Boris Yeltsin is dead

[kahaneloyalist]

I saw this eulogy to Boris Yeltsin on  one of my favorite blogs Sultan Knish. What do other people on this forum think? Is it possible to bring Democracy to the lands of despots?

For all his belligerence and incompetence, Boris Yeltsin was the rarest of creatures in the phylum of the Russian ruler, a democrat and an idealist. He fell, as democrats and idealists tend to fall in the gullet of the Russian state. But he defied the monster, the beast of the totalitarian Soviet bureaucracy of death and stabbed it in its dying throes and stood upon its bleeding corpse with sword raised high and celebrated thinking the monster dead.

The monster of course does not die. It coiled its ugly self around the Empire of the Czars as over the Empire of the Premiers. It returns now in the form of a grim skeleton, a KGB chief with dead eyes who rules the land again and stretches out his hands across Europe and the oceans beyond. Dragons are hard to slay and if Boris Yeltsin was a poor dragonslayer, he did not lack for courage and in a land filled with dragons and too few men to slay them, he raised his sword and stood his ground for that golden shining moment in the sun.

For all the corruption of the democracy's dream which flared so briefly to life in Moscow, almost as briefly as it had in Baghdad, for a moment it seemed as if the darkness could be lifted from a very dark land. If Yeltsin's passing is to be accompanied by the voice that cries out, "The hour has come but not the man," then at least it is a passing of a man who might have broken the chains of slavery that bound the Russian people so far back through time. Who might have been the man.

Americans saw Yeltsin as a cartoonish figure. In a land rarely ruled by Russians, Boris Yeltsin had been a true Russian leader. Drinking to abandon, fighting blindly but courageously and finally failing disastrously, he epitomized the best and worst of the Russian spirit and the Russian heroes of myth and legend. He goes now to whatever great big Vodka barrel there is in the sky, a man who despite his failures, stood his ground under the shadow of Communism, who protected the people under him with determination and courage and whose all too human failures, render him that much more human.

[dawntreader]

From what I understand, neither Gorbechev (Sp?), nor Yeltsin were real reformers. They were merely chameleons. Soviet Communists who changed their names in an effort to lull the West into a sense of believing we've won.

When in reality...the chameleon is also the dragon Kahane Loyalist mentions. It's only been biding its time. When it realized that it's Soviet policies were not damaging the West, and when it realized that a nuclear exchange would only destroy itself along with the West, it went into a dormant stage. It has been waiting until the West is lulled into a false sense of security and then....

It'll wake up and lay the smack down on us.

I don't think Boris Yeltsin was a good man...any more than Putin is...despite George Wahabi's claim to have looked into the man's "soul".

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

All Russians (with the primary exception of Russian American Christians) are white-skinned Mexican-like Nazis. If you know the culture at all you know what I mean.

[kahaneloyalist]

All Russians (with the primary exception of Russian American Christians) are white-skinned Mexican-like Nazis. If you know the culture at all you know what I mean.

I dont really understand, and I add the Jews of Russia are great people

[MassuhDGoodName]

Boris Yeltsin was one tough character.

The Russian people are an incredibly strong and resilient people, and they should never be underestimated.

When one of the worst socio-economic systems ever devised was forced on them, one devoid of individual freedoms and enforced through brutality, the Russians utilized it to emerge as a preeminent modern superpower and empire to challenge the United States and the entire world; all accomplished in a fifty year period during which they not only were the victims of a major military invasion, but lost over 20 million of their citizens.

Russians have made tremendous contributions in literature, music, drama, and science.  The ever popular "Lasik" eye surgical technique was a recent contribution of Soviet medicine.

Whatever else the Russians may be (crude, boorish, rude, alcoholic, wife-beaters, etc.), they will remain a force to be reckoned with by the rest of the world.

[angryChineseKahanist]

Do we get to spit on his grave?

[cosmokramer]

You have to admit his dancing at that concert was pretty damn funny.

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "...Do we get to spit on his grave?..."

No.

But, only urination is permitted.