Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007

Death has its own news cycle, much to the annoyance of the press, so the obituaries of the famous are drafted in advance of their demise. Boris Yeltsin’s recently announced death thus resulted in publication of this lengthy obituary, the third paragraph of which reads:

Although Yeltsin pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, many of its citizens will remember him mostly for presiding over the country's steep decline.

Will they? Perhaps so if the reporter means many Russians alive today. Perhaps not if one takes the longer historical view.

Russia, or rather the former Soviet Union, was already in steep decline by the time Yeltsin outmaneuvered Mikhail Gorbachev and became Russia’s first popularly elected president in 1991. Whatever the man’s personal faults and subsequent failings as a leader, the world stood agog as what had quite literally been unthinkable both in and about Russia only a few years earlier came to pass in no small measure because of the force of Yeltsin’s personality and, by comparison to Russia's earlier and current autocrats, his dedication to democratic reforms.

The Russian people not only could have found far worse leadership than Boris Yeltsin, they already have.

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UPDATE: The link no longer leads to the AP obituary the Post originally published on its web site. I poked around to try to find that obit elsewhere, but to no avail.