Boris N. Yeltsin, the burly provincial politician who became the first freely elected leader of Russia and a towering figure of his time when he presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Communist Party, has died at the age of 76, the Russian government said today.
鲍里斯 恩. 叶利钦，这位来自地方的魁梧的政客去世了，想念76岁。因为主持了苏联解体并且解散苏联共产党，他成为了俄罗斯的首位民选总统和他那个时代的巨人。俄罗斯政府于今天宣布了叶利钦的死讯。
According to the Associated Press, Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Mr. Yeltsin’s death but he gave no information on the cause of the death. The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying the former president had died of heart failure.
来自美联社的消息 克里姆林宫发言人亚历山大.斯米尔诺夫证实也叶利钦先生的死讯，但是 他 没有提供死亡的原因。国际文传电讯社援引未经正式的医生的消息，据说这位前总统死于心脏病。
In office for less than nine years and plagued by severe health problems, Mr. Yeltsin added a final chapter to his historical record when, in a stunning coup at the close of the 20th century, he announced his resignation and became the first Russian leader to relinquish power on his own in accordance with constitutional processes.
在位将近九年，叶利钦先生被严重的心脏疾病所困扰，他给自己的历史写下总后的篇章是20世纪行将结束之时的极棒的出人意料的举动，他宣布辞职，作为俄罗斯联邦的首位总统 ，根据宪法程序，他放弃了权力。
He then turned over the reins of office to his handpicked successor, Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Yeltsin left a giant, if flawed, legacy. He started to establish a democratic state and then pulled back, lurching from one prime minister to another in an effort to control the levers of power. But where his predecessor, Mikhail S. Gorbachev sought to perpetuate the Communist Party, Mr. Yeltsin helped break the party’s hold over the Russian people.
接着，他将政府的统治权交给了他亲手选择的继承人，弗拉吉米尔.普京。叶利钦留下了巨大的遗产，或许有瑕疵。他开始建立一个民主的国家，然后把它又拉了回来，在一个总理与另一个总理之间来回摇摆，努力控制权力水平。但是，在他的前任戈尔巴乔夫试图寻求苏联共产党的永存的国度里，叶利钦帮助打破了该党对人民的控制。
Although his commitment to reform wavered, he eliminated government censorship of the press, tolerated public criticism and he steered Russia toward a free market.
尽管他对于改革的承诺由所动摇，他却解除了政府对新闻出版的检查制度，容忍公众的批评并且带领俄罗斯走向自由市场经济。
The rapid privatization of industry led to a form of buccaneer capitalism and a new class of oligarchs usurped political power as they plundered the country’s resources, but Mr. Yeltsin’s actions assured that there would be no turning back to the centralized Soviet command economy that had strangled growth and reduced a country populated by talented and cultured people and rich in natural resources to a beggar among nations.
Not least, Mr. Yeltsin was instrumental in dismembering the Soviet Union and allowing its former republics to make their way as independent states.
His leadership was erratic and often crude, and the democrat often ruled in the manner of a czar. He showed no reluctance to use the power of the presidency to face down his opponents, as he did in a showdown in 1993, when he ordered tanks to fire on the parliament dominated by openly seditious Communists, and in 1994, when he embarked upon a harsh military operation to subdue the breakaway republic of Chechnya. That costly and ruinous war almost became his undoing; it flared up again ferociously in 1999 and raged for years after he left office.
The Yeltsin era effectively began in August, 1991, when Mr. Yeltsin clambered atop a tank to rally Muscovites to put down a right-wing coup against Mr. Gorbachev, a heroic moment etched in the minds of the Russian people and television viewers all over the world. It ended with his electrifying resignation speech on New Years Eve, 1999.
These were Mr. Yeltsin’s finest hours, in an era marked by extraordinary political change as well as painful economic dislocation for many of his countrymen and stupendous wealth for a privileged few.
