Titans of History (77 page)

But he did gradually open up a semi-free press and allowed limited free elections—though he did not risk any kind of vote on his own role, relying on the party for his legitimacy. To Russians, he came to stand for a dangerous experiment, his tone—so charming to Westerners—sounded pompous and lecturing to his own people.

Abroad his achievements were truly revolutionary and titanic: he overturned the Brezhnev Doctrine of intervention in eastern European satellites: in partnership with his Georgian foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, he negotiated arms control agreements with US President Ronald Reagan; more amazingly he offered to free countries like Poland after decades of tyranny. In 1989, he withdrew Soviet troops from their catastrophic war in Afghanistan and allowed eastern Europeans to grasp freedom: Soviet client regimes fell in every country. In Germany, he allowed the Berlin Wall to be brought down—and Germany to be reunited. Reagan had confronted the Soviet Union with powerful democratic rhetoric and rising American defense spending—both of which certainly played a part in the fall of the Soviet imperium—but the achievement of this was overwhelmingly thanks to Gorbachev's conviction that this could be done peacefully. At home Gorbachev was determined to promote communist rule and the coherence of the Soviet Union but his own actions had undermined both fatally: the elections of leaders in the separate republics had produced a more legitimate leadership than that of the party.

When he came to power in 1985, Gorbachev had promoted a tall, energetic but reckless new leader named Boris Yeltsin to Moscow party chief and Politburo member. Almost the same age as Gorbachev, Yeltsin was the son of a builder who had been repressed by Stalin. Growing up in Sverdlovsk, he rose to local party secretary by 1976. Yeltsin was the opposite of Gorbachev: while the latter was contemplative, legalistic, sometimes verbose,
often witty, and brave, Yeltsin was bombastic, emotional, courageous—and an alcoholic. The two soon clashed and Gorbachev sacked Yeltsin in 1987, giving him a public dressing-down. But, both opportunistic and idealistic, Yeltsin was ahead of Gorbachev in realizing that the Soviet Union and communism itself would and should soon fall. Yeltsin embraced liberal democracy—yet it also suited him. He was elected president of the Russian Republic in 1989, giving him potential legitimacy unavailable to Gorbachev. In July 1990 he dramatically resigned from the Communist Party.

In the following months, the strain started to show as ethnic turmoil and bloodshed intensified in the Caucusus and Soviet security forces seemed to be out of control, killing protesters in Lithuania. The Politburo and security service, the KGB, plotted to overthrow Gorbachev: in August 1991, a committee of incompetent drunken communist leaders and Chekists arrested Gorbachev on his Black Sea holiday and sent tanks into Moscow, but crowds defended the White House offices of Yeltsin. Yeltsin bravely climbed onto a tank outside to defiantly address the crowds. The coup fell apart but its real victim was Gorbachev, who had lost his prestige.

When Gorbachev tried to regain the momentum, Yeltsin ended the monopoly of the Communist Party and then conspired with the elected presidents of the other Soviet republics to end the Soviet Union. Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day 1991, thus ending the Soviet Union, which broke up into its independent republics. Gorbachev realized that communist oligarchy was wrong and after his fall he sincerely embraced liberal democracy but it was too late.

Yeltsin dominated Russia in the 1990s and, initially, his enthusiasm and openness were refreshing. Almost for the first time in its history, Russia enjoyed totally free elections, a totally free press, a free economy, a free investigation of history and of state crimes—and all these were Yeltsin's achievements. But he was fatally
flawed: alcoholic, inconsistent and capricious, he ruled like a tsar through cronies and henchmen such as his sinister bodyguard General Korzhakov and his billionaire financial adviser Boris Berezovsky. Yeltsin's privatization of the Russian economy was hopelessly mismanaged, making billionaires of the so-called Oligarchs, over-powerful businessmen like Berezovsky.

