JoAnne in Carrboro, N.C.

I've traveled to the Soviet Union/Russia many times..., but the summer of 1990 was particularly memorable as it was the time when Boris Yeltsin's star was shooting upward.

... Somehow that summer I became acquainted with a seminary student, and one Saturday evening he called me up and told me they'd just announced there would be a service at St. Isaac's the next morning, and invited me to go to it with him. This was a VERY BIG DEAL, as there had not been a religious service in St. Isaac's since 1928. Leningrad's Metropolitan had just been selected to become the Patriarch of All Russia and they got the idea to have a kind of "send-off" service for him.

So the church was packed, even though the event was announced less than 18 hours before the doors opened. There was an extra big commotion when, to everyone's surprise, Boris Yeltsin appeared. I stood right next to him. People were shouting both good and bad things at him: "Boris Nikolaevich! Thank you!" "Boris Nikolaevich! Way to go!" "We want change!" But the most amazing thing I heard was a babushka scolding/warning another older woman, who was cheering her support for Yeltsin and distaste for the old regime. She hissed, "What are you doing?? Be quiet! Keep your mouth shut, do you want to get in trouble? Hush! Be quiet! You shouldn't say that!" St. Isaac's is now a "working" church, though only one side of it functions as such.

Chris in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In the spring of 1991, I personally saw the Soviet leadership and Soviet people's great expectations and fears of what they thought Boris Yeltsin could do collide. It was my senior year in college.

... One night near the middle of our time there, we were told that there was a gathering of protesters at the Red Square. The Soviet parliament was debating what to do about the upstart Russian president. After the Soviet parliament had declared that there would be no public protests, an unprecedented event happened. The Moscow city council had daringly declared that protests would be allowed. We decided to see what was happening up close. When we got to the Square, we found rings of soldiers standing side-by-side, blocking entry, each ring inside the other allowing protesters to get out but not get further in. We were told that a short distance further out, tanks waited to intercede if needed. One of the Soviet professors that we were with found out that the subways were running to a station inside the rings. We took the subway in and found protesters of many different political stripes holding signs and chanting slogans.

In the end, Yeltsin, the Moscow city council and the protesters survived the Soviet parliament and attempts to silence everyone. Of course, what followed was the rise of Yeltsin to greater power and the fall of the Soviet state and communist party. I saw that Yeltsin didn't make it happen alone, but on the shoulders of people who had dreams of what he could do.