BY Martin Woollacott

THE twentieth century came to an end at 7pm Moscow time on December 25, 1991. The moment when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, ceded place to Boris Nicolayevich Yeltsin, the first ruler of the new Russia, seems a marker of far more importance than any on the horizon eight years from now.

It is as if the business of our century is over ahead of the calendar. The two enormous conflicts which have characterised it, that between capitalism and communism, and that between the old empires and the new powers Ñ struggles that have interacted through the decades Ñ have ended. ÒBolshevismÓ, as Winston Chur-chill in 1918 demanded it should, has finally Òcommitted suicideÓ.

The other great fight, that between the Anglo-Saxon powers and the newcomer states of Germany and Japan, has terminated with it. The Soviet UnionÕs eclipse has been the basis for GermanyÕs emergence as the main European power: without it GermanyÕs renaissance after the disaster of the second world war would have remained incomplete. As for Japan, AmericaÕs industrial decline and the end of the cold war has created the space in which the post-1945 renewal could be rounded out into real power.

Of course, certain facts remain unchanged. The Russian empire is, from one point of view, the last old empire to disappear, going the way of the British and French empires, its allies in two world wars. Yet those maritime domains were essentially different from MoscowÕs land empire, which in some sense will continue.

The struggle between Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev was often perceived as an ideological contest Ñ between a nationalist and an internationalist, between an ex-communist and a communist. This was overdone. Both men were ex-communists, but one was in a position to repudiate the party and the past more completely than the other. And both believed that RussiaÕs historic influence over neighbouring peoples ought to be preserved, but Yeltsin could offer a more neutral and hence more acceptable version of union.

The struggle was something else as well Ñ an epic contest between men of utterly incompatible temperaments. For Gorbachev, Yeltsin was impetuous, wilful, a bully boy, the ultimate wrecker. For Yeltsin, Gorbachev was the Òlover of half measures and half stepsÓ, who wished to appear as a Òwise, omniscient heroÓ but who was in fact a devious manager and manipulator of men.

Yeltsin has now harried Gorbachev from office; yet those who criticise should remember YeltsinÕs own humiliation in 1987, dragged from a hospital bed to be abused and cast into the political wilderness. In the hour of YeltsinÕs revenge it is worth recalling what he wrote in his autobiography: ÒOur huge country is balanced on a razorÕs edge and nobody knows what will happen to it tomorrow.Ó That is as true today under Boris as it was under Mikhail.
Yet, in saluting Mikhail Gorbachev, a man to whom we all have reason to be grateful, we have at the same time to accept that after the coup the division of power in Russia between two rival leaders and governments was unstable. That dualism was dangerous Ñ one man had to win, and Gorbachev had to be the loser. Russia is a safer place, and the world with it, because that rivalry has ended.