It is in the nature of men who lead revolutions that they rarely prove to be effective leaders of governments. So it was with Boris Yeltsin.

He was a Communist Party man who engineered the dissolution of both the party and the Soviet Union, then became Russia’s first democratically elected leader. He struggled to introduce Western political and economic values and tried to ensure that there would be no turning back. But his shock therapy led to the collapse of Russia’s economy and left much of its wealth in the hands of oligarchs.

His constant political and personal roiling — including bouts of drunkenness — left many in his country yearning for a traditional strongman, which is what they got with Mr. Yeltsin’s handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin.

Perhaps the most accurate judgment of Mr. Yeltsin is the one he passed on himself when he abruptly resigned on the last day of 1999: “I want to ask for your forgiveness. For the fact that many of the dreams we shared never came true.”

Mr. Yeltsin was a huge figure in an extraordinary time. Brought into the ruling Politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev at the dawn of perestroika — the restructuring that couldn’t save the system — Mr. Yeltsin electrified Muscovites with his openness and accessibility. His defiance of the Communist Party was a deadly blow to its rule, and when party loyalists staged their putsch in August 1991, Mr. Yeltsin’s speech from atop a tank collapsed the rebellion.

As president, Mr. Yeltsin tolerated brazen corruption, ended a 1993 rebellion by ordering tanks to fire on the Parliament and launched the brutal military campaign in Chechnya. The deals he made to ensure his 1996 re-election undermined the democracy he championed. The country he turned over to Mr. Putin was a mess. Looking back, we can identify the most egregious failings of this man. But without Mr. Yeltsin, the death throes of that terrible dictatorship could have been far worse.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company