{"id":1542,"date":"2007-04-24T05:44:46","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T05:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/24\/bye-boris\/"},"modified":"2007-04-24T06:06:54","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T06:06:54","slug":"bye-boris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/04\/bye-boris\/","title":{"rendered":"Bye, Boris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Expecting insightful analysis about Yeltsin’s place in history? Sorry – my computer crashed again and ate that one. (And I’d been loosely working on it since I first heard the news<\/a> yesterday afternoon and all…)<\/p>\n

Instead, have a couple of clips that work as perfect encapsulations of both Yeltsin and Russia – the first, amiable lack of comprehension, but keenness to be seen to be in on whatever it is everyone else is banging on about ; the second, the initially entertaining unpredictability which is all good fun until you realise that this guy had his finger on the big red button…
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\nYep – Yeltsin was the perfect leader for Russia: drunk, a bit stupid, highly unpredictable, almost certainly extremely dangerous, and practically impossible to work out. Just like Russia itself.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> Go on then, have a mini roundup of good reactions – Ruminations on Russia<\/a> puts him in context (though sadly no permanent link that I can find to the post, so check quickly), Blood and Treasure<\/a> is somewhat dry (unlike Boris, of course), Sean<\/a> is very good too, while Robert Amsterdam<\/a> has a roundup of press reactions, and the Flying Rodent<\/a> is – as so often – pretty much spot on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Expecting insightful analysis about Yeltsin’s place in history? Sorry – my computer crashed again and ate that one. (And I’d been loosely working on it since I first heard the news yesterday afternoon and all…) Instead, have a couple of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-former-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}