#8
Yeltsin Says He Led Russia Well
December 28, 2001
MOSCOW (AP) - Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted during a television interview that he made mistakes while leading the country's first post-communist government, but he insisted that he led the nation in the right direction.
``Not every decision of mine was right. Such decisions had to be made for the first time, and they could not have been made without any mistakes,'' Yeltsin told RTR state television's Saturday night news magazine Zerkalo, according to a partial transcript obtained in advance by the Interfax news agency.
``But on the whole Russia took the right path, and it became different.''
Yeltsin also defended his role in the demise of the Soviet Union, something most Russians regret. In December 1991, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus signed an accord announcing the end of the one-time superpower.
After the attempted coup by Communist hard-liners in August 1991, ``the republics one after another started to declare independence,'' Yeltsin said, according to separate excerpts reported by the ITAR-Tass news agency. ``All of history pointed to the need to change the political regime in the country.''
The former president said the mistakes he made were not strategic errors ``that would have influenced Russia's history,'' according to Interfax.
``There were tactical mistakes in some less significant options, topics and issues.''
Under Yeltsin, Russia lurched painfully through a series of political and financial jolts to the 1998 economic collapse, when many Russians watched their savings disappear overnight - some for the second time in a decade.
During the later years of his presidency, Yeltsin was plagued with health problems that frequently kept him away from the Kremlin.
Yeltsin resigned as president on Dec. 31, 1999, and has since maintained a fairly low profile in Russia, appearing only occasionally at public functions.
His hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, continues to enjoy high approval ratings, with many Russians applauding Putin's energetic, businesslike approach - a stark contrast with the later part of Yeltsin's presidency.
Next Article