It is in the nature of men who lead revolutions that they rarely prove to be effective leaders of governments. So it was with Boris Yeltsin. He was a Communist Party man who engineered the dissolution of both the party and the Soviet Union, then became Russia’s first democratically elected leader. He struggled to introduce Western political and economic values and tried to ensure that there would be no turning back. But his shock therapy led to the collapse of Russia’s economy.

Yeltsin was a huge figure in an extraordinary time. Brought into the ruling Politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev at the dawn of perestroika — the restructuring that couldn’t save the system, Yeltsin electrified Muscovites with his openness and accessibility. His defiance of the ommunist Party was a deadly blow to its rule. As president, Yeltsin tolerated brazen orruption, ended a 1993 rebellion by ordering tanks to fire on the Parliament and launched the brutal military campaign in Chechnya. The deals he made to ensure his 1996 re-election undermined the democracy he championed. The country he turned over to Putin was a mess. Looking back, we can identify the most egregious failings of this man. But without Yeltsin, the death throes of that terrible dictatorship could have been worse.