What the "Free Press" largely ignores

Angry Russians lash out at Yeltsin

Even traditional respect for the dead could not temper Russians' deep-seated anger towards Boris Yeltsin as they reacted to news their former president had died of heart failure.

On the streets of Moscow, residents railed against the many perceived failures of Russia's first post-Soviet president, from the break-up of the USSR and the war in Chechnya to the sell-off of state assets to a handful of oligarchs.

Walking arm-in-arm with his wife, a retired doctor reflected the bitterness that many older Russians still feel at Mr Yeltsin's role in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"I trusted him and he sold out our country," he said.

"My father spent 50 years in the (Communist) party and thought that what he did was for the good of the people. In the end, everything he did was for a handful of embezzlers."

Looking aghast, the doctor's wife pulled on his arm.

"Why say such things about a dead person? You must not," she chastised, reflecting an especially strong tradition in Russia of not speaking ill of the dead.

But a passerby, overhearing the conversation, also showed no restraint.

"Yeltsin is dead?" he shouted. "He was a traitor, a traitor! He sold Russia to the lowest bidder."
Chechnya failure

For some, Mr Yeltsin's greatest failure was ordering troops into Chechnya in 1994 to suppress a separatist movement in the southern Russian region.

Tens of thousands of civilians and thousands of Russian soldiers died during the 1994-1996 Chechen war, which resulted in an embarrassing defeat for the Russian military.

Russian troops recaptured Chechnya in 1999 but violence continues to plague the region.

"I had no respect for him because I served in the army in the conflict zone and I saw everything," Gennady Alembayev said, a 44-year-old veteran.

"We could have easily put a stop to the war in Chechnya and made reforms, but the top ranks of the army and the politicians were making money with this war," he claimed.
Assets sell-off

Others were especially critical of Mr Yeltsin's part in the privatisation of state assets after the Soviet collapse - a process that left a handful very rich while millions slid deeper into dire poverty.

"I have fairly negative feelings towards him because despite all the negative aspects of the USSR, what he did, particularly the privatisations, he did illegally, even criminally," said 20-year-old Dmitry Ulianov, a philosophy student at the prestigious Moscow State University.

Stuck in one of Moscow's infamous traffic jams, Timur, a 24-year-old analyst with an investment fund, said he had mixed feelings about Mr Yeltsin.

While the former president was closely linked with Russia's democratic transformation in the early 1990s, his subsequent handling of state assets was wrong, Timur said.

"What he did in terms of privatisations - I'm not saying it didn't have to be done, but the way it was done was unacceptable."
Celebration

Some even rejoiced in Mr Yeltsin's death, including about a dozen young members of the Eurasian Union, a marginal nationalist group, who held an impromptu street celebration outside Moscow's famed Bolshoi Theatre.

"I think all of Russia is celebrating in silence," one of them said, 29-year-old Pavel Zarifulin.

"[Yeltsin] destroyed the country - only [Mikhail] Gorbachev did worse."

Not everyone was so unforgiving, but even those who praised Yeltsin did so with caveats.

"Boris Yeltsin showed us that we could live differently, freely, and that we must depend on ourselves, but he was isolated by those around him," Piotr Loznitsa said, a craftsman.

"He never understood his main mistakes: the war in Chechnya, the poverty of the people and Russia's geopolitical losses," as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr Loznitsa said.

Original article posted here.

The only other man to destroy an empire as quickly and completely as the Moron

Ex-Russian president Yeltsin dies

James Sturcke


Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin photographed in Tokyo in 2003. Photograph: Chiaki Tsukumo/AFP/Getty Images

The former Russian president Boris Yeltsin has died aged 76, the Kremlin confirmed today.

Mr Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union, became the first popularly elected president in Russian history when he won 57% of the vote in June 1991.

His period in office was characterised by the introduction - sometimes tumultuous - of free market economics into the formerly command economy.

By the time he left power, he had become deeply unpopular over the economic "shock therapy", which saw the rise of the oligarchs, deep corruption and a huge drop in living standards.

Mr Yeltsin came to prominence in the west during an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachov, the reformist leader of the Soviet Union, by hardline communist sympathisers in August 1991.

He responded to the coup by making a dramatic speech from the top of a tank, inspiring his supporters.

Mr Yeltsin was re-elected to office in 1996 but retired abruptly on December 31 1999, saying he had decided "Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians". He was succeeded by the current president, Vladimir Putin.

Alexander Smirnov, a Kremlin spokesman, confirmed Mr Yeltsin had died but gave no cause of death or further information.

The Interfax news agency cited an unidentified medical source as saying the former president had died of heart failure.

He had a history of heart problems - suffering his third heart attack during his campaign for re-election - and ill health, and became the butt of jokes because of his fondness for drink, appearing drunk in public on more than one occasion.

During a stopover in Ireland while returning from talks with the then US president, Bill Clinton, in 1994, Mr Yeltsin failed to disembark from his plane to meet waiting politicians.

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

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

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

He amassed as much power as possible in office, giving it all up in a dramatic 1999 New Year's address.

His greatest moments came in bursts, such as his spearheading of the peaceful end of the Soviet state on December 25 1991.

Ill with heart problems and facing possible defeat by a communist challenger in his 1996 re-election drive, he channelled his energy and sprinted through the final weeks of the campaign.

The challenge transformed Mr Yeltsin from a shaky convalescent into a spry, dancing candidate.

However, he was an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of day to day government and almost always blamed Russia's myriad problems on subordinates.

Original article posted here.