(b. 1923), minister of defense and marshal of the Soviet Union.
A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Dmitry Yazov joined the army as an enlisted man before he was commissioned in 1942 and served as a combat infantry officer. In the postwar decade Yazov rose through the officer ranks and attended the Frunze Military Academy from 1956 to 1958. He spent the next decade in service with Soviet Group of Forces in Germany, in the Leningrad Military District, and in Cuba during the missile crisis. From 1968 to 1970 he attended the Voroshilov Military Academy of the General Staff. Yazov went on to command the Thirty-fourth Army Corps and Fourth Army. From 1976 to 1979 he headed the Main Directorate for Cadres in the Ministry of Defense. There followed a series of senior positions: deputy commander of the Far Eastern Military District, commander of the Central Group of Force, and commander of the Central Asian Military District. In 1987, in the aftermath of the Rust Affair, Yazov was appointed minister of defense to replace Marshal Sokolov. Yazov oversaw the Ministry during the final days of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the negotiation of key arms control agreements, and a period of mounting criticism of the military under glasnost and perestroika. During his tenure Soviet forces were used to intervene in domestic hot spots in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Baltic Republics. In 1991 Yazov joined an eight-man junta, the State Committee of the Emergency Situation, composed of senior party, military, and security service personnel, who gambled on a putsch to remove Gorbachev and prevent the dismemberment of the Union. Between August 19 and 21, Yazov was responsible for the movement of forces to ensure an orderly transfer of power.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
He failed and the coup collapsed. Yazov was arrested for his part in the coup and sent to jail, but in February 1994 he received a parliamentary amnesty. In 1998 Yazov was appointed as an advisor to the Directorate of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Defense. See also: AFGHANISTAN, RELATIONS WITH; ARMS CONTROL; AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH
Brusstar, James H., and Jones, Ellen. (1995). The Russian Military’s Role in Politics. McNair Paper No. 34. Washington, DC: Institute of National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. Green, William C, and Karasik, Theodore, eds. (1990). Gorbachev and His Generals: The Reform of Soviet Military Doctrine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Herspring, Dale. (1990). The Soviet High Command; 1964-1989: Politics and Personalities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Odom, William E. (1998). The Collapse of the Soviet Military. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
(b. 1931), charismatic anticommunist reformer, first president of post-Soviet Russia.
Democrat or impatient revolutionary, corrupt schemer or populist, Boris Yeltsin displayed a certain recklessness from his childhood through his rise to the presidency of Russia. While Yeltsin orchestrated the peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union, he succumbed to poor health and personal rule and failed to build a strong new Russian state.
Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931, and raised in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) Oblast in the Ural Mountains. He received a degree in construction engineering from Urals Polytechnical Institute in 1955 and spent the early years of his career in a variety of construction and engineering posts in Sverdlovsk, moving from project manager to top leadership positions in the building administration. He joined the CPSU in 1961 and in 1968 became chief of the Construction Department of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Party Committee (obkom). In 1975 he was appointed industry secretary of the Sverdlovsk Obkom.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Yeltsin was known for encouraging innovation, and his production successes made a name for him in Moscow. In 1976 he was named first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Obkom. Among his notable policies from this period, he ordered the midnight bulldozing of the Ipatiev House, the execution site of Nicholas II and his family, as the Kremlin feared it was becoming a shrine. He built a reputation for honesty and incorruptibility mixed with impatience and a tendency toward authoritarian leadership.
Yeltsin’s Party career continued to flourish as he moved up the ranks. He served as a deputy in the Council of the Union (1978-1989), a member of the USSR Supreme Soviet Commission on Transport and Communications (1979-1984), a full member of the CPSU Central Committee (1981-1990), member of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet (1984-1985), and chief of the Central Committee Department of Construction (1985).
Yeltsin soon became part of the new team of young, reform-minded communists under new CPSU General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. On the advice of CPSU ideology and personnel secretary Yegor Lig-achev, Gorbachev brought Yeltsin to Moscow in April 1985. Yeltsin quickly grew restless at a desk job and welcomed his promotion to first secretary of the Moscow City CPSU Committee, succeeding the aging Viktor Grishin. Subsequently, Yeltsin also was elected a candidate member of the Politburo (February 1986) and a member of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet (1986). Yeltsin was extremely popular as Moscow’s de facto mayor, known for riding the subways, dropping in unannounced at local shops, and championing architectural preservation, while exposing and criticizing the privileges enjoyed by the Party elite.
Eventually Yeltsin clashed with key members of the Party leadership. Yeltsin complained openly about the pace of perestroika, criticizing the senior Kremlin leadership for complacency and lack of accountability and Gorbachev for timidity. In particular, he locked horns with Ligachev. Yeltsin’s campaign to remove complacent Grishin cronies infringed upon Ligachev’s personnel portfolio. Ligachev also pointedly objected when Yeltsin began to close Moscow’s special shops and schools for Party officials. Yeltsin became so frustrated that he tendered his resignation in the summer of 1987. Gorbachev refused to accept it, asking him to hold
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his complaints until after the upcoming celebration for the seventieth anniversary of the October Revolution so that a united front would lead the festivities. Yeltsin declined to heed this advice.
Yeltsin aired his grievances at the Central Committee Plenum on October 21, 1987. The plenum agenda included approving Gorbachev’s anniversary speech, but that was not the presentation that attracted the most attention. Following Gorbachev’s presentation, Yeltsin delivered an impromptu speech, lasting for about ten minutes, complaining about the slow pace of reforms, Lig-achev’s intrigues, and a new cult of personality emerging around Gorbachev. Yeltsin charged that leaders were sheltering Gorbachev from the harsh realities of Soviet life. Though this secret speech was not published at the time, its contents soon became public. The plenum itself turned into three hours of criticism heaped on Yeltsin. He was criticized not so much for the content as for the style and the timing of his comments. Yeltsin regularly had opportunities to voice such concerns at weekly Politburo meetings; that he had chosen this particular forum against the direct order of Gorbachev indicated Yeltsin’s immaturity and arrogance. Gorbachev now accepted Yeltsin’s prior resignation from the Moscow Party Committee and asked the Central Committee to enact appropriate resolutions for his removal. He was also stripped of his seat on the Politburo. Yeltsin thus became the first high-level Gorbachev appointee to lose his position.
Yeltsin was not exiled back to Siberia, however. Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin to be first deputy chair of the USSR State Committee for Construction, a post that allowed him to remain in Moscow and in the political limelight. Yeltsin also remained popular with Muscovites, many of whom felt they had lost an ally. Almost one thousand residents of the capital staged a rally to support Yeltsin, which had to be broken up by police. Yeltsin was unavailable. As would frequently occur during his political career, times of high political drama tended to incapacitate him. At the time of the Central Committee Plenum, Yeltsin was hospitalized for an apparent heart attack. He was literally taken from his hospital bed to attend the session of the Moscow City Committee to be formally fired.
Yeltsin reappeared in public at the 1988 May Day celebration, joining other Central Committee members to watch the annual parade. He was selected as a delegate from the Karelian Autonomous
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