New at Reason

April 30, 2007

Cathy Young takes the measure of the first round of Boris Yeltsin eulogies.

Comments

|4.30.07 @ 4:48PM|#

The guy was the first freely elected president in Russia's history. Not only that . . . he was the first one to allow himself to be succeeded by an elected president. Those two factors trump anything negative that anybody might be able to say about the man.

|4.30.07 @ 6:07PM|#

> He was almost certainly corrupt

Cathy,

I usually agree with much of what you say. But where is the evidence that Boris Yeltsin was corrupt?

jbd|4.30.07 @ 7:54PM|#

Mick, read Taibbi's article, which is hyper-linked in Cathy's. Taibbi cites abundant evidence that Yeltsin was corrupt.

|4.30.07 @ 8:00PM|#

Taibbi cites abundant evidence that Yeltsin was corrupt.

This may be the greatest negative against Yeltsin; he discredited "capitalism" by instituting a crony-style market fascism in Russia that greatly increased the wealth of a few while greatly disrupting the lives of many.

Kind of the same way Republicans have discredited "free markets" and "free trade" even though they have no fucking clue what those two things are.

vadim|4.30.07 @ 10:37PM|#

Yes, he was the first freely elected president. He was also the first one to be re-elected in a rigged election. And he didn't allow himself to be succeeded by a freely elected successor - he appointed his successor (if we assume that at that point he knew what he was doing). That he was "almost certainly corrupt" is the understatement of the century. The senseless murder of tens of thousands in Chechnya deserves more than the passing mention it recieved in most obituaries. The supposed flowering of free press and opposition parties (see re-election, rigged) is quite plausibly explained as a show to make it easier for Western donors to part with their money.

That all of this can be said about the man who was, in 1991, Russia's best hope for freedom in centuries just tells what a hopeless clusterfuck that country is. Life is way better now in Moscow and SPb than in 1989, so I guess the yound people should be grateful. But a Western observer trying to interpret Russia and its government is always better off forgetting slogans, ideologies, geopolitics, etc., and simply following the money.

|5.2.07 @ 1:53AM|#

Cathy Young really nails this story. I found her analysis dead on and her assessment astute and well-founded. Yeltsin was both an enigmatic dreamer and a shark who navigated amongst other sharks. His proper legacy is more than drunkenness and Chechnya it is his tolerance for an open media and his strong opposition to Communists and the Marxist-Leninist legacy. The sad thing about Russia is that before the country could distance itself from the philosophy of a 19th Century deadbeat dad, the country's resources were consolidated by mafiosos and Yeltsin had unwittingly given the country over to an ex-KGB thug. Russia is always going to be Russia, well, at least that's what the Russians themselves believe. Putin's rise is all the more remarkable in that the majority of the people are completely ambivalent about it. A return to the Soviet good ol' days seems just the thing to raise their spirits.