The passion to create idols for oneself and the passion to overthrow them, the passion to appoint those responsible for one’s own failures and to shout at them “Hell” – all these are bright and ordinary features of the political infancy of nations.

Few people remember today that in 1991 Boris Yeltsin's rating was the same as Vladimir Putin's rating a little over 10 years later. But Yeltsin's rating in the eyes of Russians by that time had become the same as Vladimir Putin's rating was when Boris Yeltsin declared that he wanted him to be his successor. It was not the war in Chechnya, not the Decree 1400 and the fighting in the center of Moscow, not his addiction to alcohol and not his eccentric personnel decisions that caused such a sharp and passionate change in the people's attitude toward Yeltsin. We forgive our rulers for all this quite easily. The reason was our own drama - the drama of our freedom.

In 1991, we believed that Yeltsin would be the battering ram with which we would free ourselves from the order of the aging communist empire and enter the open road of freedom and prosperity. Ten years later, we placed all responsibility for the difficulties and failures we experienced on the way out of Egypt on him.

We blamed him for the disorder and chaos of the post-revolutionary decade. We ourselves had demanded freedom and sovereignty, but forgot about it as soon as we discovered that we could not dispose of freedom and sovereignty. But we especially blamed him for the fact that he himself continued to persist and did not want to abandon the old ideals with us, did not want to “restore order.”

Because we continued to believe that order was not our common responsibility and concern, but the business of Big Uncle in Moscow, to whom we were already ready to return the freedom we had received in payment for order.

It never occurred to a man in some distant Russian town in the early 90s that the town's residents themselves could and should restore order. He did not speak out against the director who was spinning his salary on the currency exchange, against the mayor who was selling everything he could on the left, against the thugs at the markets who allowed only those who paid them tribute to trade. He scolded Yeltsin. Especially since, unlike everything else, this was an absolutely safe occupation.

In the same way, we blamed Yeltsin for the predatory privatization and branded his “oligarchs,” because few in Russia had the courage to point a finger at the director of their own factory, the director of a local market, or the chief of police and say, “That’s a thief.” It was much more convenient to call thieves those whom we only saw on television.

Did Boris Yeltsin make mistakes? Yes, of course. But before we talk about them, we must admit and understand that they were our mistakes. That we ourselves created chaos and lawlessness in our country, excusing ourselves by saying that we were not given a Cerberus to protect us from ourselves. We ourselves could not and did not know how to establish order in our country, having complete freedom to do so. We wished to give up freedom and curse those who gave it to us.

And Boris Yeltsin, to whom we ourselves handed the flag of our freedom in 1991, remained faithful to this order and accomplished his feat to the end. If you like, he gave us time to experience the bitterness of freedom. If only so that we would be more prepared for it when we need it again. Peace to your ashes, Boris Nikolayevich.

MEMORY: The Bitterness of Freedom