In memoriam: Boris Yeltsin 1931-2007

Did I say it was a slow news day in my last post? Now this news.

When I think back to the summer of 1991, what will always stick out in my mind is the botched coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev. This ragtag gang put Gorby under house arrest at his dacha and cut his phone lines; yet somehow they forgot to round up the Presidents of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union -- all of whom were itching for independence from Moscow. Even Russia had declared independence from the USSR some time before. And of course, they totally ignored the Internet which still didn't have the World Wide Web but was just a text exchange -- people on the ground made sure the real news got out to the West somehow.

I'll never forget CNN managing to get in touch with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan and Vytautas Lansbergis, the President of Lithuania -- and both pleading with the West not to let the coup leaders get away with it. They and their people had tasted freedom and wanted to keep it. Then of course, there was the Russian President, Boris Yeltsin. His standing up on a tank and defiantly saying that was where he was drawing the line inspired his countrymen, and the world. Within the week, Gorbachev was back. In no time at all, however, Yeltsin managed to pull the rug under the Soviet leader and by the end of 1991 the USSR was no more.

Yeltsin may have been less than competent in many respects, and his personal habits became the stuff of legend and even ridicule. Still for many that one singular image of him and Gorby going at it at the podium on live TV, a bloodless coup, will stand as his testament; of Yeltsin actually taking the words of the American Declaration of Independence seriously that

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Compared to what's happened under Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin was a genuine democrat. The world has lost a true statesman today.

UPDATE (7:22 PM EDT, 2322 GMT): Some have pointed out to me at my private e-mail that Yeltsin dropped the ball in Chechnya. I totally agree -- but we all saw what the Taliban did to women in Afghanistan and still want to do to them. The radicals in Chechnya aren't that much better, in fact I think they're worse.

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