In 1993, communist hardliners in Parliament threatened the entire democratic project with an armed revolt which Yeltisn defeated by ordering the storming by special forces of the White House in Moscow. The following year, faced with rebellion and the assertion of independence by Chechnya, Yeltsin invaded the little republic. As they committed atrocities on a vast scale, killing thousands of innocent civilians and utterly destroying cities such as Grozny, Russian forces were humiliated by dynamic Chechen fighters. Yeltsin was forced to retreat, withdraw Russian forces from Chechnya and infamously recognize Chechen independence—an unprecedented Russian humiliation. The decay of financial corruption, Kremlin intrigue, economic chaos, mafia disorder and resurgent repression unleashed by the Chechen war discredited his real achievements.

By 1996, Yeltsin, ill and isolated, faced a new election which he seemed likely to lose: his billionaire cronies, the Oligarchs, mobilized their fortunes to help him win re-election but now even democracy was tainted. The next three years saw economic meltdown and Yeltsin's personal decline as he sacked prime ministers with imperial whimsy and embarrassed his country with acts of drunken buffoonery.

In 1999 he chose a young, ambitious and severe ex-KGB officer and cabinet minister named Vladimir Putin to be his successor and dramatically resigned the presidency. Putin proved more than equal to the task: he restored the power of the state and the prestige of Russia as a great power, crushed mafia corruption and broke the
influence of the Oligarchs. At the same time he demonstrated his discipline and vigor by again attacking Chechnya with brutal and bloody competence, crushing the rebellion at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. Putin promoted his colleagues from the security services who now dominated Russian government and business, diminished democracy and press freedom, ended the election of local governors and personified a new Russian form of authoritarian government that he called sovereign democracy. During two terms in the Kremlin, Putin utterly dominated Russia in a way Gorbachev and Yeltsin had never done: he was able to hand over the presidency to an aide, Dmitri Medvedev, while remaining the country's ruler as prime minister. In 2012, he was able to return to the presidency, despite popular protests at widespread corruption and the regime's authoritarianism. Putin may turn out to be the dominant Russian leader of the early 21st century.

1935–1977

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man, for more years than I know … They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up
.

Elvis Presley, in an early interview

Elvis, the King. Thus the United States, that most republican of nations, dubbed its favorite musical son, ensuring that his preeminence would remain inviolate. He didn't invent rock 'n' roll, he
didn't write many songs, he never toured abroad, and he has since been eclipsed in almost every bald statistic of popular-music success. But all that is irrelevant. His sublimity of voice—startling in its reach from raunch and rebellion to the angelically tender—his devastating good looks, and the pulsating charisma of the performer entranced millions. He was a global star, and, by carrying the black music of blues and gospel to a white audience in a way that was unthinkable before, he enabled the musical synthesis that remains the bedrock of popular music today.

Elvis Aaron Presley had a poor Southern upbringing and was much closer to his lively and impressive mother than his shirking, petty-criminal father. He was a shy teenager, often bullied for being a mother's boy. When he left school, he started driving trucks, just as his father did. But it was not long before his remarkable voice came to the attention of the record producer Sam Philips. Philips was looking for a white man to sing “Negro” songs, and when he heard Presley's self-funded singles, recorded in 1953 as a birthday present for his mother, Philips felt he had found his man.

In 1954 Presley recorded “That's All Right,” a blues song. Radio stations in Tennessee immediately began playing it, and Presley went on a tour of the Southern states. He came up against the ingrained prejudice of many white Americans opposed to seeing blacks and whites mixing together or sharing culture. But even this generations-old legacy of separateness could not compete with the adoration from the young and more color-blind fans that Presley began to attract. By 1956 pressure from white teenagers had forced radio stations nationwide to play Elvis' singles—hits such as “Heartbreak Hotel” (1956), “Love Me Tender” (1956) and the title song to the film
Jailhouse Rock
(1957)—and he remained completely frank about his musical influences. In some quarters black critics accused him of stealing their music; in contrast, Little Richard called Elvis “a blessing,” who “opened the door” for black music. What was
undeniable was that his momentum was unstoppable.

