A far too sympathetic obituary of the late Boris Yeltsin. The Western media tend to be soft on Yeltsin due to the fact he helped end the communist tyranny. All he did however, was replace one form of dictatorship with another. This man was no democrat.

In 1993 Yeltsin sent tanks against parliament when it disagreed with him. There is little evidence to prove his re-election was fair. He brutally crushed the drive for independence Chechnya. Putin's war in the region is a mere extension of Yeltsin's prior policy there.

Putin, who is often criticised by the West, was Yeltsin's appointed sucessor. The system seen today in Russia is Yeltsin's system.

Yeltsin's shock therapy of the early 1990s consigned many Russians to lives of unemployment, hunger, homelessness and despair. Freedom of speech means relatively little to those who have no food or no home. And besides, how deep goes freedom of speech in Russia?

Putin long ago passed anti trade union laws (i.e a curb on the right of the masses to democratically self organise for their own einterests). Journalists are afraid to speak their minds lest they um, get killed. The State controls a very large proportion of the media. What kind of democracy is this?