In his finest moment, he stood atop a tank in 1991 as a defender of a new Russia, rallying opposition to an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Later he proved a fitful but reform-minded steward of his nation's moves toward freedom. He allowed the former Soviet republics to drift away peacefully, though he waged a disastrous war against Chechnya. But his greatest service came in 1999, when he showed Russians how a ruler freely lets go of power.