Oliver Willis

3 Responses to “How I Will Always Remember Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007)”

1. 1 Rheinhard
   Apr 23rd, 2007 at 11:22 am

   Ultimately Yeltsin will be remembered by history for his stand against the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the August 1991 Putsch, and not for his later ineffective government. Sad that Putin is basically restoring piecemeal all the repressive state security apparatus the State of Emergency Committee was trying to save.

   There was a great PBS series about the end of the millennium some years ago and the episode that dealt with the fall of Communism showed, among other things, a line drawing cartoon of the aged State Committee members being literally “flushed away” by a grinning Yeltsin. If I can find my VHS tape of that episode I’ll have to digitize it and stick that clip up on Youtube after I get home tonight.

2. 2 Nimrod Gently
   Apr 23rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm

   Best democratically elected president of Russia ever.

3. 3 Hollywood_Freaks
   Apr 23rd, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   For those who have not heard the context of the second video (I hadn’t until 1 minute ago):

   “President Yeltsin. Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear journalists: I want to say, first of all, that when I came here to the United States for this visit at the invitation of the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, I did not at that time have the degree of optimism with which I now am departing.

   And this is all due to you because, coming from my statement yesterday in the United Nations, and if you looked at the press reports, one could see that what you were writing was that today’s meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster. [Laughter] Well, now for the first time, I can tell you that you’re a disaster. [Laughter]“

   Thanks for that video, Clinton’s reaction is priceless.

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