“They had to fool the people,” he told Sukhanov. “It is now clear why they made it so difficult for the average Soviet citizen to go abroad. They were afraid that people’s eyes would open.”
May he rest in peace.
“They had to fool the people,” he told Sukhanov. “It is now clear why they made it so difficult for the average Soviet citizen to go abroad. They were afraid that people’s eyes would open.”
May he rest in peace.
Gore, Suzuki, Dion also say the AGW debate is over. No one is allowed to visit the other side.
-In Ireland “Circling Over Shannon” is a euphemism for being drunk, coined after Yeltsin’s infamous trip to Ireland where he was reportedly too drunk to get off the plane, so they circled the airport six times before landing to sober him up.
-In August 1994, Yeltsin’s antics as he and then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl presided over the withdrawal of the Red Army from eastern Germany endeared him to Germans. On the steps of Berlin’s city hall, a flush-faced Yeltsin grabbed a police band conductor’s baton and began directing the musicians. German officials later said Yeltsin had begun drinking before noon.
-George Bush’s impending love-in with his Russian soulmate, President Vladimir Putin, will be a far cry from the 18 raucous summits between Putin’s hard-drinking predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, and Bill Clinton. Yeltsin often arrived at Andrews Air Force Base “tired and emotional,” as the British tabloids like to say. And the carousing Russian leader ended up lurching around Blair House in Washington shouting “Pizza! Pizza!” in his underwear — until the Secret Service finally called in his Russian bodyguard to get him to bed.
So he drank a lot. So did Winston Churchill. The world should be grateful to both of them.
A historic legend indeed.
Time for a shot of vodka…
Hey remember when all the liberal were going gaga for gorbechev yeah all those liberal wussietards and not just him but they even think that FIDEL CASTRO was great typical of a bunch of brainless liberal wacks
He serves as a reminder that human imperfection is no barrier to recognizing truth.
Generally I liked Yeltsin but I have two beefs with him: his economic reforms were simply brutal and borne by a people that had been brutalised for decades already. Secondly, now we see who owns the country and I think that most Russians are not happy about this.
Ideologies only succeed by creating a self contained world built within a fortress made out of lies and denial. You can see how it’s done by reading the sort of leftist literature that’s taught in the humanities departments of our universities. Yeltsin was one of the guys who helped blow apart one such fortress, and if the results aren’t what you’d want in a perfect world, so what? They never are. Yeltsin has his place, and an honourable one.
How conveniently he died just before the elections…
Geez, I thought Reagan got all the credit for that. Fancy that.
“Everything which was not permitted was forbidden. Whatever was permitted was mandatory. Citizens were shackled in their actions by the universal passion for banning things.”
— Boris Yeltsin
Jose, credit for what? Reagan gets credit for defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Yeltsin gets credit for later introducting democracy to Russia. Yeltsin would have been unable to do that without Reagan.
I will always remember Boris Yeltsin standing atop the tank waiting for the armed forces to come and suppress the ‘rebels’.
At that time it looked like another major bloodletting could quite easily have occurred.
Interesting too that Mr Yeltsin’s funeral, which will be broadcast live on national television, will be the first for a head of state sanctioned by the Church since Tsar Alexander III’s in 1894.
Mr Yeltsin’s open casket is in state as priests chanted liturgies at the gold-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral.
Boris was a real page turner, and will also be remembered for his fondness of vodka.
Na zdorovia Boris!
HE,S DEAD JIM
http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9074306
A great obituary by the Economist and my favorite quote:
“He believed in freedom and rejected communism not because he was a libertarian, but because he felt freedom was part of human nature. His hatred of Stalinism was instinctive, not intellectual. He cursed fascism and Stalinism in the same breath, without putting so much as a comma between them.”