse. Much, much worse. |
