R.I.P. Boris Yeltsin

[AustinHoya03]

We raise a glass (or perhaps a liter bottle?) of vodka in your honor. Like him or not, Yeltsin was a character -- check out this link to an older account by Strobe Talbott I saw today. Someone should have told Boris Manny & Olga's delivers late.

www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/052602PostMag.shtml

"As Yeltsin emerged from the plane at Andrews Air Force Base and made his way down the mobile stairs, he was gripping the railing and concentrating on each step. His handlers did their best to block the view of the cameras recording his descent. He slipped on the last step and had to grab his wife’s arm. That night at Blair House, Yeltsin was roaring drunk, lurching from room to room in his undershorts. At one point, he stumbled downstairs and accosted a Secret Service agent, who managed to persuade him to go back upstairs and return to the care of his own bodyguards. Yeltsin reappeared briefly on the landing, demanding, “Pizza! Pizza!” Finally, his security agents took him firmly by the arms and marched him briskly around in an effort to calm him down."

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Strobe Talbott's book on Russia during the Yeltsin years and his involvement "The Russia Hand" or something like that is really good though a little self-important.

I prefer David Remnick's (sp?) stuff personally.

Yeltsin is one of the most personally interesting and conflicted leaders of Russia in country that seems to be plagued by them. Despite his noted personal problems - drinking, alleged affairs, letting his daughters do whatever they wanted (they apparently got kickbacks from many Western firms doing major business with Russia in the mid-1990s), and his reliance on personal relationships and distrust of party-afiliation, his list of accomplishments are remarkable and could be summarized with the phrase "creative destruction": he joined the communist party only to outlaw it and destroy it, he started the Chechen War only to end it, he was a member of the Supreme Soviet only to disband it, he created a powerful position of the President (like DeGaulle) only to not exervise all of its powers (Putin is doing that now), and he stood on a tank in the square in front of the Russian Whitehouse only to order tanks to fire on the same building 2 years later. They creative destruction he will most be remembered for was economic and political - he simultaneously floated prices and auctioned off large parts of state property and encouraged individuals and Russian oblasts to "take as much sovereignty as they could swallow". The results were terrible - sovereignty shifted away from the central government and often away from government entirely with the Mafia performing many of the state police functions in Russia in the 1990s and acting as an enforcer of economic relations, contracts, and in some cases auditing people's books and determining that they could make more income begging and breaking their legs and hands to accomplish the career change. He is responsible both for Russia not being a communist-fascist state and for Russia being a syndicalist state with heavy Presidential control.

Like many leaders in times of transition he faced tremendous tasks and in doing so proved to be very human - which makes his so compelling. As a story that combines the two - when Yeltsin was negotiating with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine to dissolve the Soviet Union and create the Commonwealth of Independent States the agreement was reached and then the leaders had a drink - Boris had a few more than everyone else and decided to pass out. Except he hadn't signed the formal agreement. The other leaders had to wake up Boris and get him to sign the document.

[Coast2CoastHoya]

Gotta give the man his due. He was a giant in his time, in the model (not necessarily the method) of leaders of another generation, namely the likes of Churchill and Roosevelt.

Boris, may you be happy swimming in the big, big bottle of Vodka up in the sky.

[RusskyHoya]

tothebeach said:

Gotta give the man his due. He was a giant in his time, in the model (not necessarily the method) of leaders of another generation, namely the likes of Churchill and Roosevelt.

Boris, may you be happy swimming in the big, big bottle of Vodka up in the sky.

I...wouldn't quote go that far. Churchill and Roosevelt successfully waged WWII. Yeltsin let Chechnya turn into a festering bloodbath, complete with atrocities, war crimes, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing. Not good.

[Coast2CoastHoya]

I'll defer to the guy with "Russky" in his screen name. Yeltsin did say that Chechnya was the biggest failure of his tenure though.

Don't forget that FDR and Churchill weren't necessarily saints either. And none of the three was all that sober, although I think Yeltsin might take the (rum) cake.