For me, as for all Russians, these were the toughest days. There are no words to describe my compassion for the people who"ve lost their children in the Beslan tragedy. I believe every adult in Russia feels partially responsible for what"s happened. We have failed at protecting our children, at guarding them... This is our common fault and our common grief.

Over all, Boris Yeltsin will be remembered as a great liberator.

What are we to make of Boris Yeltsin,the man who led post-Soviet Russia in its first nine years?

Leon Aron available for comment on the death of Boris Yeltsin.

Yeltsin belonged neither to the Soviet Union nor to the West.

Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected leader in the federation’s thousand-year history, died on April 23, 2007. During his presidency, Yeltsin institutionalized the vital liberties that Mikhail Gorbachev had granted only provisionally and often by default: freedom from government censorship of speech and of the press; free elections; freedom of...

Review of Aron's book Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life in Kirkus Reviews.

The dramatic impact of Yeltsin.