Letters to the Editor
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Alas, Yeltsin is why we have Putin
Yeltsin's government looked so hopeful from the outside but there was a lot of corruption from the inside.
Like privatization: the laws were supposedly written so that the transfer of state property into private hands would not create a concentration of enormous wealth into the hands of a very few.
Yet by the end of the day, the oligarchy took everything.
The Yeltsin years were so wild, so violent, so crazy and unbelievable -- anyone who was an expat in Russia in the nineties must have plenty of stories to tell. And maybe some they're afraid to tell, or forbidden from ever telling.
Now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Soviet nostalgia is the new black. Old Soviet art depicting heroically toiling workers is being snapped up by the New Russians at high flying auctions.
A recent poll published in the Moscow Times asked Russian citizens in which era of history they're prefer to live. About the same number -- 40% -- said either "Putin era" or "Brezhnev era." The spare change was divided between Yeltsin and Tsar Nicholas II.
Putin is becoming more of a control freak every day, but the majority of the Russian public doesn't seem the least bit alarmed.
It's like watching the pendulum of history swing wildly from one side to another.
One wonders when the next major swing is due.