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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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092589
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09258900.036
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1990-09-17
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WORLD, Page 36Coming to America
During his eight-day odyssey through the land of the free, he
lurched from speech to speech more like a back-of-the-pack
presidential contender than an aspirant to the mantle of Lenin. But
if jet lag, fatigue and generous helpings of Jack Daniel's
occasionally took their toll, Boris Yeltsin, 58, the former Moscow
party boss who has achieved unusual visibility and enormous
popularity as one of Mikhail Gorbachev's most acerbic critics,
still impressed Americans with his charm and appreciation of the
U.S. His knack for an ingratiating riposte was apparent at John and
Vicki Hardin's hog farm in Danville, Ind. "Would Mr. Yeltsin like
to see some pigs?" the host asked. "I'd prefer to see some
Americans," Yeltsin cracked, "but pigs will do."
Behind Yeltsin's down-home humor was a stark message about the
Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R., he warned, had barely a year, or
less,to put its house in order. "We are on the edge of an abyss,"
he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, "and if
we go over the edge, it will lead to a cataclysm, not only for the
Soviet Union but for the whole world."
Yeltsin, who won an astonishing 89% of the Moscow vote in his
election to the Congress of People's Deputies last March, reported
the pitfalls facing perestroika to President Bush, Vice President
Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security
Adviser Brent Scowcroft, as well as thousands of ordinary
Americans. And he had plenty of prescriptions for improvement:
clean the deadwood from the Politburo; subordinate the party to the
People's Congress; open up foreign investment.
But Yeltsin's main target was what he called the weak
leadership of Gorbachev. And for that, his campaign-style trip to
the U.S.seemed to offer one solution: himself.