fett on 24/4/2007 at 17:27
Goodbye Mr. Yeltsin. The next time I'm smashed on Smirnoff, I shall think of you.
vorob on 24/4/2007 at 20:00
Guys. Really. You don't know what he had done for our country. It was a deep breath of fresh air. President who gave us democracy, freedom, and civil rights. Problem is, that Russians wasn't ready for that. That's all. Rest in peace Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.
P.s. sorry for my grammar, I always had problems with this part of English...
Swiss Mercenary on 24/4/2007 at 20:17
Quote Posted by vorob
Problem is, that Russians wasn’t ready for that.
Actually, he also royally fucked up the economy, and sold half the country to his friends.
Then again, I can't say that I could have done much better.
Economy-wise, that is.
Agree with the rest of that stuff.
Fingernail on 24/4/2007 at 20:34
Still, it was better than 70 years of Communism, eh? Which in turn is better than a slap in the face. I'm not really sure what I'm saying. Russia's pretty messed up!
Swiss Mercenary on 24/4/2007 at 22:26
Quote Posted by Fingernail
Still, it was better than 70 years of Communism, eh?
Restructuring the economy was one of his stated goals in 1991.
Now, there are different ways of going about it. The way he took (As per advisory of Western economists, now) resulted in near-complete economic collapse of the country, which was, according to wikipedia "More devastating then the Great Depression." (Think about it - if the economic policy of a Western president/prime minister could be directly linked with something like that, we'd be fishing his body out a canal within a week. Metaphorically speaking, of course.)
Now, I wasn't old enough to remember the details of those years, but a 50% drop in national GDP says
something.
It also, incidently, plants the seeds for a resurgence of communism, in the "Man, things were so much better back when we were the USSR" way.
The economy seems to be somewhat sorted out, 16 years later, at least.
Zygoptera on 24/4/2007 at 23:48
Yeltsin was clearly brave and had to make some hard decisions, but I don't think he deserves to be labeled great. He was corrupt or at best allowed those around him to be corrupt and he allowed a huge number of his country's population to devolve into poverty. The vast majority of the hard decisions setting up the impetus towards democracy and freedom were made by Gorbachev- perhaps the most underappreciated politician of the past century.
It's also significant that much of Russia's current resurgence can be traced to Putin's rollback of many of Yeltsin's more extreme economic reforms (of course, high commodity prices help enormously too, but ten years ago most of those increases would have gone straight into the back pockets of the oligarchs).
Kolya on 25/4/2007 at 01:48
Back in the US.. back in the US.. back in the USSR.
Rogue Keeper on 25/4/2007 at 07:34
Good riddance Boris, for starting Chechnya conflict and all.
Aja on 25/4/2007 at 08:07
Quote Posted by Fingernail
Still, it was better than 70 years of Communism, eh? Which in turn is better than a slap in the face. I'm not really sure what I'm saying. Russia's pretty messed up!
dude, russia and i got sooo messed up last weekend
i was just glad i didn't ahve to work the next day
clearing on 25/4/2007 at 08:38
Yeltsin engineered the democratic process in Russia following the demise of the USSR. Closer and more friendly relations were build with the west after nearly half a century of cold war. He had good intentions, but never really made any substantive progress in transforming Russia to a successful market economy. He was a nice man, but not a very capable leader for such an important nation.
