Jewish Odysseus: A HERO FOR FREEDOM--BORIS YELTSIN R.I.P.

Monday, April 23, 2007

A HERO FOR FREEDOM--BORIS YELTSIN R.I.P.

"READ IT!"

Boris Yeltsin was the right man, in the right place, at the right time.

A lot of people forget now that, as late as 1986, Communism looked as solidly set as ever in Russia. The Kremlin's forces were gaining on the ground in their new Afghan colony...The courageous "dissident movement" was seen as eliminated...And their mortal enemy, Ronald Reagan, had suffered an embarrassing national setback in America's 1986 elections.

Yeltsin quit the Politburo in 1987, with a dramatic "Up Yours!" speech to the Central Committee, and then proceeded to put on a clinic on "How to LEverage an Ounce of Freedom to Destroy a Ton of Tyranny." He ran in the semi-free Duma elections of 1989, and took a 97% victory against a candidate hand-picked by the Politburo. In the Duma he allied with prominent human rights activists like Andrei Sakharov, Marju Lauristyn, and Yuri Orlov, and with them created the "Interregional Group," to which he brought insider power. In 1990 he crushed another Kremlin candidate to become the first elected President of Russia. Yeltsin, a charismatic "Great Russian," went out of his way to defend the smaller, crushed nations of the USSR, like Georgia, the Baltics, and even the Jews--he personally ordered Passover services in Moscow to be broacast nationwide in 1990.

Yeltsin's years in power after the collapse of communism certainly had their share of errors, but we must never underestimate the challenge he confronted: changing a pot of fish soup that had boiled for 74 years BACK into an aquarium. He deliberately chose to abandon a rich and pampered career as a nomenklaturist in favor of confronting monolithic Soviet communism, and at every turn he made strategic choices that pushed the spear in deeper and deeper. All friends of freedom owe him a debt of gratitude--may his spirit inspire the people of Russia far into the future.

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The Odyssey by Homer, Chapter 21:

For long Odysseus stood with the bow in his hands, handling it as a minstrel handles a lyre when he stretches a cord or tightens a peg. Then he bent the great bow; he bent it without an effort, and at his touch the bow-string made a sound that was like the cry of a swallow. The wooers seeing him bend that mighty bow felt, every man of them, a sharp pain at the heart. They saw Odysseus take up an arrow and fit it to the string. He held the notch, and he drew the string, and he shot the bronze-weighted arrow straight through the holes in the back of the axe-heads. Then as Eumæus took up the axes, and brought them outside, he said, ‘Thou seest, lord Telemachus, that thy guest does not shame thee through foolish boasting. I have bent the bow of Odysseus, and I have shot the arrow aright. But now it is time to provide the feast for the lords who woo thy lady mother. While it is yet light, the feast must be served to them, and with the feast they must have music and the dance.’ Saying this he nodded to Telemachus, bending his terrible brows. Telemachus instantly girt his sword upon him and took his spear in his hand. Outside was heard the thunder of Zeus. And now Odysseus had stripped his rags from him and was standing upright, looking a master of men. The mighty bow was in his hands, and at his feet were scattered many bronze-weighted arrows.