Boris Yeltsin, Capitalist

The announcement this morning that Boris Yeltsin had died was surprising if only because many of us thought he was already six feet under. He'd been so out of the news for so long that he reminded me of that parlor game, "Dead or Alive," where you try to guess which celebrity or pol is still kicking. Ariel Sharon (still in a coma, but not dead) or John Wooden (the UCLA basketball coach is still kicking) or David Rockefeller.

Now that he's gone Yeltsin's ripe for a revival. When he left office, he was seen as a buffoonish figure with a penchant for drink and slurring his words. Now, in contrast to the authoritarian, Vladimir Putin he looks like Thomas Jefferson--the democratic architect of a new nation. Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, who thought he could save Communism and the Soviet Union through reform, Yeltsin understood that markets and a new Russia made more sense. Right now, the Soviet markets have been on fire. (Who doesn't wish they'd put more in a Russia fund a few years ago?) But the economic benefits that have accrued under the dictatorial Putin clearly owe themselves to the reforms of Yeltsin, no matter how imperfect. His reputation won't rise like Churchill's who was famously tossed out of office after World War II and was revered by the time he died in 1965. Yeltsin won't engender as much affection and he'll garner more and deservedly so.