Boris Yeltsin: Hero or Traitor?
- Ludmila Melnikoff
- May 8
- 2 min read
Heroes are rare, and when I first met Boris Yeltsin in December 1990, I walked away thinking he was the greatest hero I have ever seen. Yeltsin was like a brave bull, beaming with self-confidence, energy and strength. The meeting was to discuss gold mining joint ventures between my company, STAR, and Russian gold mining companies in Siberia. Yeltsin banged his fist on the desk and roared, “Soon all Russian Gold will be in my hands. Go to Siberia and if you find anyone who wants you, come back to me and I will support you. Russia needs foreign investment.”
And so, with Yeltsin’s blessing, we toured Siberia and finally did a deal with Lenzoloto, which had rights to the world’s largest secret gold deposit, “Sukhoi Log.” Yeltsin, true to his word, supported our joint venture in which STAR had a 31% share and hence began my roller-coaster ride to wealth.
In June 1991, Yeltsin was elected President of Russia in the country’s first democratic elections. Then on 11 December 1991, he orchestrated the dissolution of the Soviet Union and embedded democracy into Russia.
Russia had a chance to become a free, lawful democratic country. What Yeltsin should have done next is hold democratic parliamentary elections, as the Russian parliament was infested with communist hard-liners who eventually turned on him resulting in Yeltsin’s bloody siege of the “White House” (Russian parliament house) in 1993. He should have also dissolved the KGB, infested with hard-liners and corrupt crooks, including the little-known Vladimir Putin.
All this took its toll on Yeltsin, and he gradually became too sick and too drunk to rule Russia, and others took advantage of him, becoming the defacto rulers, including Putin, and the so-called oligarchs, both inadvertently forged by Yeltsin. It was Yeltsin who gifted the oligarchs enormous stakes in priceless assets during the privatization of Russia’s national property, thus creating a super-rich class of businessmen in exchange for their political support.
According to a recent documentary called “The Traitors” by Alexey Navalny’s Anticorruption Foundation (FBK), Yeltsin also filled his coffers with riches and hence label him a traitor who came to power as a fearless fighter against Communist party corruption, and once in power simply filled his own boots with wealth.
Yet Yeltsin’s greatest shortfall was his appointment of a petty officer from the KGB as his heir-apparent – Putin, in exchange for immunity from prosecution for corruption.
So, hero or traitor? I think a flawed hero who lost his way and betrayed the Russian people.
This whole saga is revealed in my newly released memoir “For the Love of Russian Gold” (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all major book sites).
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