Yeltsin dies.

[InsaneApache]

Old Boris has shuffled off his mortal coil. He, at least, stood up to the conspirators during the attempted coup d'tat in '91 and thus paved the way for Russian democracy. Shame that his successor is doing his best to dismantle it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6584481.stm

[Louis VI the Fat]

While he was drunk Russia was sold out to mobsters and a war in Chechnya was started. Both problems very much made the rise of Putin possible, and the return of a Soviet Union lite.

Yeltsin's legacy is one of dismantlement. It was great as long as it involved dismantling the old Soviet institutions, but somewhere between his finest hour in 1991 when he stood up against the coup d'État, and 1993, he lost it.

[Vladimir]

He must of had Keith Richards syndrome. :barrel: :medievalcheers: :skull:

[ShadeHonestus]

Say what you will about Yeltsin but that boy could bust a move.

[scotchedpommes]

Say what you will about Yeltsin but that boy could bust a move.

Exactly my thoughts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5FIoocja4k).

[rory_20_uk]

Sorry, I fail to see why his death should be mourned, apart from the men who managed to purchase Russia's infrastructure and are now some of the richest men on the planet.

~:smoking:

[Hepcat]

Exactly my thoughts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5FIoocja4k).

Ha, I'd known nearly nothing about him except that he dismantled the USSR until now. But after seeing that video I now have more respect for him than a lot of other politicians.

[Vladimir]

Hey. Where's the video of that Dutch one falling off a skateboard?

[Hosakawa Tito]

I wonder if someone slipped him a glow-in-the-dark cocktail. Is there a Geiger counter in the house?

[KukriKhan]

Before we dissect his politics and decisions, I strongly suggest we note with human decency, the passing of this 76 year old man, a player on the world stage (whatever we thought of his actions), now gone.

I'm sure his bereaved family would appreciate the grant of time to bury him, before the world debates his wrongs and rights.

R.I.P. Boris. I have to admit: you had your moments. :bow:

[Kurando]

Well said KukriKhan + after an acceptable period of time I want to search youtube for that 1994 footage of Yeltsin conducting the police orchestra while he was completely hammered. He grabbed the baton from the conductor and just went to town; it was an amazing moment.

http://informacia.ru/info/elcin2.jpg

[Idaho]

Before we dissect his politics and decisions, I strongly suggest we note with human decency, the passing of this 76 year old man, a player on the world stage (whatever we thought of his actions), now gone.

I'm sure his bereaved family would appreciate the grant of time to bury him, before the world debates his wrongs and rights.

R.I.P. Boris. I have to admit: you had your moments. :bow:
Sorry KukhriKhan, I disagree. If you live as a public figure, you die as one. If he was an ordinary person trying his best, then I would give him the due courtesy and respect however he was a drunken fool who handed the wealth of Russia to a handful of oligarchs who are now stupidly rich while the rest of Russia has decended into miserable poverty, sub-third world life expectancy and endemic corruption.

[Fragony]

Hey. Where's the video of that Dutch one falling off a skateboard?

Right here, good effort but Balkje don't bounce like Yeltsin

http://dump.geenstijl.nl/mediabase/1161/46d0e699/index.html

[KukriKhan]

Sorry KukhriKhan, I disagree. If you live as a public figure, you die as one. If he was an ordinary person trying his best, then I would give him the due courtesy and respect however he was a drunken fool who handed the wealth of Russia to a handful of oligarchs who are now stupidly rich while the rest of Russia has decended into miserable poverty, sub-third world life expectancy and endemic corruption.

I disagree with none of what you wrote. I don't say anybody gets a "pass" just because they died - especially anyone who was set as leader/target. I DO say we ought to respect the interests of his survivors, who undoubtedly knew a husband, father... man different from the one we knew as a world player.

And, I DO say, in defense of our own individual sense(s) of decency, WE are better served ourselves, by not immediately jumping on the dead guy's career at the announcement of his death. Let him get buried, then tear into 'im.

In my personal opinion. :bow:

[The Wizard]

Good riddance, is all I can say. All I'm concerned with is the politics and the man was a horror in them. Can't say the Soviet Union would've been a viable alternative, but that's just the problem: your average Russian is stuck in between a rock (Yeltsin; alternatively, anti-government movements like ever-so-nice National-Bolsheviks) and a hard place (Putin).

[Kurando]

Idaho, all seriousness aside, like KukriKhan said "the man had his moments!" Remember the breathalyzer at Moe's? "Tipsy --> Soused--> Stinkin--> and..."

https://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2622/yeltsintt7.jpg

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

As has been noted, a man died.

