Word: sovietizing
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...plans to build missile-defense facilities in Eastern Europe has left U.S. officials wondering whether Russia is living in the last century. Sure, Moscow had reason to fear President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program, which he made clear was part of a plan to bankrupt the then-Soviet Union by pouring billions into a missile shield that he vowed would render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." But that was so 20th century...
...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 is still corrupt, but Putin has rekindled Russians' nostalgia for greatness. His popularity ratings are about 60%. Yeltsin retired quietly to his dacha outside Moscow and died last Monday, seemingly forgotten...
...Yeltsin had moments that made one believe Russia could shed its authoritarian shackles. His defining moment was in August 1991. While Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was summering in the Crimea, dark forces opposed to Gorbachev and his stop-start reforms tried to stage a coup. Yeltsin's political instincts were still sharp, and he raced to the scene, outside Russia's White House. He climbed atop a tank and urged defiance. The putsch failed. Gorby returned to Moscow, but when he declared his unshaken faith in the Soviet state, Russia was Yeltsin's. By Christmas, the U.S.S.R. was done...
...policies, said Filatov, chagrined Yeltsin to the point of expediting his demise. This week, Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Gazprom-owned, heavily pro-Kremlin Moscow daily, ran its list of Yeltsin's top mistakes and top achievements, "built on our audiences' opinions." It held that his biggest mistake was dissolving the Soviet Union. And that his last great achievement was handing over power to Putin. If Russians are thinking this way, then Yeltsin can't be solely to blame for what came after...
...There wasn't anything heroic about him fighting Gorbachev either - in fact, he continued what Gorbachev started. Gorbachev ruined the Soviet Union. Yeltsin ruined Russia. He led to having this country robbed and pilfered. He hasn't done anything good to us. All he has done has been negative. The new rich have benefited under him. But he has done nothing for the ordinary people...