Emerging from the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin supposedly responded to a question of what the delegates had given America: "A republic, if you can keep it." Boris Yeltsin might have been wise to have said something similar to his fellow countrymen. He, more than anyone else, gave Russia a republic. But they couldn't keep it. Shame on them, not on him. Boris Yeltsin made a U-turn on more than seventy years of murder, repression, and imperialism, yet his obituaries depict him as a bafoon at best and a villain at worst. The Associated Press account insults by claiming that "many of [Russia's] citizens will remember him mostly for presiding over the country's steep decline." Perhaps some, particularly state officials of the Soviet regime, will. But many others will remember him for being unlike the seven tyrants who preceeded him and the one wannabe tyrant who succeeded him. How should Boris Yeltsin be remembered? As the only Russian leader who wasn't a murderer, tyrant, and oppressor, as uniquely possessing the right ideas about freedom and democracy, and as a courageous leader who stood up to Communist bullies when they tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Like most bullies, they folded when their bluffs were called. It's too bad Yeltsin's ideas were more interlude than inaugural. But at least he wasn't Stalin, or Lenin, or Gorbachev for that matter. Yeltsin buried that regime. For that Russians, and the ancestors of the victims of Soviet imperialism, should be thankful. Boris Yeltsin, rest in peace.

Just because he wasn't Stalin, or Lenin, or Gorbachev does not mean he was an adequate leader. He even apologized while submitting his resignation for "errors in his rule". He did face some serious opposition while in office, which made it difficult to accomplish many of his objectives. He was not a murderer or a tryrant, but he certainly was not an able leader.

Rosie O'Donnell ate him.

Tonight, I can look out of my hotel window in Sofia, Bulgaria and see a statue of the man that freed Bulgaria from the Turks. And just down the street, the Russian embassy is flying their flag at half mast to honor the man that led the USSR out of another kind of tyranny. While I can't dispute the fact that Yeltsin did just that, I can certainly tell you that from what I see here, those who directly benefited from his actions have very mixed opinions about the man.

Generally speaking, people here very much miss the security, or at least the illusion of security, that the Communists gave them. Life in many ways is seen as harder, and while they hated the Communists, they see that they have lost quite a lot now that they've gone.

So, from what I see from the perspective of this former Soviet State, they have no ill will towards Yeltsin, but they're certainly not going to put flowers on his grave.

I think that perhaps the lesson from this is a rather sad note on human nature -- or at least the Russian brand of it (see "Under Western Eyes" by Conrad). Many people prefer for a leader a strong man to a good man, and prefer for their nation power and glory to ensuring freedom and the common good.

I have to hand it to them, though. They actually put their patron saint (Ivan Rilski) on their money. It's pretty cool to get foreign money and find an orthodox icon on it. Yet this is contrasted by the fact that hardly any of the communist era statues, monuments or architecture have been removed, unlike in Hungary or Czech. On the one hand, I understand the resistance to trying to erase your history. On the other, these guys don't seem to think that their history was so bad that it is worth erasing.

Don't know how I feel about it, actually...