The World Needs More Boris Yeltsin

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.
Leo Tolstoy, What Is To Be Done? (1886) Chap. XL, as translated in The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï (1902) edited by Nathan Haskell Dole, p. 281

I was quiet pleased to see that the Russian people have honored the memory of Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first elected president, by unveiling a grand and tasteful marble monument. He would have been eighty years old on February first. I quiet approve of it. It brought back a lot of memories.
   

Boris Yeltsin,  21-02-1989

 Boris Yeltsin had my favorite attributes of a great leader. Joviality and benevolence. Everybody got a taste. If you deserved it, you got a break when you really needed it. Many people say he was a buffone and / or an alcoholic. Hell no! I say that Boris Yeltsin was the greatest Russian since Peter The Great! And history will prove me right. If you wonder what the average Russian is like, I can't give a better example then Borris. He drank his wodka. Praised God, in his own way. And sought to find a comfortable vantage point for his people and himself to let the world be the world. And in that was his greatest success.
 

Boris Yeltsin does Washington...

 There were many evil forces against him through out his whole term of office. Due to the situation he inherited,  it was always damned if I do and damned if I don't. The worst possible situation to serve in elected public office. Looking back on it all I realize now that a lot of the "drunkenness" and the weird behavior looks a lot like other chemicals, I will even go so far to say that LSD could be a real candidate! The gangsters wanted him gone and for good. And LSD and other even more exotic chemicals were developed in the end of the Soviet era. There was a big bag to choose from.

" I am leaving. I did all I could do. "

Greed and fear can make men do insane things. But Borris pushed on. He did all he could do and then left. And upon leaving, enjoyed his retirement. Power is not all it is cracked up to be folks! And it really cuts into quality leisure time. To be out of it and having the phone go dead and the fart catchers gone is better then sex! 

(Photos: www.kremlin.ru)