If ever an individual represents leadership conditions, it is Boris Yeltsin. A man of modest abilities, he had served in various posts within the Soviet system including the mayor of Moscow in the late 1980s. However, he had been a critic of the slow progress of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev and as a result found himself put on the shelf by the powers that be.
But the democratic initiatives under perostroika led to Yeltsin's election to the Congress of People's Deputies as the delegate from Moscow district in March of 1989. In May 1990, he was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR (RSFSR) and in June of that year was elected President in a general election.
On August 18, 1991, a coup against Gorbachev was launched by hardline communists and while Gorbachev was held in Crimea, it was Yeltsin who raced to the White House of Russia (residence of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR) in Moscow to defy the coup. The White House was surrounded by the military but the troops defected in the face of mass popular demonstrations. Yeltsin responded to the coup by making a memorable speech from the turret of a tank.
The coup broke and Yeltsin was seen as a hero. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was only natural that he should become the new president of a new democratic Russia.
The leadership conditions worked to put Yeltsin in power, but unfortunately, he did not have strong enough leadership capital to lead such a great nation. Boris Yeltsin died of a cardiac arrest at the Moscow Central Clinic yesterday.