AaronFreedman.com

The New York Times:

Boris N. Yeltsin, the burly provincial politician who became a Soviet-era reformer and later a towering figure of his time as the first freely elected leader of Russia, presiding over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Communist Party, died yesterday in Moscow. He was 76.

Yes, Boris Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s successor is now dead. So, what’s the big deal? Well, like Gorbachev, Yeltsin was an economic reformer. Of course, he was also a drunk and chaotic leader. Still, he was better than the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who’s reversing all of the economic and political progress that Gorbachev and Yeltsin made. By recreating the fear of the Cold War-era Soviet Union and causing the entire country to rely on petroleum for money, Putin’s slowly been bringing Russia back to its dark ages. The death of Yeltsin, who tried to do everything that Putin didn’t do, is a symbol of this tragedy.