Title: Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s First Elected President, Dies at 76 | Democracy Now!
Headings: Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s First Elected President, Dies at 76
Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s First Elected President, Dies at 76
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Content: Well, I’d like to talk to you about a number of issues, but let us start with Boris Yeltsin. Can you assess his career? KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Boris Yeltsin was a man who squandered, in my view, the democratic possibilities he was given. In June 1991, he was elected president in the freest election in Soviet Russia. And he is known, Amy, as you know, in this country primarily for that iconic moment when he stood atop the tanks in August 1991 defying the coup plotters. He went to the parliament that day and said, “I am a man of the parliament.” But he squandered the democratic possibilities, I believe, that Mikhail Gorbachev opened for Russia. He did so in three ways: He presided over the greatest fire sale in 20th century history, in my view, strip-mining the country;