Also, for his faults he was about 100 times better than Putin.

[edyzmedieval]

Goodbye Eltsin. Unlike some of the current political leaders, he tried to do something for the country.

[Xiahou]

...handed the wealth of Russia to a handful of oligarchs who are now stupidly rich while the rest of Russia has decended into miserable poverty, sub-third world life expectancy and endemic corruption.
So, it's no different than before? :beam:

[KukriKhan]

OK, he's been interred (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/world/europe/25cnd-yeltsin.html?hp).

Let the games begin.

Does anyone think that he just moved too fast in trying to convert Russia from 'collective' property ownership to individual property ownership?

Or was deeply-ingrained corruption so rampant there that the whole project was doomed from the start?

Or was it "c", HE was so personally corrupt that he just sought to line his own pockets and those of his cronies?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

A and B, less C.

Yeltsin was democratically corruptp perhaps, but then how well did he line his pockets, Putin is autocratically corrupt. He has people he doesn't like killed.

I doubt Yeltsin actually had killings ordered, though you might say the situation in Chechnya was his fault. So maybe he does have blood on his hands.

Which is worse, incompetance or tyranny?

[Idaho]

Which is worse, incompetance or tyranny?
Hmm.. in the words of CS Lewis:


Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.

You really in Isca Dumnodnium these days? At Uni?

[Hosakawa Tito]

Originally Posted by Idaho
...handed the wealth of Russia to a handful of oligarchs who are now stupidly rich while the rest of Russia has decended into miserable poverty, sub-third world life expectancy and endemic corruption.

So, it's no different than before? :beam:

Pretty much. The old KGB clubbers just traded up to better looking suits and dropped the Comrade title.

[Banquo's Ghost]

I think we need to be very careful not to look at Yeltsin's reign through our own Western perspective.


Does anyone think that he just moved too fast in trying to convert Russia from 'collective' property ownership to individual property ownership?

We forget (perhaps conveniently) that much of the speed of Russian economic reform was dictated by the "victorious" West. Russia needed economic help badly, and instead of a Marshall Plan response, they were given no choice but to smash away every last vestige of the command economy and liberalise into a free market straight away. A free market, the implications of which cause angst amongst many countries of western Europe, let alone a bankrupt former communist state. It has been said that the free market is one law away from gangsterism - Russia wasn't given much help in the public service needed to maintain the rule of law, so it got free market gangsters.

Yeltsin had to face that incredible, and imposed, pace of reform while simultaneously trying to stop the reactionary forces of communism from succeeding where he had thwarted them before. A military take-over was a constant threat. He had to shell the White House (no, the other one) to stop one such coup attempt.

I think he saw the swift privatisation of Russia's resources as killing two birds with one stone: a) he was being told that this was a excellent idea which would make him very popular with the World Bank and Washington; b) it would provide an economic bulwark against the communists - a clear message about "no going back". As a bonus he would gain some very influential friends at home.


Or was deeply-ingrained corruption so rampant there that the whole project was doomed from the start?

The communist apparatchiks that had refined corruption into a fine art certainly fitted smoothly into the role of "corporate facilitator". The project was doomed because the west would not lend money to ensure the public service was well enough paid and respected enough to avoid corruption. In the new free market, it was much easier to be corrupt and rich, than trustworthy and poor - or dead.

(I had a friend who was a policeman in these times - he was a good man, trying to combat the mafia that ran St Petersburg. After a couple of small successes, a couple of hoods turned up at his flat and gave him a choice. He could accept the equivalent of five year's salary and lay off - he was paid slightly less than $30 a month at the time, and hadn't actually been paid for six months - or he could fish his wife and daughter out of the Neva the following night. Like any intelligent man, he took the money - left the police, and now runs a really successful Audi franchise. This is not an unusual story).


Or was it "c", HE was so personally corrupt that he just sought to line his own pockets and those of his cronies?

Yeltsin certainly benefitted, but like my friend he was also on a hiding to nothing. It should be remembered that in his time in the Party, he made a lot of enemies by being fiercely anti-corruption - one reason Gorbachev brought him to Moscow. He was, in the main, a good man overwhelmed by history. I suspect his increased drinking had something to do with his feelings of personal betrayal. He was certainly very troubled by his mistake in Chechnya. Like all of his predecessors, in his final years his preoccupation was to ensure that his family and he survived any transfer of power. Putin was his best bet, and he cleverly out-manoevred those who might have seen him as a "sacrificial lamb" to expose once they were in power.

