Western governments had initially been reluctant to embrace Boris Yeltsin, adding to uncertainty in the emerging former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Russia, over the future of the Soviet Union. At the time of the coup, Leonid Kravchuk, chairman of the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet, urged Ukrainians to remain calm and emphasized that the republic’s legally constituted authorities remained in control throughout Ukraine. David R. Marples, an associate professor of Russian and Soviet history at the University of Alberta, questioned whether power would remain with the republics through democratization, but Ukraine, he added, was in a strong position to assert its own taxes, monies and armed forces.