Boris

i'm a big fan of local and regional humor, particularly of the variety that reflects the culture of other countries... i would be remiss if, on the passing of boris yeltsin, i didn't share this...

yeltsin's tenure as russian president was marked by massive changes and social upheaval... during one of the periods when even basic goods were hard to come by, a man was standing in a long line, waiting to buy a loaf of bread... he was visibly agitated, shifting from foot to foot, rubbing his hands in the cold, trying to stay warm... finally, in a fit of exasperation, he loudly announced, "goddamit, i've had it, i'm going to go KILL yeltsin..." twenty minutes later he reappeared and resumed his place in line... the man behind him asked what happened... "well, dammit," the man replied, "THAT line is longer than THIS one..."

part of the appeal of this story to me is how i came to hear it... i was teaching an mba class... my classes are always composed of middle to senior-level managers who are pursuing the degree while carrying large job responsibilities... during the class, one individual excused himself during the class to go outside in the hall to take a call from his boss... his boss happened to be on a sales trip to russia at the time, and this story was related, fresh from the streets of moscow, over the phone and, subsequently, to the class...

yeltsin's reign was also the time when huge fortunes were amassed, many in very suspect fashion, in the rush to privatization... just the other day i posted on the oligarchy created in the aftermath...

here's some more from today's wapo...

The early reforms of the 1990s were painful for the elderly, the infirm and those unable to adapt rapidly to the staggering changes. Death rates, suicides, alcoholism, joblessness, prices and crime soared. Birth rates, pensions, health-care standards, factory output and state support for kindergartens and social welfare programs fell dizzyingly.

[...]

Yeltsin's policies gave rise to a new generation of tycoons, known as oligarchs, who supported his 1996 reelection bid after he turned over shares of the state's most valuable companies to them in exchange for loans.

despite all of the pabulum being spewed about yeltsin razing "the rotting communist superstructure of the former Soviet Union and build[ing] from its ruins the framework of a newly democratic and capitalist country," most americans have no idea of today's reality in those former socialist countries... privatization has largely wreaked havoc, and the move to capitalist, market-based economies have often made people's daily lives much worse than they were under the socialists... just one more reason why people in the u.s. who haven't traveled abroad cannot begin to understand the sobering reality of today's world and just how much their own country has contributed to making it that way...

for an excellent primer on what i'm talking about, pick up a copy of joseph stiglitz' "Globalization and Its Discontents" or john perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", or, preferably, both...

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