Death of Yeltsin

[Guy N. Heels]

I just heard that Boris Yeltsin has died. IMO, Yeltsin did more to restore Russia from it's squalid communist past than any other man I can think of. While Yeltsin certainly didn't much look like one, I believe he was both a patriot and a hero. Too bad that Russia can't seem to find someone else like him. He deserves a hero's send-off.

[Arctic]

I'm not so sure. Russia went through dramatic changes under his rule, tens of millions of middle class people lost all their savings, the banking system collapsed and corruption skyrocketed. Yeltsin was often out of order due to bad health and he was a notorious alcoholic, so many people say that his aides were the true presidents. It was also under Yeltsin's rule that Chechenya declared independence, and subsequently was run over by the red army with thousands of innocent deaths as a consequence. That issue is still unresolved to this day. It is no doubt no easy feat to lead a nation in state of chaos from communist rule to something that resembles a democracy but it was not pretty what he left behind. This is also the reason that Putin's iron fist made it to the Kremlin. But then, who am I to say something about Russian Politics...

[thedesigner]

I'll have a large wodka in his honour anyway..

[Firefox]

What Russia has now is effectively a dictatorship where corruption is rife in the economy. They're probably better off than under the communists but it's still not that clear. While Yeltsin presided over a change in regimes, economically his policies were a disaster, overseeing the creation of a new corrupt ruling class, as state assets were privatised in a hasty fashion.

[Guy N. Heels]

I'll have a large wodka in his honour anyway..

I'm not saying that Yeltsin was "Mr. Perfect", but compared to Lenin and Stalin, he was a breath of fresh air.

Make that 2 large Popov wodkas, one for me and one for a fallen comrade.