Posted on 04/27/2007 6:10:54 PM PDT by A. Pole
Boris Yeltsin, who died on April 23, was a towering figure in Russian political history. But was he, as so many US obituaries and editorials have described him, the "Father of Russian Democracy"?
As though a wave of historical amnesia had swept over the media, few commentators seemed to remember that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, upon becoming Soviet leader in 1985, who launched the democratic reforms of "perestroika" and "glasnost"--ending censorship, permitting, even encouraging, opposition rallies and demonstrations, beginning market reforms and holding the first free, multi-candidate elections. (Indeed, Yeltsin was the chief beneficiary of those reforms.)
[...]
After August 1991, Yeltsin's anti-democratic policies polarized, embittered and impoverished his country laying the ground for what is now unfolding in Russia--though it is being blamed solely on today's Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[...]
Beginning in early 1992, Yeltsin launched the disastrous "shock therapy" policies which sent the country reeling with pain. Urged upon Russia by a group of US (primarily Harvard) economists, and supported by the Clinton Administration and energetically implemented by Yeltsin's young "reformers," these policies--almost universally touted as "reforms" in the Western media-- involved the swift elimination of most price controls and a privatization program that resulted in hyperinflation wiping out, in installments, the savings of average Russians. Roughly half of Russia's people thus found themselves living below the poverty level.
** In October 1993, Yeltsin used tank cannons to destroy not only the Parliament that had brought him to power and defended him during the attempted coup of 1991 but the entire political, constitutional order of Russia's post-Communist republic. The US government and media, with few exceptions, acted as Yeltsin's cheerleaders as the Russian President's tanks pounded Russia's first ever popularly elected and fully independent legislature. A senior US official told the New York Times that "if Yeltsin suspends an anti-democratic parliament, it is not necessarily an antidemocratic act"; and an unnamed US official was quoted by Newsweek as saying the Clinton Administration "would have supported Yeltsin even if his response had been more violent than it was." (187 people died and almost 500 were wounded in the attack.)
[...]
In 1996, Yeltsin's reelection campaign---financed by a handful of oligarchs including now-exiled Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky and aided by pro-Kremlin media bias and censorship--was marked by spectacular legal violations. No less enduring in its consequences was the most aggressive giveaway on Yeltsin's watch --the notorious "loans-for-shares" agreement--which allowed a small group of men, in exchange for financing Yeltsin's campaign, to take control of and Russia's most valuable economic assets.(It was a colossal piece of criminality glossed over at the time by almost all US media outlets as "market reform".) Thus was birthed the rapacious oligarchy--leading one Russian journalist to remark the other day that Yeltsin was not "the father of democracy" but "the father of the oligarchy."
**In August 1998, following a number of financial dealings that victimized or failed to benefit most Russians, the government after pledging not to do so,suddenly devalued the ruble, defaulted on its debts and froze bank accounts. In effect, people's savings were once again expropriated, this time decimating the post-1991 middle class.
Such events help explains why for millions of Russians, Yeltsin's rule was an age of blight not democracy. This magazine never lost sight of the social and economic disaster he presided over. But almost no one in the US media wanted to tell that story. Preferring Panglossian narratives, few cared to report that since 1991 Russia's reality included the worst peacetime industrial depression of the 20th century. In 1999, when the UN Development program reported that " a human crisis of monumental proportions is emerging in the former Soviet Union," the report was virtually ignored. And while, as Professor Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski wrote, "for the first time in recent world history one of the major industrial nations with a highly educated society has dismantled the results of several decades of economic development," American press coverage preferred to run glowing stories about Yeltsin's crusading "young reformers" --sometimes called "democratic giants" -- showing a cold indifference to the terrible human consequences of the crusade. (A Reuters journalist later made the observation: "The pain is edited out." ) As Stephen Cohen wrote, "sustaining such a Manichaean narrative in the face of so many conflicting realities turned American journalists into boosters for US policy and cheerleaders for Yeltsin's Kremlin."
Neither these cold realities nor the political and economic consequences today have chastened the the booster-journalists. Indeed, while many of the obituaries in newspapers that were Yeltsin's most uncritical supporters at the time now give a more balanced account than they did at the time --there is no acknowledgement that they helped promote the acts they now criticize or regret.
Embedded in those obituaries is another argument, perhaps stated most clearly by Strobe Talbott, a Russia expert and Clinton's primary adviser on Yeltsin's Russia, that while there are valid criticisms of Yeltsin there was no alternative route to what he imposed. Yet the majority of Russian pro-market economists warned against "shock therapy" --abetted by US-sponsored policies--foreseeing its tragic outcome. The alternative road they offered was more evolutionary, a gradualist approach, a "third way" that would have averted catastrophic impoverishment, plundering and lawlessness. Time has proved them right.
[...]
