Word: yeltsin
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...Yeltsin has been haunted by stories of excessive alcohol consumption ever since his 1989 visit to the U.S., when he popped up at Johns Hopkins University smelling of bourbon and behaving erratically. Another unsettling incident came in March 1993 when Yeltsin made an unexpected appearance before the rebellious congress late one Saturday afternoon. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his eyes looked glazed, and his speech was filled with long pauses and slurred words. Those watching assumed that Yeltsin was drunk...
...which raises the question, Is Yeltsin an alcoholic? Officially, the subject is taboo, and no one close to the President talks about it. But some Yeltsin watchers claim to see a pattern in the President's political gaffes -- like the recent emotional outburst when he refused to see visiting former U.S. President Richard Nixon -- that might dovetail with weekend drinking bouts. Russian journalists claim they have been prevented from covering the President's return to Moscow from trips because he is too inebriated to meet the press after a long flight of tippling. The widespread impression Yeltsin has made...
Whether that image is fair or not, there is clearly a physical change in a politician who cemented his power in 1991 by boldly scrambling atop a tank outside the besieged White House. These days Yeltsin appears increasingly lugubrious; the spring is missing from his step when he shuffles down the long red carpet at the Kremlin, and there are embarrassing pauses when he answers off-the-cuff questions. These subtle signs only heighten the sense, already gaining credence in Moscow from Yeltsin's political struggles, that the President is slipping...
...premature to start writing the Russian leader's political obituary, given his remarkable aptitude for recovering from both political and physical reversals. Anyone who doubts those abilities need only ask an opponent who knows what it is like to do battle with Boris Yeltsin and lose: Mikhail Gorbachev...
Rumors of Yeltsin's drinking give Moscow a case of coup jitters...