To turn around the battleship that was the Soviet Union, with its bloated military-industrial establishment, its ravaged economy, its devastated environment and its antiquated and inefficient health and social services system would have been a Herculean task for any leader in the prime of life and the best of health.
But in Russia, the job of building a new state from the ashes of the old was taken on by Mr. Yeltsin, the dedicated but imperfect reformer, a man in precarious health whose frequent mysterious disappearances from public life were attributed to heart and respiratory problems, excessive drinking and bouts of depression. These personal weaknesses left a sense of lost opportunity.
But a former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack F. Matlock, cited the difficulty of managing a transition where there is no prototype and no road map. “The change is so profound that probably no one leader could have sorted it out,” he said in an interview. “I suspect it will take more than one generation of politicians to do it.” But he said that Mr. Yeltsin, along with his predecessor, Mr. Gorbachev, deserve full credit for what he called a “tremendous achievement.”
Together, he said, “they destroyed the most monstrous political system in the history of the world, a regime with extensive resources to keep itself in power.”
Mr. Yeltsin was the most populist of politicians who rejected the notion of forming a political party, insisting he was elected by “all” of the people. This rendered him weak at the task of building coalitions to support efforts to initiate necessary reforms.
He sometimes played with the truth, surrounded himself with cronies, and appointed and dismissed one Prime Minister after another. Then, in failing health and under suspicion of enriching himself and his inner circle at the expense of the state, he resigned.
In an electrifying speech that surprised the world, he asked forgiveness for his mistakes and turned over the government to Mr. Putin, a loyal aide and former officer of the K.G.B.
In return, Mr. Yeltsin, and it was rumored, his family, received a grant of immunity from criminal prosecution and credit for leaving the Kremlin voluntarily.
Mr. Yeltsin left with his fondest wish for the Russian people only partly fulfilled. “I want their lives to improve before my own eyes,” he once said, remembering the hardship of growing up in a single room in a cold communal hut, “that is the most important thing.”
In fact, in the dislocation and chaos that accompanied the transition from the centralized economy he had inherited from the old Soviet Union, most people saw their circumstances deteriorate. Inflation became rampant, the poor became poorer, profiteers grew rich, the military and many state employees went unpaid and flagrant criminality flourished. Much of Russia’s inheritance from the Soviet Union stubbornly endures.
Mr. Gorbachev had sought to preserve the Soviet Union and, with his programs of glasnost and perestroika, to give Communism a more human dimension.
Mr. Yeltsin, on the other hand, believed that democracy, the rule of law and the market were the answers to Russia’s problems.
A big man with a ruddy face and white hair, he was full of peasant bluster — what the Russians call a real muzhik — and came to Moscow with a genuine warmth and concern for his countrymen.
During a visit to the United States in 1989, he became more convinced than ever that Russia had been ruinously damaged by the centralized, state-run economic system where people stood in long lines to buy the most basic needs of life and more often than not found the shelves bare.
He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans.
Leon Aron quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his biography, “Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000): “For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ‘What have they done to our poor people?’ he said after a long silence.”
He added, “On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the ‘pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments.’ ”
He wrote that Mr. Yeltsin added, “’I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.”’ An aide, Lev Sukhanov was reported to have said that it was at that moment that “the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed” inside his boss.
Mr. Yeltsin became etched in the minds of the Russian people and, indeed, a world figure, in an act of extraordinary bravery that day when he clambered atop a Soviet Army tank in August 1991 and faced down right-wing forces who were threatening to overthrow Mr. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader.
Long a thorn in Gorbachev’s side and soon to become his most powerful rival, Mr. Yeltsin on that day was Mr. Gorbachev’s most powerful and effective ally.
“Citizens of Russia,” he declared. “We are dealing with a right-wing, reactionary, anti-constitutional coup d’etat. We appeal to citizens of Russia to give an appropriate rebuff to the putschists.”
Thousands of Muscovites came out in the street to support him. He defeated the coup and saved Mr. Gorbachev. But not long after, he became the instrument of Mr. Gorbachev’s political downfall, and with it the dissolution of the Soviet state.
