home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- THE WEEK, Page 20WORLDBoris' Revenge
-
-
- Yeltsin makes life miserable for the rival he once helped save
-
-
- Mikhail Gorbachev was never as popular at home as abroad. But
- last week the former Soviet President's status in Russia
- reached an all-time low. The once omnipotent Gorbachev has been
- waging -- and lately losing -- a war of recrimination with his
- former rival, Russian President Boris Yeltsin. First Yeltsin's
- government barred Gorbachev from leaving the country and fined
- him because he refused to testify at a trial investigating the
- ostracized Communist Party. Then Yeltsin ordered the police to
- seize the Moscow headquarters of the Gorbachev Foundation, the
- former leader's political think tank. "This is all happening in
- a country that its leaders call democratic," Gorbachev
- complained as police guarded the building's entrance.
-
- The eviction came one day after Gorbachev lambasted
- Yeltsin and his government in a newspaper interview, charging
- that the Russian leader had failed and should hand over power
- to a governing state council. The reprisal seemed petty, and it
- diverted public attention away from the real business of the
- week: Yeltsin's major address to parliament in which he defended
- his economic-reform program, criticized three Ministers of his
- own government for poor performance, and offered to cooperate
- with some of his political opponents.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-