Boris Yeltsin's Legacy: Very Mixed

About 50 million Russians will be voting for president on Sunday, and barring a miracle, acting President Vladimir Putin will get the job.

Former President Boris Yeltsin, who anointed Putin, will congratulate himself, because -- most experts say -- Putin will rule much the same as Yeltsin did.

"I think Putin is probably Yeltsin mark 2," said Stephen Jones, associate professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

So, as people scrutinize Putin's every move, trying to predict what his influence will be on Russia and the world, they should also consider Yeltsin's legacy. Is Russia a better place because of Yeltsin's 11-year reign, or would the Russians have been better off without him?

"It's a very, very mixed legacy," Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton told Producer Justine Blau at CBS.Com. "On the one hand, Yeltsin faced down the last gasp of Communism in August of 1991. That's probably his big contribution to Russia, historically. And he attempted very wide sweeping reforms that brought good results for very few people and bad results for the vast majority."

Jones agrees that Yeltsin got Russia through a very difficult transition period with democracy more or less intact. "On the other hand, one other result of Yeltsin's legacy is an economy in shambles, massive corruption, a decrease in civil rights, and war on its own territory."

But, he adds, "It could have been worse."

"We all remember that it was Yeltsin who got up on the tank in August of 1991, and averted a potential military coup. Unfortunately, he did not maintain the openness and did not have the strategy, tact, or intelligence of Mikhail Gorbachev, for example. But at that state, Gorbachev was not longer an option and Yeltsin was the best alternative."

Jones believes that Yeltsin's personality had a huge impact on Russia.

"He was authoritarian. He still has all the mannerisms of a Soviet party boss," says Jones.

"It seemed to me he had no real strategy," says Jones, characterizing Yeltsin as "very impetuous, often in a hurry."

"He seemed to be reacting to events, rather than creating opportunities for economic and political development."

"He, as many politicians, became infatuated with power. He had a drinking problem, which didn't help, and should have resigned much earlier than he did because he was so sick. His flaws were many. One of his greatest flaws was to lead Russia into a disastrous war in Chechnya, which had a major impact on Russian domestic politics."

According to Jones, Yeltsin could have avoided war with Chechnya by negotiating. "If he'd had the foresight, he would have seen that it was a war that he couldn't win. And I would say it's a war that militarily Russia has won, but in the long run it has very serious consequences for Russia."

he Chechen war has weakened democracy in Russia, says Jones. "It has made tough military policies acceptable when in most cases such policies backfire. It has cost Russia enormous financial burdens when it can least afford it. They need to spend money on their civilian economy, and their military and civilian economies are not connected. So putting money into the military, does not help the civilian economy."

Jones points out that the war is not reducing unemployment. He predicts that the continuation of the war by Chechen guerrillas, with continuing Russian casualties, is going to undermine the authority of the army in the long term.

It adds to the sense of incompetence by Yeltsin's government, he says.

Gorbachev was very unpopular because he was presiding over the decline of an empire, observes Jones. "Yeltsin had in some sense a better chance because he was leader of a new state with a new beginning. But he failed to capitalize on those possibilities."