Since the surprise New Year's Eve announcement that Boris Yeltsin would be stepping down as president of Russia the wires have been full of praise for the old Bolshevik.
"History is made mostly by leaders with the instincts to recognize the decisive moment and the boldness to seize the initiative that carries the day," editorialized the clueless Chicago Tribune on Jan. 2. "Boris Yeltsin was such a leader, right down to his surprise resignation as Russia's president on Friday."
Nina Khrushcheva -- Khrushchev's granddaughter -- at least hinted at a little better understanding of the way these things actually go down in Moscow, when she slipped a quasi-cryptic reference to "personal safety" into her following dispatch for the New York Times:
"The hardest thing about power is knowing when to let go. The next hardest, particularly in a country like Russia which has experienced nothing but dictatorship for a millennium, is knowing whom to hand power to. In announcing his resignation on Dec. 31 Boris Yeltsin may have succeeded on both counts, assuring not only his personal safety and political legacy, but his place in history and Russia's infant democracy. ..."
Time for the weekly reality check.
Three hours -- yes, (start ital)three hours(end ital) -- before "resigning," the old bear Yeltsin signed a new decree that in order for candidates to appear on the Russian presidential election ballot this March 26 they must collect a million petition signatures. That's "a million." In less than 90 days. So who is it we think successor-delegate Vladimir Putin (who we're now widely informed is "well qualified due to his KGB background" -- by the same newspapers that spent the 1930s championing Joe Stalin as a misunderstood agrarian reformer) is going to face in the ensuing "campaign"?
"The million-signature rule will pose an especially large burden for Putin's biggest rival, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov," the AP reported Jan. 2.
Oh, unhappy coincidence.
So much for the majesty of the democratic process in the "new Russia," where we're blithely assured the commissars "no longer hand pick their own successors."
As for Mr. Yeltsin's courage in stepping down, can't anyone else picture Moscow's chief drunk being shown two press releases by Mr. Putin on the last evening of his latest hospital stay?
"Please, comrade, we need your help deciding which of these to send out tomorrow morning," the deferential Mr. Putin explains, handing over two announcements on official letterhead, the first reading "In a surprise move, President Boris Yeltsin resigned his office this morning, naming Vladimir Putin acting president ..." while the other is headlined "Russia Loses a Great Hero: A fiery car crash claimed the life of Russian president Boris Yeltsin as was being driven home from the hospital this morning ..."
"Is there any way you can you help us choose?" the suddenly sober president is asked, as the room's four hulking KGB bodyguards stare out the window with studied nonchalance.
If this was really Mr. Yeltsin's idea, does anyone think it wouldn't have occurred to the old dog to insist his daughter and other family members be kept on the company payroll, at least through election day? Yet "acting president Putin's" first action -- before the weekend was even out -- was to fire Yeltsin daughter Tatyana Dyachenko from her absurd, zillion-ruble job as the Kremlin's "fashion and image consultant."
In the end, all the thief Yeltsin got (his whole family has been famously on the take for years, and Yeltsin himself is now widely reported to own a billion-dollar share of the Russian aluminum industry, a position I doubt he gained by saving scraps of aluminum foil out of candy boxes) was a promise of personal immunity from prosecution -- not usually the first thing on the mind of an innocent, selfless statesman.
Boris Yeltsin did block a "hard-line communist resurgence and crackdown" when he stood on top of that tank back in 1991, for which he has indeed earned his permanent footnote in history, next to the somewhat less savvy Alexandr Kerensky.
But by 1992 Yeltsin had backed down from any serious attempt to restore a true real free market in Russia, instead allowing the old commissars to continue running the current weirdly semi-collectivized economy, with industrial firms still held "collectively" by a few wealthy families, while combined tax rates on the few genuinely "independent small businesses" often exceed 120 percent, leaving them no choice but to pay protection to mobsters to assassinate the official tax collectors.
And now, as his final "triumph," the old warhorse turns over the Russian state to warlord Vladimir Putin, whose claim to fame is that he intends to level Chechnya mainly by long distance artillery bombardment, thus limiting Red Army casualties.
The "new Russia"? How far from the ancient days, when the very blooming of the spring flowers was attributed to the wisdom and foresight of comrades Lenin and Stalin, have we really come when the New York Times syndicate offered readers this week the following over-the-top Putin lube job -- apparently not a parody -- by Vyacheslav Kostikov, "former press spokesman for Russian president Boris Yeltsin":
"Vladimir Putin is Russia's Mr. Nice Guy. Everyone admires him. Like a young prince, he exudes the charm of political freshness. Always on the move, this man still appears to be shy, even though in a mere five months he has ascended from being an unknown bureaucrat, to being prime minister, and now the acting president of Russia. And the people's affection for Putin has only seemed to grow as he has backed away from being labeled a Russian hero. By now, I honestly believe, Putin is ready to work selflessly for the good of this humiliated country. ..."
Excuse me, could you pass me that little paper bag from your handy seat-back pocket? Yes, that one. Thank you.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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