[Tax-chick]

I had no idea Yeltsin was still alive.

[Cheburashka]

Boris Yeltsin is a man with flaws. And he was at one time an appartchik, something he glosses over in this story.

Yet he resigned from the Politburo in 1987 on a matter of principle. Note that in 1987 It was hard to believe that the Soviet Union would not outlive everyone then alive. I certainly believed it would outlive me. To resign from the Politburo was to resign from the Soviet aristocracy and further meant dragging all your family down with yourself. And no one can forget his actions in August 1991 as President of Russia in opposing the coup, which brought the freedom to all of the Soviet Union's citizens, not merely the Russians.

One can dispute his opinions, one can't dispute his right to express them.

[JimSEA]

Too bad Yeltsin was an alcoholic and thus a failed leader. I am afraid that Yeltsin may be fondly remembered by the Russians after Putin completes his effort at turning the clock back. My conspiracy fantasy involves Putin taking advantage of a WMD attack on USA to complete his return to a police state and his quest for an open dictatorship.

[The_Reader_David]

Hey, cut Yeltsin some slack.

He was the one who killed the Soviet Union, by, of all things, having Russia secede! We, the Russians, and the Latvians (among many others) should be grateful to him.

His point is that there is neither an identity nor a continuity between the Soviet Union and Russia as it exists today. Moreover that the Communist ideology was a foreign import, not indigenously Russian, infecting the half-Westernized intelligentsia first, so in some sense, Russia, too was occupied. Besides, it was a Georgian, not a Russian, at the helm of the Soviet state when it occupied Latvia.

[Thunder90]

ping