That’s actually a very good point. Think about it: The Communist system was in place since 1917 and was the only game in town. That’s three, almost four generations, where only system existed, where all dissent was eliminated, where history was politicized, etc.
bump
If there's something else going on that I'm not aware of, then I'll gladly stand corrected on this one.
I remember the Polls during his time 95% of the Russians hated the USA because Bill Clinton Propped him up far too long! I guess they were drinking Buddies...
Then we Bomb CHinese embassie with Tennets faulty Inteligence again.. and 90% of Chinese hate the USA and Clinton Albright Richardson as a result!
I guess Bush’s approvals don’t look as Bad....haha
I don’t think we’re going to get an answer, it’s a done deal.
Well, there goes the Immigration ping list, too. I just don’t understand the heavy hand on FR lately. It seems any deviations from a certain perspective are now unforgivable. What kind of discussion will there be if everyone has the same opinions?
To do that someone would have to admit they made a mistake. That is totally contrary to human nature. Ain’t gonna happen, that is why society is divided into two camps each thinking it is in the right stubbornly holding to ideas even if patently wrong. Human nature is thus. FR has become a place to be cautious lest capricious moderators who disagree with you on some minor point ban you for life.
If Russia wants to be relevant, then she needs to quit playing quid pro quo with this nonsense and start making a real stand.
I will join the others questioning why A. Pole had to be banned. He posted a controversial article (lies?) by someone with a stronly leftist slant. Occasionally I want to hear what the bad guys are saying. Okay, let there be debate. Let the Freepers tear the article to pieces. A. Pole did not call names, insult anyone, call for violence, etc.
Russia is looking after its interests. A lot, even all of the anti-NATO rhetoric in Russia was for domestic consumption. Americans have an emotional attachments for the British more than any othern European nation, but US and UK have only mutual interests. The same can be said of Russia and Serbia.
Vn_survivor, you don't like the source of the article,not the writer or her periodical,and I can understand that. However,I have very similar info about Yeltsen taken from testimony given before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S.House of Representatives on September 21,1999. The presenter is Anne Williamson,she spent ten or so years dividing her time between Moscow and New York and wrote for the Wall Street Journal among other publications. She is not in the slightest degree,left leaning.
You can Google her name right now and info about her is right at the top.
I happened on info about her prior to the election in 2000 as I looked for evidence of corruption in the Clinton/Gore Administration. From her testimony:
The first mistake was the West's perception of the elected Russian president,Boris Yeltsin;where American triumphalists saw a great democrat determined to destroy the Communist system for freedom's sake,Soviet history will record a usurper. A usurper's first task is to transform a thin layer of the self-interested rabble into a constituency. And she goes on to relate how he accomplished that.
She then goes on to say:
The second mistake lay in a profound misunderstanding of Russian culture and in the Harvard Institute of International Development advisor's disregard for the very basis for their own country's success;property rights.
It was a very grave error.
Her testimony is compelling,it is packed with great information giving names and places and missteps. I hope you will read it as it has a considerable impact on what is happening in Russia now. As others on this thread have said Putin did not have it easy and while he must be watched carefully,he came into office in a country that was buried in complex problems and corrupt men in positions of power.Boris Yeltsin,was not a good man.
“Vn_survivor, you don’t like the source of the article,not the writer or her periodical,and I can understand that.”
Good.
About the banning.....you’re an inch or so from accusing me of having something to do with it. Wrong. Period. Ask the Mod.
Originally it was intended to go to you since A.Pole was not suspended when I read your statements about the article. I knew I had a similar assessment about Yeltsin from a conservative source (Williamson) and searched around for it. When I found it I ran through the thread because if someone else had sent it I wouldn't. That is when I learned that A.Pole had been suspended.
I never even thought about who asked for it because it seemed so completely divorced from anything written on this thread. For all I knew it was the result of something he said on another thread. Nonetheless,I wanted to express my sincere disappointment with the suspension,so I did by pinging the admin moderator.
Then I went on to the real purpose of my comment which was to give you the information from a source I believed you would find credible. Sorry my slothfulness caused you to think I was somehow implicating you with an action I thought kind of unreasonable,didn't mean to.
Reread everything and am convinced the banning must be something from another thread,there is nothing wrong with anything on this one IMO. Do you know what happened?
Also read up on what Williamson said about the whole thing and let me know if you don't think her assessment is pretty good given the documentation she presents. On the other hand, if you are Bill Clinton or Larry Summers you may have other thoughts.
Do you know what happened?
No. And I already said as much.
Further, I am astonished with your concern (twice now) to educate me with van den huvels/etc POV re Soviets/Russia - since I said not a single word about it on this thread. My comments and discoverthenetwork posts were exclusively re van den huvels gauche America-hating agenda.
BTW, I don’t take research or reading assignments such as yours.
Let it be, now.
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