Yeltsin: A Life

The name "Gorbachev" may pop to mind when thinking of the fall of communism, the truth is Boris Yeltsin was the real hero who finished off its carcass with conviction and drama and dragged the country along on the road to its form of democratic modernity. Professor Timothy Colton's book is a thorough, highly readable biography of Boris from the Urals, the man of real significant consequence of the 20th century. Focusing on Yeltsin the person, the book does not suffer from the Russophobia as do so many books on Russia, its politics and governance. As an accomplished Russian speaking historian; Colton is knowledgeable and respectful of Russian culture and its political turnaround from the late 1980s onward. Text, sources, in person interviews with all the players, and 130 pages of copious, informative footnotes show that the book's sources are deep and authorative, not the usual newspaper stories filtered through American press reports. Colton, a Harvard professor of Russian history, is not some journalist historian. The book's high points center on his humble upbringing, Yeltsin's canny climb to power from the town of Sverdlovsk, his emergence on the political scene in the later 90s, the machinations of his ouster of Gorbachev, his struggles with the Duma and his historic and surprising selection of Vladimir Putin as prime minister and president in 1999.

Colton has provided a smart, well-researched and well-written account of a pivotal figure in Russian history.