Tag Archives: Yeltsin

Boris Yeltsin: Demon or Hero?

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Reading time: 3 minutes

On the 1st of February Boris Yeltsin, the first President of the Russian Federation, would have been 85. Commemorating the date, Argumenty i Fakty published a two-polar article about Yeltsin. Two views on what he did to Russia, one negative and one positive. The whole article Boris Yeltsin: Demon or Hero can be read in Russian at the site of AiF.

Here I am only going to translate one view, which reflects the real negative impact of Yeltsin on Russia. I cannot bring myself to translating the positive view by Vladimir Ryzhkov, who was the vice-speaker of the Parliament in 1997-1999 – in the years after the 1993 Yeltsin’s coup d’etat. Ryzhkov’s words are sugar-coated paintings of black as white. IF anyone wants to read them, go to the Russian article above and use Google translate…

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The “Wild ’90s” in Russia, as reflected in people’s memory

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Reading time: 5 minutes

I previously published a translation of an article For Russia 90’s Were Worse Than WWII, which tells the extent of the destruction caused to Russian industry and science in the course of the 90’s.

That was the time, when the West’s darling Yeltsin was in power, and when every parliamentary, every minister had an American “advisor” attached to him or her.

Let us remember that in October-November 1993, the Russian Parliament tried to pass an impeachment of Yeltsin, trying to save the country in a democratic way. The response back then, authorised by Clinton, was to bring tanks into the streets of Moscow, open fire at the Parliament building and kill almost 2000 people, who came to defend the young democracy from APC machine guns. That was effectively a coup d’etat, which kept Yeltsin in power and descended Russia into a dark stretch of destruction of the country and its people, which lasted until 2000, when Yeltsin released his American-backed grip, and Putin started slowly, but surely, save the county.

In this post I want to translate an echo from that time. There is a Russian site, which publishes jokes, real life stories (both fun and sad) and aphorisms, and people get to vote on them. One story collected a large number of votes, for it resonates strongly with the Russian population which survived through the war-like conditions of the 1993-1999.

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