Boris Yeltsin Has Died

By Cernig

The former Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, has died of an apparent heart attack at age 76. The AP has a retrospective analysis of his impact on Russian and world affairs.

Although Yeltsin pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, many of its citizens will remember him mostly for presiding over the country's steep decline.

He was a contradictory figure, rocketing to popularity in the Communist era on pledges to fight corruption - but proving unable, or unwilling, to prevent the looting of state industry as it moved into private hands during his nine years as Russia's first freely elected president.

He steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media.

He amassed as much power as possible in his office - then gave it all up in a dramatic New Year's address at the end of 1999.

Yeltsin's greatest moments came in bursts. He stood atop a tank to resist an attempted coup in August 1991, and spearheaded the peaceful end of the Soviet state on Dec. 25 of that year. Ill with heart problems, and facing possible defeat by a Communist challenger in his 1996 re-election bid, he marshaled his energy and sprinted through the final weeks of the campaign. The challenge transformed the shaky convalescent into the spry, dancing candidate.

But Yeltsin was an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of day-to-day government and nearly always blamed Russia's myriad problems on subordinates.

Former UK Conservative party leader William Hague said, via ToryBlog, the official blog of the Conservative party, that:

“Boris Yeltsin will always be associated with the creation of democracy in Russia. He contributed to breaking the stranglehold of communism, the ideology he was born into and that brought him to national power. Mr Yeltsin will be remembered as a President who carried his country through a turbulent transformation in far calmer fashion than many had feared.”

One of my favorite Russian jokes illustrates the changes Yeltsin made to Russia - and the Russian people's sometimes ambivalent reaction to them - with typical sardonic humor.

An old man goes shopping for bread and joins the line at the store, but just before he reaches the front the store announces it has run out and closes for the day. Angry, the man begins to curse the store and Boris Yeltsin. A policeman nearby stops him and tells him to calm down, things could be worse.

"In the old days", the policeman says, making a gun shape with his fingers and placing it to his head, "for what you just said...bang!"

The old man trudges home where his wife meets him at the door. When she sees he has no bread, she sighs.

"Did they run out of bread again?" she says.

"no, it's worse than that," says the old man. "They've run out of bullets!"