Letters to the Editor
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Gorbachev is the real hero
As these stories ably recount, there was a lot to admire about Yeltsin personally - not least the way he stood up to the decrepit remnants of Stalinism in the summer of 1991 during the attempted coup d'etat.
And Yellow Dog makes a great point - that an honest drunk like Yeltsin is preferable to a "reformed," holier-than-thou, possibly dry one like the Current Occupant. Churchill was perhaps the best of all politician drunks; he of course took on Stalin himself.
But Yeltsin's legacy - and the West's support of him - looks more every day like a miserably failed experiment in liberalization. Life expectancy is lower in Russia today than it was in the 1980s under communism, while crooks run the country and the grip of the state gradually tightens once again. And let's not forget that Yeltsin set a precedent for authoritarianism in post-Soviet Russia by bombing the parliament in 1993.
By contrast, I believe history will be kind to Mikhail Gorbachev, who, like Khrushchev (but with more intelligence and conviction), attempted serious reform within the considerable constraints of the system. It was Gorbachev who brought the world back from the brink of nuclear war, who refused to engage in the belligerent rhetoric propagated by Reagan and Thatcher.
It was Gorbachev's humane governance and forward thinking that created the possibility of an open, democratic Russia - an opportunity hopelessly squandered under Yelstin.