YELTSIN HAS TURNED 75

…Correspondent: Boris Nikolayevich, during your presidency your team and your circle underwent considerable changes. Whom would you mark out specially, who rendered you the greatest support, or, may be even the greatest assistance?

Boris Yeltsin: Oh, many people!

Correspondent: But most of all?

Boris Yeltsin: You know, I managed somehow not to loose my friends during my presidency. I have fifty friends, my former co-students. Two our classes, that graduated from the institute 50 years ago…. We are still friends and still meet – all fifty people. [Only think about it] to keep one’s friends!

And during that time I found new friends – those who are one’s co-workers… For example, previously I had not known Mintimer Shaimiyev. And he rendered so much help and support in the solution of ethnic problems. We were on the verge of nationalistic massacre in Russia. Because the two of us managed to come to an agreement that time, all the republics supported this at once and made the same thing. So high was the authority of Tatarstan and it still is. Do you understand…?

I can call many names, really many names…. I think that many people will come to me to celebrate my 75th birthday. I shall receive them proceeding from their attitude towards me and the warmth I feel towards them, rather than from their posts. And these warm feelings they feel towards me… Proceeding from this feeling.

Correspondent: Whom from your political opponents could you mark out, who out of them inspired and inspires respect?

Boris Yeltsin: Respect…? Yavlinsky. Yes, Yavlinsky. With all his so to say complexity as a political figure, as an opposition leader, he represents an opposition leader of high political culture. I would mark him out…

Interview by Kirill Kleymyonov
Full version in video is here …

***
Grigory YAVLINSKY specially for the website yavlinsky.ru, February 1, 2006

YABLOKO’s assessments of Boris Yeltsin’s policy is well-known and has been announced and published a thousand times. All that has been happening in Russia at present is a direct and logical consequence of these policies. On his birthday we are wishing Boris Yeltsin good health, however our attitude to his policies now and before remains unchanged.

Translated by Olga Radaeva