Elvis signed a management deal with “Colonel” Tom Parker, to whom he turned over all of his business affairs. Parker was a shadowy character, but he was a master merchandiser and turned Elvis into the greatest musical brand the world had ever seen. Under his guidance, Elvis found that he could draw crowds and audiences on a phenomenal scale. He broke records for sales of singles and albums, and he could attract 80 percent of the American television audience for his TV appearances. Young men wanted to be him, young women wanted him, and older generations were scared and shocked. In the city of Liverpool, John Lennon recruited Paul McCartney to the band that had Elvis as its lodestar and that wanted to be “bigger than Elvis.”

Back home, as Elvis' music and high-energy stage act grew ever more popular, conservative America became more disgusted and worried that its offspring were being irrevocably corrupted. His habits of shaking his legs, rolling his tightly leather-clad hips, thrusting and throwing himself about in front of the microphone were considered the height of obscenity. As a result, there were many who saw Elvis' draft into the US Army, and subsequent posting to Germany in 1958, as something of a relief. When he returned to America in 1960, he was a more subdued character, and during the 1960s, as the era of the pop groups burgeoned, he chose to concentrate on a lackluster film career rather than return to music. But he reinvented himself for a musical comeback in 1968, adopting some of the influences of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the very stars who had re-interpreted his kind of music and sold it back to America.

Elvis's popularity remained huge throughout the 1970s, and he sold out enormous venues across the United States, particularly in Las Vegas, albeit in a new persona where he was now encased in the outré outfits of the cabaret scene. He still made it into the charts, for example with “Always on My Mind” (1973). But his health
and state of mind declined alarmingly. He grew fat, gorging himself on fast food. He also became addicted to prescription drugs. He slept for most of the day and cut a bloated figure on stage—although that voice remained mesmerizing.

Elvis died on August 16, 1977. He suffered heart failure at Graceland, his mansion in Memphis, Tennessee. His funeral was a massive event, watched by millions. He ranks with the American singers Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson, those English bands the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the French singer Edith Piaf as musical giants who have moved beyond the realm of music into the conscious identity of nations.

1937–2006

What has befallen us of defeat, shame and humiliation, Saddam, is the result of your follies, your miscalculations and your irresponsible actions
.

Shia Iraqi army commander in 1991, inaugurating
the uprising against Saddam's rule that was subsequently
crushed by the dictator's forces

Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, aspired to be an Arab hero and conqueror, but his long reign of ruthless oppression, sadistic cruelty, gangsterish corruption, unnecessary wars, mass murder and a ludicrous personality cult led to a series of political miscalculations that brought about the destruction of his regime and his own death on the scaffold.

Saddam was born in a small Sunni village close to the town of Tikrit. His father died before he was born so he was brought up in his stepfather's house—repeatedly beaten and spending much of his youth as a street kid. In 1947 he went to live with his mother's brother, from whom, at the age of ten, he received his first schooling.

In the early 1950s Saddam moved with his uncle to Baghdad and tried to get into military college but failed the exams. Meanwhile, he imbibed from his uncle a hatred of British influence in the kingdom of Iraq, became a regular participant in anti-government demonstrations, and formed his own street gang to attack political opponents. In time he became drawn toward the Ba'ath Party, which combined socialism with anti-Western, pan-Arab nationalism, and in 1958 he participated in the army coup led by Brigadier Abdel Karim Kassem that overthrew and murdered King Faisal II. Many, especially the Ba'athists, were disappointed that Kassem failed to lead Iraq into a union with neighboring Arab countries, and in 1959 Saddam was involved in a failed attempt to assassinate Kassem, after which he went into exile in Syria and Egypt.

A Ba'athist-dominated coup in 1963 induced Saddam to return, but the new ruler of Iraq, Abdul Salam Arif, soon fell out with his Ba'athist allies, and Saddam was imprisoned for several years before escaping in 1967. He went on to become the right-hand man of the Ba'ath Party leader, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, and after the party seized power in 1968, he emerged as the strong man of the regime, becoming vice-president, as well as head of Iraq's security apparatus and general secretary of the Ba'ath Party. He deliberately fashioned his regime on that of Stalin, whom he studied.