鲍里斯 恩. 叶利钦，这位来自地方的魁梧的政客去世了，想念76岁。因为主持了苏联解体并且解散苏联共产党，他成为了俄罗斯的首位民选总统和他那个时代的巨人。俄罗斯政府于今天宣布了叶利钦的死讯。
According to the Associated Press, Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Mr. Yeltsin’s death but he gave no information on the cause of the death. The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying the former president had died of heart failure.
来自美联社的消息 克里姆林宫发言人亚历山大.斯米尔诺夫证实也叶利钦先生的死讯，但是 他 没有提供死亡的原因。国际文传电讯社援引未经正式的医生的消息，据说这位前总统死于心脏病。
In office for less than nine years and plagued by severe health problems, Mr. Yeltsin added a final chapter to his historical record when, in a stunning coup at the close of the 20th century, he announced his resignation and became the first Russian leader to relinquish power on his own in accordance with constitutional processes.
在位将近九年，叶利钦先生被严重的心脏疾病所困扰，他给自己的历史写下总后的篇章是20世纪行将结束之时的极棒的出人意料的举动，他宣布辞职，作为俄罗斯联邦的首位总统 ，根据宪法程序，他放弃了权力。
He then turned over the reins of office to his handpicked successor, Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Yeltsin left a giant, if flawed, legacy. He started to establish a democratic state and then pulled back, lurching from one prime minister to another in an effort to control the levers of power. But where his predecessor, Mikhail S. Gorbachev sought to perpetuate the Communist Party, Mr. Yeltsin helped break the party’s hold over the Russian people.
接着，他将政府的统治权交给了他亲手选择的继承人，弗拉吉米尔.普京。叶利钦留下了巨大的遗产，或许有瑕疵。他开始建立一个民主的国家，然后把它又拉了回来，在一个总理与另一个总理之间来回摇摆，努力控制权力水平。但是，在他的前任戈尔巴乔夫试图寻求苏联共产党的永存的国度里，叶利钦帮助打破了该党对人民的控制。
Although his commitment to reform wavered, he eliminated government censorship of the press, tolerated public criticism and he steered Russia toward a free market.
尽管他对于改革的承诺由所动摇，他却解除了政府对新闻出版的检查制度，容忍公众的批评并且带领俄罗斯走向自由市场经济。
The rapid privatization of industry led to a form of buccaneer capitalism and a new class of oligarchs usurped political power as they plundered the country’s resources, but Mr. Yeltsin’s actions assured that there would be no turning back to the centralized Soviet command economy that had strangled growth and reduced a country populated by talented and cultured people and rich in natural resources to a beggar among nations.
Not least, Mr. Yeltsin was instrumental in dismembering the Soviet Union and allowing its former republics to make their way as independent states.
His leadership was erratic and often crude, and the democrat often ruled in the manner of a czar. He showed no reluctance to use the power of the presidency to face down his opponents, as he did in a showdown in 1993, when he ordered tanks to fire on the parliament dominated by openly seditious Communists, and in 1994, when he embarked upon a harsh military operation to subdue the breakaway republic of Chechnya. That costly and ruinous war almost became his undoing; it flared up again ferociously in 1999 and raged for years after he left office.
The Yeltsin era effectively began in August, 1991, when Mr. Yeltsin clambered atop a tank to rally Muscovites to put down a right-wing coup against Mr. Gorbachev, a heroic moment etched in the minds of the Russian people and television viewers all over the world. It ended with his electrifying resignation speech on New Years Eve, 1999.
These were Mr. Yeltsin’s finest hours, in an era marked by extraordinary political change as well as painful economic dislocation for many of his countrymen and stupendous wealth for a privileged few.
To turn around the battleship that was the Soviet Union, with its bloated military-industrial establishment, its ravaged economy, its devastated environment and its antiquated and inefficient health and social services system would have been a Herculean task for any leader in the prime of life and the best of health.