We should remember that without Yeltsin and his courage, we might have been facing a dying military dictatorship with no other options but nuclear war. We see a lot of the bad parts of Russian nationalism nowadays, but imagine that in the hands of old communists, scared to death by one near-reformation and knowing that there was no way to maintain their grip but war.

We should remember Boris Yeltsin on a tank striving to protect a new freedom (and thus our own western peace of mind) rather than a drunk old man broken by our own ideologies and the remorseless legacy of seventy years of corruption.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Hmm.. in the words of CS Lewis:



You really in Isca Dumnodnium these days? At Uni?

Have been since last year, I believe it led to a comment before Christmas you took excpetion to.:beam:

Sorry about that.

I agree with Banquo.

More explicitly, the new Oligarchs had a vested interest in not going back to Communism, Yeltsin mananged to break the Communist state.

However, Putin has since reveresed much of that and is much more corrupt, probably with fewer scruples. Intelligence officers tend to have scewed morality at the best of times.

[Vladimir]

I agree with Banquo.


And well stated. :2thumbsup:

[Sarmatian]

Have been since last year, I believe it led to a comment before Christmas you took excpetion to.:beam:

Sorry about that.

I agree with Banquo.

More explicitly, the new Oligarchs had a vested interest in not going back to Communism, Yeltsin mananged to break the Communist state.

However, Putin has since reveresed much of that and is much more corrupt, probably with fewer scruples. Intelligence officers tend to have scewed morality at the best of times.

Death of communism doesn't have anything to do with Yeltsin. It was dead long before him. In my opinion, Yeltsin was corrupt and he did not have the strength or the knowledge how to deal with problems Russia was in. Under Putin, Russia is stabilized, it's most important resources (oil and gas) are again in goverment hands, there is less corruption and so on.

RIP fot Yeltsin but he was wrong man for the job.

[econ21]

We forget (perhaps conveniently) that much of the speed of Russian economic reform was dictated by the "victorious" West. Russia needed economic help badly, and instead of a Marshall Plan response, they were given no choice but to smash away every last vestige of the command economy and liberalise into a free market straight away.

I don't think the West was in much of a position to "dictate" or "impose" policies on Russia. Russia was still a very powerful military force that the West could not risk going belly up. If anything Russia played on its geo-political significance to leverage money out of the West, rather than the West using its money to control Russia. When looking at the reform process in Russia, I would start with the internal politics rather than look abroad.

I was struck by a Chinese friend's perspective on Yeltsin - my friend hated Yeltsin with real passion. To a Westerner, this was curious so I asked why. The reason was because Yeltsin smashed the Communist Party, rather than using as an instrument for reform as Gorbachev did. The CP provided instutitions and a vast organised membership that could potentially manage both economic and political change in an orderly way. Abandoning them effectively unleashes revolutionary change that risks chaos and destruction. This essentially a conservative (small c) argument for the Communist Party. There may be an analogy here with the recent criticism of de-Baathification and the disbandment of the Iraqi army post-Saddam.

As a Westerner, I have some romantic admiration for Yeltsin on his tank and his smashing of the Communist Party, but I suspect the Chinese perspective may have an element of truth. It will be interesting to see if China continues to manage its gradual transition from Communism in a more successful way than Russia did. Male life expectancy is 71 in China and 58 in Russia, BTW.

[rory_20_uk]

Before reading too much into the male death rate, that has other factors such as the Russian's prelidiction to drink anything with an alcohol / alkane or alkene / aldehyde in it. Oh, and then continue life as normal.

~:smoking:

[econ21]

Before reading too much into the male death rate, that has other factors such as the Russian's prelidiction to drink anything with an alcohol / alkane or alkene / aldehyde in it. Oh, and then continue life as normal.

The point is not so much the level - although it is abysmal - but the trend. Male life expectancy in Russia was 65 in 1987. That fall is remarkable, almost unprecedented outside of countries subject to AIDS epidemics.

Alcohol has always been around so by itself it cannot explain this fall. It is true that increased alcohol abuse is a proximate factor, but it is quite likely that socio-economic factors - increased absolute poverty and economic insecurity - played a large role. Furthermore, Gorbachev had some success with an anti-alchololism campaign in 1985 which probably helped male life expectancy jump by three years by 1987.

http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7023-14.cfm

I am not saying rising mortality rates are entirely due Russia's costly transition from Communism. Life expectancy was falling - apparently since the late 1960s - and in hindsight that unusual trend was a foreshadowing of the failing state of the USSR. But the fall accelerated sharply after Gorbachev left power.

[InsaneApache]

nm.