Word: kgb
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Putin, a former KGB officer, talks about the priority for Russia to move beyond being a supplicant in world affairs. Equally forceful in his own country, he has done dreadful things. Chechnya's soil is sodden with blood and is ruled by a thug who has Putin's approval. The Russian media have been intimidated into submission. The rule of law is widely ignored. Businessmen kowtow to the government or else lose their businesses. Almost a fifth of Russians live in poverty, according to U.S. figures...
...that referendum but ultimately became a failed President, a point affirmed at the end of 1999 when he suddenly announced that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man from Leningrad and Yeltsin's Prime Minister, would take over. In the final, pathetic chapter, Yeltsin evidently agreed to vanish from the political scene as long as Putin didn't pursue corruption cases against him. Putin then undid much of what Yeltsin had accomplished--tolerance (usually) of a free press, for example--and began to mold a Russia that is stronger, surer of itself yet more like the unforgiving Soviet state. Russia...
...After more than a decade of what he sincerely believed was his fight for democracy, Yeltsin surrendered his country and his subjects - whom he had so persistently urged to become citizens - to former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin. A few members of the democratic opposition still left now reproach Yeltsin for choosing a successor who dismantled the fragile freedoms Yeltsin had inaugurated. But the point was not his choice of successor as much as the method of succession, forgoing fair and transparent elections, simply announcing his resignation and appointment of Putin as his successor on New Year...
...that referendum but ultimately became a failed President, a point affirmed at the end of 1999 when he suddenly announced that Vladimir Putin, a relatively unknown former KGB man from St. Petersburg before becoming Yeltsin's Prime Minister, would take over. In the final, pathetic chapter, Yeltsin quietly agreed to vanish from the political scene as long as Putin agreed not to pursue corruption cases against Yeltsin and his family. Putin then undid much of what Yeltsin had accomplished - for example, a tolerance (usually) of a free press - and began to construct a Russia that is stronger, more sure...
...After successfully beating off the Communist challenge in the 1996 election, he presided over a series of financial and economic crises and eventually, in 1999, installed former KGB officer Vladimir Putin as his anointed heir. (Putin inaugurated his own term by launching a second brutal war in Chechnya to reverse the concessions Yeltsin had made to end the first one.) He passed quickly from the political scene into relative obscurity as Putin launched an aggressive nationalist drive to reverse Russia's decline by reemphasizing a central role for the state in economic affairs and establishing a harsh, authoritarian regime that...