But in Russia, the job of building a new state from the ashes of the old was taken on by Mr. Yeltsin, the dedicated but imperfect reformer, a man in precarious health whose frequent mysterious disappearances from public life were attributed to heart and respiratory problems, excessive drinking and bouts of depression. These personal weaknesses left a sense of lost opportunity.
But a former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack F. Matlock, cited the difficulty of managing a transition where there is no prototype and no road map. “The change is so profound that probably no one leader could have sorted it out,” he said in an interview. “I suspect it will take more than one generation of politicians to do it.” But he said that Mr. Yeltsin, along with his predecessor, Mr. Gorbachev, deserve full credit for what he called a “tremendous achievement.”
Together, he said, “they destroyed the most monstrous political system in the history of the world, a regime with extensive resources to keep itself in power.”
Mr. Yeltsin was the most populist of politicians who rejected the notion of forming a political party, insisting he was elected by “all” of the people. This rendered him weak at the task of building coalitions to support efforts to initiate necessary reforms.
He sometimes played with the truth, surrounded himself with cronies, and appointed and dismissed one Prime Minister after another. Then, in failing health and under suspicion of enriching himself and his inner circle at the expense of the state, he resigned.
In an electrifying speech that surprised the world, he asked forgiveness for his mistakes and turned over the government to Mr. Putin, a loyal aide and former officer of the K.G.B.
In return, Mr. Yeltsin, and it was rumored, his family, received a grant of immunity from criminal prosecution and credit for leaving the Kremlin voluntarily.
Mr. Yeltsin left with his fondest wish for the Russian people only partly fulfilled. “I want their lives to improve before my own eyes,” he once said, remembering the hardship of growing up in a single room in a cold communal hut, “that is the most important thing.”
In fact, in the dislocation and chaos that accompanied the transition from the centralized economy he had inherited from the old Soviet Union, most people saw their circumstances deteriorate. Inflation became rampant, the poor became poorer, profiteers grew rich, the military and many state employees went unpaid and flagrant criminality flourished. Much of Russia’s inheritance from the Soviet Union stubbornly endures.
Mr. Gorbachev had sought to preserve the Soviet Union and, with his programs of glasnost and perestroika, to give Communism a more human dimension.
Mr. Yeltsin, on the other hand, believed that democracy, the rule of law and the market were the answers to Russia’s problems.
A big man with a ruddy face and white hair, he was full of peasant bluster — what the Russians call a real muzhik — and came to Moscow with a genuine warmth and concern for his countrymen.
During a visit to the United States in 1989, he became more convinced than ever that Russia had been ruinously damaged by the centralized, state-run economic system where people stood in long lines to buy the most basic needs of life and more often than not found the shelves bare.
He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans.
Leon Aron quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his biography, “Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000): “For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ‘What have they done to our poor people?’ he said after a long silence.”
He added, “On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the ‘pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments.’ ”
He wrote that Mr. Yeltsin added, “’I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.”’ An aide, Lev Sukhanov was reported to have said that it was at that moment that “the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed” inside his boss.
Mr. Yeltsin became etched in the minds of the Russian people and, indeed, a world figure, in an act of extraordinary bravery that day when he clambered atop a Soviet Army tank in August 1991 and faced down right-wing forces who were threatening to overthrow Mr. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader.
Long a thorn in Gorbachev’s side and soon to become his most powerful rival, Mr. Yeltsin on that day was Mr. Gorbachev’s most powerful and effective ally.
“Citizens of Russia,” he declared. “We are dealing with a right-wing, reactionary, anti-constitutional coup d’etat. We appeal to citizens of Russia to give an appropriate rebuff to the putschists.”
Thousands of Muscovites came out in the street to support him. He defeated the coup and saved Mr. Gorbachev. But not long after, he became the instrument of Mr. Gorbachev’s political downfall, and with it the dissolution of the Soviet state.
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