Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).
In September 1989, Boris Yeltsin came to America.
At the time, he was a rising political figure inside the Soviet Union – a reformer who had begun to question the system he had spent his life serving. He would later become the first president of Russia.
The trip was part diplomacy, part public relations, part fact-finding mission. Yeltsin toured the country, met with officials and saw the polished version of American power.
But the moment that stayed with him did not happen in Washington, D.C.
