Azerbaijan International

Winter 1999 (7.4)

The Leap - Too Big

Boris Yeltsin
"I want to apologize for our unfulfilled dreams. What we thought would be easy has proved painfully difficult. I would like to apologize for having failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one go. I myself believed in this. We haven't managed to make this leap, and I was naive in thinking we could."

Boris Yeltsin, President of Russian Federation, as a personal aside at the announcement of his resignation on December 31, 1999, six months short of fulfilling his second term in office. Quoted in the New York Times the same day in an article by Celestine Bohlen entitled "Yeltsin Resigns, Naming Putin as Acting President to Run in March Election."


From
Azerbaijan International (7.4) Winter 1999.
© Azerbaijan International 1999. All rights reserved.

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