BORIS YELTSIN IN THE NEWS TODAY

WHAT ELECTIONS 

CAN BRING 

BORIS YELTSIN VOTING 
IN THE 1991 RUSSIAN 
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 
(the first) 
Moscow, June 12, 1991 

Pausing in casting his ballot to help 
the photographers get their pictures 

Yeltsin won 

Today Boris Yeltsin is the news as a comparison point in a Forbes piece by Melik Kaylan on "Understanding Egypt": 

"The last decade has introduced to the world the novel phenomenon of the genuinely re-elected dictator, the populist who gets successive mandates largely because he controls all information, much of the economy, starves opponents of funds, because he has delivered a measure of stability and because the alternative looks worse. The alternative might be what went before – Boris Yeltsin in Moscow...." 

Well.... 

BORIS YELTSIN IN THE NEWS TODAY

BORIS YELTSIN 

CHECKS IT OUT 

BORIS YELTSIN INSPECTS THE BOOKS 
Sakhalinskaya Oil Platform 
Sea of Okhotsk, off the City of Okha 
Sakhalin Island, Sakhalin Oblast', USSR 
August 1990 

From today's Washington Post obituary of Kongar-ol Ondar, a "master of throat singing" from the Russian republic of Tuva: 

He mesmerized audiences with his ability to produce two or more notes simultaneously — a low, steady drone overlaid with higher-pitched tones that to the unaccustomed ear sounded like a radio gone haywire. 

His talent was so extraordinary that when he sang for Yeltsin in 1994, the Russian leader looked into his mouth in search of a device that could produce such music.

From Russia Redux, Chapter Six:  Yeltsin "was never kabinetnyi, never one to be desk-bound."  He "liked to be out in the field, seeing things first hand."