The recent death of Boris Yeltsin has gotten me thinking about his legacy as well as the legacy of his predecessor, and who, strictly speaking, was a better leader.

Yeltsin became the face of Russian democracy and he certainly helped to accelerate the decline of the Soviet Union, but aside from that, not much positive can be said about him. He was a world class drunk and he allowed the economy to falter, which left many Russians worse off than they were under Soviet rule. Yeltsin never seemed to have any real interest in being anything more than a figurehead and he certainly never did anything to shake this perception.

Gorbachev, on the other hand, was a real leader. He improved relations with the West, gave more autonomy to the Soviet states, and increased freedom of speech, among other things. In doing so, he put himself in an impossible situation. His reforms were seen as too much by the hardline Communists and not enough by others. Along with Lenin and Kruschev, he is one of the few admirable leaders that Russia has had in the last 100+ years.