Posted Late, But He's Not Going Anywhere

I meant to scribble a bit to commemorate the passing of Boris Yeltsin when it actually happened, but my recent schedule has allowed me precious little time for much of anything, let alone sitting down to blog.

Mostly I would echo JJV's post below with a couple of additions. I had the opportunity to shake his hand at the opening of a Library of Congress exhibit in 1994, at which he appeared with President Clinton. I don't remember if it was the grenade-maimed hand but in any case it was the prototypical meaty paw.

Somewhere I still have a Yeltsin RSFSR presidential campaign T-shirt from 1991 (pre-putsch) that I picked up on my trip there that summer.

Finally, in addition to pensioners and Soviet imperialists, Yeltsin is reviled by some czarists for his role, as Party head in Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), in demolishing the house in which Nicholas II and his family were massacred by the Cheka in 1918.