Russia, once almost a democracy
By Kathy Lally and and Will Englund,
WashPost
ublished: August 12
MOSCOW — Twenty years ago Friday, communist hard-liners staged a coup here, sending tanks rumbling to the Russian White House in an effort to preserve the Soviet Union. Instead they touched off a powerful expression of democracy.
Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically elected president in Russia’s thousand years, galvanized the resistance when he climbed atop one of the tanks and called on citizens to defend the freedoms he had promised to deliver. They mounted the barricades, unarmed, willing to risk their lives for democracy. The coup leaders lost their nerve. A few months later, the Soviet Union was dead.
All these years later, so is democracy.
Today, Vladimir Putin presides over an authoritarian government in that same White House, a bulky 20-story skyscraper on the edge of the Moscow River. Occasional demonstrations in favor of democracy are small and largely ignored, except by the police.
(More here.)
WashPost
ublished: August 12
MOSCOW — Twenty years ago Friday, communist hard-liners staged a coup here, sending tanks rumbling to the Russian White House in an effort to preserve the Soviet Union. Instead they touched off a powerful expression of democracy.
Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically elected president in Russia’s thousand years, galvanized the resistance when he climbed atop one of the tanks and called on citizens to defend the freedoms he had promised to deliver. They mounted the barricades, unarmed, willing to risk their lives for democracy. The coup leaders lost their nerve. A few months later, the Soviet Union was dead.
All these years later, so is democracy.
Today, Vladimir Putin presides over an authoritarian government in that same White House, a bulky 20-story skyscraper on the edge of the Moscow River. Occasional demonstrations in favor of democracy are small and largely ignored, except by the police.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home