Yeltsin had won the power struggle. He would now enter his own stage of ascendancy, when he would be expected to take political responsibility for solving the problems facing Russia – in particular, a collapsing state and an economy on the verge of collapse. The expectations of him were shaped in large part by the public image he had forged in the course of outflanking Gorbachev. Yeltsin had built his authority and seized the political initiative on the basis of an expanding but largely negative program: anti-corruption, antiprivilege, anti-Party apparatus, anti-communist, anti-Gorbachev, and, finally, anti- “the center” (i.e., the Kremlin's Soviet authority). The apogee of this accumulation of authority came in August 1991 when, in the eyes of many citizens, he assumed almost legendary heroic status by mounting a tank in front of the White House and facing down the coup plotters, seemingly through the sheer force of his will. The positive features of Yeltsin's program were real, but they were neither elaborated nor implemented at the time. Throughout 1991 and especially during his presidential election campaign of Spring 1991, Yeltsin promised Russia that he would build a market economy on the Western model, integrate the country into the global capitalist economy, and see Russia take its place among the “normal” and “civilized” liberal democracies of the world. But he did not have to specify a strategy for accomplishing all this, since Russia was not yet autonomous of the Kremlin's dictates.