Word: yeltsin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...which he served first in Moscow and then in East Germany. The acting President's spy life remains as much a mystery as the rest of his biography. Friends insist he was involved in "economic intelligence," designed to help the Soviet Union's badly antiquated industrial sector. After Yeltsin's resignation, however, former Prime Minister Stepashin told a television interviewer that inside the KGB Putin was known as "Stasi," possibly implying a link to the East German secret service...
...investment, among other responsibilities. Though he hunkered out of public sight--he was known as "a gray cardinal"--Putin began to accumulate power and a quiet reputation among reformers. In 1996, Sobchak lost a re-election campaign, and Putin headed to Moscow, where he quickly rose to become a Yeltsin confidant, to run the FSB and, eventually, to be handpicked as successor...
...recitation about items on which the two nations would never agree. Putin, by contrast, generally starts his conversation with an old salesman's trick--reviewing things that the U.S. and Russia have in common. There is "none of the Jekyll-and-Hyde ambivalence that characterized former Russian leaders, including Yeltsin," says a State Department official...
...possible to tease some hopeful signs from the ice-head's resume. Though he has let the military manage the war in Chechnya, for instance, U.S. officials say Putin, unlike Yeltsin, seems to be ultimately in control. Visiting U.S. officials like Attorney General Janet Reno have been impressed that Putin realizes corruption poses a major threat to the creation of a market economy in Russia. If this is so, Putin is in for a struggle. The fight against corruption could turn out to be the defining theme of a Putin presidency. The fact remains that his ascent to power...
...word of the resignation spread across Moscow, the Russian stock market jumped about 20%; politicians paid their predictable tributes, and ordinary citizens responded largely with indifference. Gorbachev, who is spending the New Year's holiday in Paris with his children and grandchildren, told the French press agency that Yeltsin should have resigned earlier. Human-rights activist Elena Bonner--Yeltsin nominated her husband Andrei Sakharov as TIME's Person of the Century--was scathing. "After eight years in the Kremlin, sadly, what has Boris Nikolayevich achieved? Nothing. He left Russia with a dangerous constitution that was made just...