A well-connected and insightful Russia-watching friend had the following to say about Boris Yeltsin vis-a-vis his handpicked successor, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin:
"Whatever he(Yelstin) actually did, in his ham-handed way; and whatever happened by accident on his watch, or even in spite of his actions was more to the benefit of the country than whatever VVP has done deliberately, in the name of "progress" and "democracy". The sad thing (and this is perpetually the problem with Russians and Russia) is that the people have very short attention spans, memories and even patience; and they have always cared very little for the intangibles, like open borders and a free press. What most will remember Yeltsin for is the debacle with privatization (they don't realize that they have Chubais to thank for that) and the resulting inequities in society (the birth of the oligarchs).
I also think that poor, often drunk and sick BN was jerked around by a coterie of arrogant, unscrupulous types (including his daughter) who took advantage of the situation and made matters even worse. Unfortunately, Putin's blanket pardon of BN and his family (why he did that defies reason) has put all of them effectively beyond the pale of punishment. And a bunch of them are still grabbing what they can, and with both hands (Chernomyrdin, Borodin, etc.).
The fact remains, however, that, any thinking individual would always choose the chaos, mess of a Yeltsin era over the order, discipline of the Putin one. The operative word here is "thinking". And we've all been told too many times that Russians prefer "feeling" over "thinking"..."
Amen, amen, amen!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
well the blanket pardon i think was done to move forward (actually backward) and a move towards healing. too bad he wasn't capable of controlling the process instead of the process controlling him. i wonder if that contributed to his drinking
someone said yeltsin was a skillful destroyer, and some of the things he destroyed needed destroying, like the soviet union and the communist party and the censorship apparatus. not a lot of people realize that russia had a truly free press and media for about l0 years. the trouble was, he didn't have a clue about building things--an infrastructure, a system of relations between ex-Soviet states, a consensus about direction in the future. the shoot-up of those people in the parliament, people who wanted to stop what he was doing, was a terrible moment for a state that was calling itself a democracy.
Post a Comment