Geopolitique...10

Ce post est dedie a la mort de Boris Eltsine, le 23 Avril 2007.

Interesse par la periode "Sovietique" (la Guerre Froide, la crise du Cuba, la Perestroika, la Glasnost, etc.), j'ai longtemps cherche un bon article sur cet homme qui a marque l'Histoire de la Russie... mais aussi l'Histoire du XXe siecle.
La fin de l'URSS, l'Union des Republiques Socialistes et Sovietiques.

Parmis les nombreux quotidiens consultes, j'ai trouve un article sympas ecrit par Jack F. Matlock Jr. (rofessor of international and public affairs at Columbia, was the United States ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991) sur le site du Herlad Tribune International. Certes, celui ci ne couvre qu'une partie de la mandature de Eltsine, mais j'ai trouve son style interessant et intriguant sur le personnage.

Boris Yeltsin: The early years

I met Boris Yeltsin shortly after I arrived in Moscow as the United States ambassador in April 1987. He was then the head of the Communist Party organization in Moscow, and while he would become a household name around the world within five years, at the time few outside the Soviet Union had heard of him.

Now, as we consider him in death, two very different pictures are emerging: In one he is the embodiment of the most important democratic revolution of the last half-century, and in the other he is a bumbling president who presided over Russia's turbulent, still incomplete transition out of the Soviet era. But I think that to truly understand the man - and the events he set in motion - it helps to look back to that period just before he burst onto the global political scene.

Back then, Yeltsin would sometimes take the subway to work instead of his chauffeur-driven limousine, and he would show up from time to time at factories and stores to chat with the workers. If the shelves were bare in a shop (as they often were), he would barge into the storeroom, and if he found that the manager was hoarding articles to sell on the black market, he would fire the man on the spot. He quickly became a public legend as a politician of the people who was serious about changing things at the personal level.

Then in November 1987, he was suddenly expelled from the Communist Party leadership after complaining that reforms were not moving fast enough. His opponents' mistake, however, was to allow him to remain in Moscow in a politically unimportant position, where he plotted his return from the wilderness.

Having found him to be one of the most objective observers of Soviet policy, I continued to call on him after his fall; occasionally my wife and I would have him and his wife, Naina, for a private dinner. This paid great dividends: After he catapulted to national prominence by gaining a seat (with nearly 90 percent of the vote in a Moscow district) in the new Congress of People's Deputies in the elections of 1989, he remembered that I had paid attention to him when others had dropped him, and I always had ready access.

Yeltsin, of course, had a reputation as a heavy drinker, but I never saw him drunk. He seemed more like a man who liked to drink than one who had to. He was also notorious for periods of illness; every few months he would disappear from the public for a week or two, only to reappear, seemingly as fit as ever. I recall attending a wedding reception for one of his associates just a few weeks after he was reported to have had serious back surgery - he came to the party in high spirits and danced with every woman present. The flip side of his sometimes comical nature was a resiliency that was remarkable even for a politician.

He also had a keen sense of the political value of theatrical gestures - something most of his Communist colleagues lacked. Famously, he announced his resignation from the Communist Party in July 1990 not by calling a press conference but by demonstratively walking out of a party conference in full view of the television cameras.

Yet this decision may have been harder for him than it looked. Just days before he did it, I asked him over dinner whether rumors that he was going to leave the party were true. He said he was considering it, but had not decided. Naina then leaned over and explained to me that such a decision was hard for someone from outside the Communist system to understand: "When your whole life is bound up in an organization, it is very hard to break the tie."

Yeltsin was often impulsive, and later in his presidency this led to the many gaffes and errant decisions his obituaries will catalog. But in those early days, his instincts were usually correct and, fortunately, led him to give vigorous support to most American policies.

For example, in January 1991, on the evening of a bloody attack by Soviet forces on the television tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, we both attended a theatrical performance in Moscow that had been organized to support the independence movements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

When he saw my wife and me, he had his security guard move over and invited us to sit beside him so we could chat. Soon most eyes in the audience seemed to be on us rather than on the performance on the stage.

What we said was of little importance - the symbolism was what he needed: He was increasingly leading the opposition to Mikhail Gorbachev and wanted to show that he had an easy relationship with the American ambassador. Though I could hardly have refused his invitation to join him, I, too, had a political motive, since the United States was trying to deter a crackdown on the Baltic independence movements.

The next morning, Yeltsin, acting as chairman of the Russian Republic's Supreme Soviet (he had not yet been elected president), instructed Russian soldiers in the Soviet Army to refuse orders to act against the Baltic independence movements. This was an illegal order, of course, since he had no authority over the army - strictly speaking, he could have been accused of treason - but it showed where his heart was.

Boris Yeltsin left his mark on history in many ways, not all of them what he would have wished for. But he was much more than the colorful, erratic drunk of popular legend. Even when he was inspecting storerooms, he was preparing, perhaps, for his starring role in the creation of a Russia independent of the Soviet Union. I only wish his successors would be as firm as he was in respecting the independence of the countries that were once a part of the Soviet empire.

Jack F. Matlock Jr., a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia, was the United States ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.


Sinon, voici qques articles pas mal ...
- "Boris Eltsine est mort", sur lefigaro.fr
- "Boris Eltsine, ancien président russe", par Daniel Vernet, sur lemonde.fr
- "La Russie libre a perdu son Pere", par Philippe Randrianarimanana, sur courrierinternational.com
- "Je vous demande pardon", allocution du 31 Decembre 1999 ou Boris Eltsine demissionne, sur courrierinternational.com
- "Yeltsin's Promise and Failure", par ADI IGNATIUS, sur le www.time.com

et pour finir...

Eltsine et Clinton
envoyé par rogerwilco