Posted on 04/23/2007 6:49:06 AM PDT by dawgmeat9
Boris Yeltsin is dead, Russian news agencies say, quoting Kremlin.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I’m reading a biography of him done by his press secretary at the time.
It’s funny, because the whole thing fell apart pretty easily and quickly. In fact, the easiest thing to dismantle was the KGB. The meeting and agreement on it took less than fifteen minutes.
As I know think I understand it, the USSR was really a union, not a monolith. Each state had a head, and the head of the Russian state was Yeltsin. He essentially had all the power anyway.
Yeltsin believed in the union, however. After the coup, however briefly the other states tasted independence, the entire idea of the ‘band getting back together’ was long history.
In fact, the book reveals the level of hatred between the Ukrainians and the Russians. Something about being starved into joining the union in the first place?
It’s hard for me now to think that the sword Putin rattles today belongs only to just the state of Russia. As much as he may like to represent the rest of those states, he only represents Russia.
Now, Russia’s still only the biggest country by land mass on the face of the earth, but . . .
If it was, Put had everyone that violated the copywrite killed off!
LOL you are good!!!
Which funeral was that, or was that the Auschwitz memorial?
BUMP
He had a cold and died in a Cosmodrome fire, like a lot of Russian leaders.
A brave man. May he rest in peace.
As I recall, quite a few Soviet athletes & musicians who were privileged enough to travel to the US also lost their love of communism on their first trip to an American supermarket or shopping mall.
I tip my glass of Stoli to him. (It’s actually a really cheap brand I poured into a Stoli bottle, but I do what I can!)
I remember telling my boss that day, “This is a revolution.” He laughed at me. I was right, Gerry—you were wrong.
RIP, Boris Nikolayevich. You stood up for individual liberty, and kept the communists and the mafia out of power. It’s too bad they took over again once you left, but you did what you could.
Posner's book was, like the man, smooth and cosmopolitan, the obvious product of a veteran con man then moving on to a new mark as the old USSR fell.
Yeltsin's book was totally different in tone; it was real with all its rough edges, the product of a man who was ambitious, to be sure, but who wanted to do good for his people.
For all his faults he was perhaps the best leader Russia has had in centuries.
I remember watching it live. A sight to see.
Actually, Yeltsin did one heroic thing. He stood up on that Soviet tank outside the Russian Parliament building and declared the attempted coup illegal. He mobilized the opposition.
Requiescat In Pace Boris Nikolayevich!!!
You earned the rest big man.
“It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.”
-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, 1990
It is a tragedy that Yeltsin was followed by Putin, who bit by bit is creating a new monster. RIP President Yeltsin.
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