Against the Grain-An Autobiography by Boris Yeltsin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"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.

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