Yeltsin

Yeltsin

• Popular radical 
  • ​​​​​​​reputation for attacking corruption within the Party
  • campaigned in 1989 for radical reform and got 89% Moscow vote
  • used his political legitimacy to criticise Gorbachev
  • he helped the IRDG 
• Yeltsin and the Party
  • ​​​​​​​damaged the authority of the Party be resigning in July 1990
  • after this ^ membership dropped by 3.3 million
• Gorbachev's rival
  • ​​​​​​​June 1990 opinion polls showed he was more popular than Gorbachev
  • he presented himself as a rival leader of a non-Communist government
• Nationalism 
  • ​​​​​​​emphasised rights and autonomy of Russia which weakened the USSR
  • encouraged the Republics to take as much nationalism as they could swallow
• Rival powerbase
  • ​​​​​​​he had democratic legitimacy where Gorbachev didn't
• The coup
  • ​​​​​​​became centre of opposition to the coup
  • used it as a pretext to ban the Communist Party
  • seized Party assets to undermine their ability to control the Union
  • emerged as a hero
• Yeltsin and the Union
  • held secret meetings with Belarus and Ukraine to sign the Minsk Agreement
  • he persuaded the leaders of Soviet army to abandon the Union and form a Russian army