Word: yeltsin
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...personal corruption," the Vice President's office returned it with a barnyard epithet scrawled across the cover, according to a New York Times report last November. (Gore's spokesman refuses to comment.) Now that confidence may be repaid. Chernomyrdin, in the role of Kosovo envoy for Russian President Boris Yeltsin, is a key player in the search for a diplomatic end to the war. During Chernomyrdin's visit to Washington this month, most of the talking took place around Gore's dining-room table...
When Boris Yeltsin was baptized, a tipsy priest dropped the baby in the font and left him there, struggling for air, until his terrified parents persuaded the priest to fish him out. The priest was not fazed, Yeltsin recalled in his autobiography. "The boy's a fighter [borets in Russian]," he said. "We'll call him Boris." Yeltsin is still a fighter, and still has luck on his side, as the collapse of an attempt to impeach him last weekend shows. He also has cunning, and a formidable state patronage system that works for him, as well as a constitution...
...Yeltsin's fate and that of Russia have in some ways come to resemble each other. Seven years ago, Russians pinned hopes for a peaceful, prosperous future on Yeltsin. As his turbulent and sometimes bloody presidency draws to a close, both the President and his people are sunk in depression, their dreams in tatters. Millions live on the poverty line. The country has neither the confidence of investors abroad nor self-confidence at home. Life is a struggle, and there seems little prospect it will improve soon...
Sergei Stepashin is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. After his nomination sailed through parliament Wednesday, the former secret policeman now shares the lot of all of Boris Yeltsin's prime ministers. "The very ease with which he was confirmed will immediately rouse Yeltsin's suspicion," says TIME Moscow bureau chief Paul Quinn-Judge. "After all, for all his ill health and mental diminution, Yeltsin still controls the political system here, and he's immediately suspicious of any prime minister who appears to get along with the Duma or enjoys public confidence. Of course, a prime...
...Duma's acceptance of Stepashin's nomination wasn't simply a backhanded curse. "They're deeply demoralized by their failure to impeach Yeltsin and they fear he may be out to provoke a crisis to dissolve parliament, possibly even banning them," says Quinn-Judge. "And of course, they have a demonstrably incompetent leadership." Stepashin made the usual promises about fighting corruption and reforming the economy. But Russians see Stepashin as a familiar sideshow, while real power remains in the hands of an all-powerful president whose physical and mental health are in perilous decline...