24 April 2007
Russian Jewish leaders have praised the country’s former president, Boris Yeltsin, who died on Monday aged 76,
as the man who ended decades of state-sanctioned anti-Semitism in Russia. Both of Russia's chief rabbis have offered their condolences to Yeltsin's wife Naina and their daughter Tatyana. Mikhail Chlenov, who established Russia's first legal Jewish communal group in the early years of Yeltsin's rule, said that Jews should remember Yeltsin as a great figure. "It was his great achievement that the new Russia came to life without that evil called state anti-Semitism," said Chlenov, president of the Va'ad of Russia and secretary-general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.
Others credit Yeltsin for allowing Jewish life to develop freely in Russia to an extent that was hard to imagine even under his predecessor, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. With American Jewish activists marking the 40th anniversary this year of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, it is notable that meaningful Jewish emigration began under Gorbachev, but it was Yeltsin who really opened the floodgates. "While Gorbachev made freedom of emigration a reality for Soviet Jews, it was Yeltsin who made possible an unprecedented freedom of Jewish life in the country," Borukh Gorin, a spokesman for the Federation of Jewish Communities, told JTA. "Jewish schools and new synagogues were opened – it was he who made the impossible possible."
Another leading figure of the Russian Jewish renaissance during Yeltsin's presidency noted the fundamental changes in civil liberties and economic freedom that Yeltsin helped establish in Russia, changes that ultimately benefited Jews. "I won't make a direct connection between Yeltsin's rule and Jewish life in Russia unless we take into account the maxim that the more freedom there is, the better it is for Jews," said Alexander Osovtsov, who served as executive vice president of the Russian Jewish Congress from 1996 to 2000.
At the same time, some observers say that controversial policies in the second half of Yeltsin's presidency, such as the decision to go to war in Chechnya paved the way for the rise to power of Vladimir Putin and a move back toward authoritarianism that has been associated with his rule. Mikhail Chlenov agrees that Yeltsin was a controversial and even tragic figure. This had become even more evident since he stepped down in December 1999 in favor of Putin. Yeltsin successfully fought the predominance of Communist ideology, but was unsuccessful in overcoming the influence of bureaucracy and powerful apparatchiks. Many of the negative trends in Russian political and public life since his resignation were a direct result of the unfinished struggle Yeltsin led, Chlenov said, adding: "These are these bureaucratic circles who are taking their revenge now.”
