Word: yeltsin
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...statement on Friday he took obvious delight in scoffing at predictions ("lies," he called them) that he would never give up power voluntarily. His critics and rivals wanted to cast him as an autocrat. But the single idea I heard Boris Yeltsin utter more than any other was that his country must never go back to a dictatorship of any kind, especially to the communist system he so clearly detested. His enduring commitment to democracy was evident in his resignation statement, when he said that Russia's recent parliamentary elections, which brought forward a "new generation of politicians," had persuaded...
...Yeltsin's designated successor, Vladimir Putin, must be the custodian of Russia's democracy while running for its presidency in March. If Russia is successful in passing power from its first democratically elected President to its second, then the country's direction will be in the hands of a new elected President and Duma, as well as the thousands of elected officials who now run local governments. Multiple parties vie for power through the ballot box. There are some 65,000 nongovernmental organizations and approximately 900,000 private businesses where there were none a decade ago. A pluralist political system...
...deserves a larger share of the credit for this transformation than Yeltsin himself. For all his difficulties, he has been brave, visionary and forthright, and he has earned the right to be called the Father of Russian Democracy...
...saying farewell, Yeltsin was characteristically frank about what hasn't gone right under his leadership. He asked "forgiveness" for hopes that haven't been realized. "What we thought would be easy turned out to be painfully difficult," he said, acknowledging that along with new opportunities for some, the past decade has brought deep hardship for others...
...Russia's new leaders--the generation to whom Boris Yeltsin gave the stage last Friday--endorse this as firmly as he did, they will find in America an eager and active partner...