A rchive Date
[ 25-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Russia ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/04/29/4139360-sun.html
Yeltsin was a 'real mensch'
He deserves credit for driving a stake through heart of Russia's Communist Party
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Sun, April 29, 2007
I watched Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin's lavish funeral in Moscow with considerable sorrow and melancholy. The tough, boisterous, earthy Yeltsin often typified the best traits of Russians. He was a real mensch.
Boris Yeltsin deserves immortality for driving a stake through the heart of the undead Communist Party in 1991, and bringing down the rotten Soviet Union. He almost didn't survive the 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup. Only the commander of KGB's elite Alpha Group's refusal to assassinate Yeltsin saved his life. He became Russia's first elected president and was hugely popular -- for a time.
My respect and affection for Russia and its people led me to hope that Yeltsin's election would somehow lead to creation of a viable democracy and free markets in this long-suffering nation, ravaged first by Stalin, then Hitler.
Tragically, Yeltsin failed on both counts. Instead of democracy, the new Russia got a chaotic political system resembling tribal warfare. The ideal of free markets quickly vanished, as robber barons, gangsters, and the KGB -- more often than not all in cahoots -- pillaged the economy. A tiny elite grew fabulously wealthy while ordinary Russians suffered cruel privation.
In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist invited into KGB headquarters at Moscow's notorious Lubyanka prison. Long hours spent with senior and mid-ranking reformist KGB officers in Moscow allowed me to understand and report the shape of things to come.
KGB
KGB's elite First Directorate, charged with foreign intelligence, was composed of the cream of Soviet society: Young, highly educated, sophisticated, westernized, multilingual officers. The men of the First knew better than anyone else the Soviet Union and Communist Party were totally rotten and nearing collapse.
In 1989-1990, I was advised KGB had decided to abandon the party, save itself, and seize key sectors of government and the economy. As one KGB general told me, "We need a hard-assed leader like South Korea's Park Chung-hi or Chile's Pinochet to make our lazy people work -- at gunpoint if necessary."
After 1991, KGB, rechristened FSB (domestic) and SVR (foreign intelligence) went into business. It worked against the party and relentlessly undermined Yeltsin's attempts to produce a viable democratic government while putting "retired" KGB men in key positions.
In 1994, the Muslim Caucasian state of Chechnya, with only one million people, declared independence from Russia. Yeltsin reacted savagely, sending in heavy bombers and artillery to shell Grozny, capital of the tiny nation.
Russia's attempts to crush Chechen freedom left 100,000 Chechen civilians dead and the tiny country destroyed. After more bitter fighting, the fierce Chechen defeated the Russian Army and drove it out.
Yeltsin's slaughter of 10% of the total Chechen population was one of the worst war crimes of our era, yet one that never reached western consciousness. U.S. President Bill Clinton lauded Yeltsin as "Russia's Abraham Lincoln" and helped finance the brutal war against Chechnya.
CHECHNYA
The Bush Administration would later brand Chechen independence fighters -- the children of Soviet concentration camp survivors -- "Islamic terrorists."
Russia was engulfed by crime and runaway corruption. Surrounded by mediocrities and a Rasputin-like general who practised black magic, Yeltsin lost control in spite of huge secret American cash subsidies. Drinking far too much, and suffering from worsening heart disease, Yeltsin was almost unable to serve his second term. Meanwhile, foreign carpetbaggers plundered Russia's assets.
On New Year's eve 1999, the "security organs" ousted Yeltsin in a palace coup. Former FSB director, Vladimir Putin, became Russia's new president. Putin was the antithesis of Yeltsin: Sober, efficient, decisive and respected.
Putin was boosted into office after 300 Russians were killed in mysterious apartment building bombings blamed on Chechen "terrorists."
In his fascinating book Blowing Up Russia, former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was recently murdered in London, documented how the bombings were a false flag operation conducted by FSB and gangsters to provoke a new war against Chechnya.
Yeltsin's flawed democratic experiment was buried with him. A tragedy for Mother Russia.
Do svidaniya, Boris Nikolayevich.
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