Boris Yeltsin Quotes

Soviet and Russian politician, 1st President of Russia (1931–2007)

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin [Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин] (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Russian and former Soviet politician who served as the first President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1990, he later stood as a political independent, during which time he was viewed as being ideologically aligned with liberalism and Russian nationalism.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Native Name: Борис Николаевич Ельцин

Alternative Names: Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin • Yeltsin • Eltsine Boris Nikolaevitch

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Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.

Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country... They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.

Despite all the difficulties and severe trials being experienced by the people, the democratic process in the country is acquiring an increasingly broad sweep and an irreversible character. The peoples of Russia are becoming masters of their destiny.

A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.

What have they done to our poor people?... [the] pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments... I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.

Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky.