Revelations of “Tsar Boris I” (as he liked to call himself): “I came to the conclusion that alcohol is the only thing. a means to relieve stress. That stress in 1993 was so great that I still don’t know how I survived it. And I remember that this load became lighter after a few glasses.”
Political scientists and the media characterized Yeltsin as a charismatic personality, noted the unusual and unpredictability of his behavior, eccentricity, lust for power, tenacity, and cunning.
Opponents argued that Yeltsin was characterized by cruelty, cowardice, rancor, deceit, and a low intellectual and cultural level.

In 2007, Mark Simpson wrote in The Guardian: “A perpetually drunken scoundrel who has reduced most of his people to unimaginable poverty while fantastically enriching his cabal. A man who began his career as a populist campaigning against the relatively modest corruption of party functionaries later became the head of a country in an era of widespread corruption and banditry unparalleled in history. He not only kowtowed to Western interests, but also presided over the almost complete destruction of his country as a political and military force on the world stage. He trampled Russia into the mud so that we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves.” Rod Liddle in The Times, on the occasion of Yeltsin's death, paid great attention to partisanship in his article former president to alcohol: “No one else in Russian history It was not possible to save the state hundreds of liters of formaldehyde by reliably preserving itself not only during life, but also in power.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote: “Yeltsin’s worst enemy was himself. Drunken antics not only undermined his health, but also became symptoms of the incompetence of the Kremlin authorities.

From the book by V. Zhirinovsky “Ivan, smell your soul!”:
“They say that somewhere in Kemerovo, during a trip to the miners, Yeltsin, after another drinking session, stopped a motorcade near a river, stripped down to his underpants and went into the water. He climbed out onto the shore and, to the horror of the men, but to the hidden happiness of the ladies accompanying the motorcade, took off his underpants, He began to twist them. And then he looked in their direction and showed his “object,” grinning and adding: “With such a powerful object, we will kill them all, commies.”
Korzhakov: “Drunkenness in the Kremlin began in the morning. At about 11 o’clock Yeltsin called on a direct line:
- Well, Alexander Vasilyevich, isn’t it time to have lunch? “Lunch” began and lasted all day until dinner. It’s good if you managed to bring the boss home at 10 or 11 at night. This was a normal day."
30.9.1994. Yeltsin was returning from the USA. His plane landed in Ireland, where Yeltsin was to meet with the Irish Prime Minister.
Yeltsin never showed up, he was too drunk. Then Naina Iosifovna whispered to Korzhakov with holy innocence: “Boris Nikolaevich got up, probably wanted to go to the toilet, but fell, wet himself and lies motionless.”
And then Yeltsin publicly said, to Clinton’s laughter, that he simply overslept. Yeltsin's heart condition worsened, the blood vessels became clogged. Yeltsin's reluctance to give up alcohol further worsened this condition. Alcohol affects the heart, blood vessels, and blood supply to the body. Yeltsin swallowed a huge amount of pills, mixtures and continued to drink Korzhakov: Yeltsin periodically received blood transfusions to cleanse the body. However, his whole life was one of complete disintegration.”
After winning the elections in 1996, they spent a whole month preparing for the inauguration of the presidency. We built a special stands. Then, the ceremony was shortened from 2 hours to 40 minutes. And then, when they realized that Yeltsin could not stand it, they shortened the ceremony to 5 minutes.
How Yeltsin conducted in Germany
Korzhakov: During lunch, he drank a lot of dry red wine - the German waiter did not have time to add more. Yeltsin frolicked: he cackled in a rich baritone, gesticulated loosely and spoke outright nonsense. When we arrived at the city hall, Yeltsin got out of the Mercedes and approached the Berlin police band. And suddenly he snatched the baton from the stunned conductor and settled down at the console. He started waving his arms.
Spectators, correspondents and musicians also had a lot of fun. They have never seen anything like this anywhere and are unlikely to see it again.
And the president accepted the hoots and screams as enthusiastic recognition of his talent as a conductor.
Few people know that in the president’s car there was always a special suitcase, which always contained a set of bottles of strong drinks and several sandwiches - any event was suitable for the occasion.
And how did the journalists whisper to each other when they saw the president of the country, completely drunk, being carefully led by the arms from the plane after the meeting of the heads of the CIS?
P. Voschanov: “During the days of the August 1991 coup, people sincerely decided to defend democracy, their president. We sat on the steps and lit fires. The nights were already cold then. I didn't doubt for a second that, start then fighting, they would all die. And at this time below ground floor, a table was set in the White House bomb shelter, and Yeltsin and his inner circle were drinking, waiting for the situation to be resolved.

At the end of 1989, Yeltsin toured the United States with speeches. IN Soviet newspapers reprints appeared from foreign countries that Yeltsin spoke while drunk, and his poorly coordinated movements were shown on television. Kevin Connolly, a BBC correspondent in Moscow recalled that in 1991 in Novokuznetsk, after a “legendary binge,” Yeltsin slept through several meetings . As the journalist noted, “this was years before Yeltsin’s drunkenness became a subject for cartoonists around the world.” In 2009, at a banquet in Tashkent, after the signing of the Bishkek agreements, Yeltsin tapped his forehead and the foreheads of the presidents sitting next to him with two spoons. After the banquet, Yeltsin could hardly stand on his feet: he was led by Gaidar and Grachev.
In 2007, Mark Simpson in The Guardian called Yeltsin "a perpetually drunken scoundrel who reduced most of his people to unimaginable poverty while fantastically enriching his cabal."
An editorial in The Guardian noted: "The meeting where the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus worked on a plan to break up the Union ended in a drunken quarrel."
The Times correspondent in Moscow, Michael Binion, wrote that Yeltsin, “weakened by illness, and even more so by vodka, had lost control of the country,” “he left office a broken man, arousing universal contempt.” American millionaire Louis Bantle, sponsor of free rehabilitation center for recovery from alcoholism, in 2008 said that Russia had “a 10-year delay in development, because President Yeltsin was an active, functioning alcoholic” Korzhakov: In 1990. into the smoke, a drunken EBN in his broken-down Moskvich knocked down a man to death at night. And he got away with this murder completely with impunity. Gennady Zyuganov called Yeltsin “a drunken, decayed, immoral person” who was not capable of leading the state. On September 1, 1998, at a meeting of the State Duma, Zyuganov said: “The president was absolutely drunk and insane for two days last week... We don’t have a president, we have a drunken, insane person.” On February 8, 1999, at a press conference Zyuganov: “... we believe that a document should be prepared that would limit the autocracy of one helpless, weak-willed, drunken person who sits in the Kremlin. And more precisely: he is either lying in a hospital bed or in a sanatorium. He had never worked a full week since mid-summer 1995...” The Economist: “Most Russians despised Yeltsin, in part because of the humiliation they saw him subjecting the country to with his drunken, clown antics.” Korzhakov. "Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk":
“Yeltsin drinks a lot in the book. Drinking on the first page. Drinks at one hundred and one. And he drinks on the two hundred and first. Naturally, he drinks at three hundred and first. If Korzhakov’s book had more pages, then Yeltsin would have been drinking even at six hundred and one.”
Irina Lisnichenko “FACTS”: “When we drank to Russian-Ukrainian friendship at Yeltsin’s in Sverdlovsk, a “dose” of less than half a liter of vodka per person was considered frivolous.”
According to the FOM, 57% have a negative assessment of Yeltsin’s historical role, 25% have a positive assessment (in 2000, immediately after his resignation, this ratio looked more depressing - 67% versus 18%).
According to the Levada Center, 67% in 2000 and 70% in 2006 assessed the results of his reign negatively, 15% and 13%, respectively, positively.
This is what, for some reason, our TV channels (and the media) did not finish and did not show, which for a whole week, before the opening of the “Block in Motion” by the President, tried hard to knock out tears of emotion from the population with “Yeltsin’s Private Life” in order to prepare the population listen with enthusiasm to the President’s speech (especially after his words: “...we must...”).

Politicians in many countries have always loved to drink a glass or two. This has become especially noticeable in the era of mass media. The first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, was no exception.

Power is fun!

It is difficult to say reliably in what situation Yeltsin was really drunk. It is possible that his strange behavior was due to his playful and cheerful character. But people for the most part are inclined to the version of alcoholic excesses.

During a trip to Kyrgyzstan in 1992, Boris Nikolaevich, demonstrating his ability to play spoons, knocked them... No, not on his hand or knee. And on the head of the President of Kyrgyzstan Askar Akayev! Such strange behavior of Yeltsin was explained precisely by intoxication.

The first president of Russia did not behave quite adequately during his visit to Berlin in 1994. The fact that Yeltsin forgot the name of German Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl was still a trifle. During the event, he could not resist and suddenly rushed to conduct the orchestra. The apotheosis of the event was the song “Kalinka-Malinka” performed by Boris Nikolaevich.

It should be noted that these were celebrations on the occasion of the withdrawal of our troops, which had been based there since 1945. The people took the president’s prank with humor: “What? This is our last time in Germany!”

By the way, Helmut Kohl was not offended at all. In an interview at the beginning of the 2000s, he said: “Drunk Yeltsin was much better than many sober people.”

"Helicopters" on an airplane

That same year, a meeting with the Irish Prime Minister at Shannon Airport fell through. Not only did Yeltsin’s plane arrive late, but Russian President I haven’t gotten out of it yet. The plane stood still and just flew away.

Later in his interview, Boris Nikolaevich said that he was simply tired due to the 18-hour flight and overslept. Allegedly they wanted to wake him up, but the security did not let anyone near him. He promised to punish the guilty.

When people were “joking” about this situation, they recalled an episode from “Jumble,” in which a schoolboy constantly complains: “My grandmother didn’t wake me up.”

Alexander Korzhakov ( former head Yeltsin's security service) noted in one of his interviews that on some days Boris Nikolayevich could get drunk until a pig squealed. In his book “Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk,” he described several cases. For example, during a trip to Baltimore, Yeltsin urinated on an airplane wheel. This is confirmed by the organizers of the meeting.

Conspiracy and general lies

American colleague Bill Clinton also describes a curious incident in his memoirs. Allegedly, one early morning his security called him with the message: “Yeltsin ran out into the street in his shorts to catch a taxi.”

Although Boris Nikolaevich was known overseas for his strange behavior long before his presidency. In 1989, as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he came to the USA for the first time and spoke at the Institute. Hopkins. Yeltsin was so confused that no one could make out what he was saying!

And what’s more, Boris Nikolaevich, during a welcoming speech from the head of the institute, suddenly stood up and snatched a piece of paper with the text from him. He commented on his actions: “Since I speak without a piece of paper, that means you speak without it.”

Yeltsin's speech was shown on central television. Pravda wrote that he performed drunk. A scandal arose. As a result, the editor-in-chief of Pravda was fired.

Yeltsin’s behavior was then explained by the fact that he suffered from insomnia and took a powerful sleeping pill. Yeltsin himself insists on this version in his book. Moreover, he claimed that KGB agents made a video edit, slowing down the film on vowel sounds to make it look like Yeltsin was drunk.

Commentary from the head of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Mikhail Nenashev: “We don’t have such equipment to portray a person as drunk if he is actually sober. And no amount of slowing down the sound will help here - it will be noticeable. The television recording featured a meeting rather than just a monologue. It is technically impossible to distort the behavior and speech of one person without affecting others.”

However, Yeltsin’s version can be believed. Then he was one of the most prominent opposition figures, and was subjected to persecution for any reason.

Strange assassination attempt

That same year he fell from a bridge into the Moscow River. And again the security officers turned out to be the extreme ones. According to Yeltsin, he was walking to visit a friend across the bridge, when suddenly unknown people attacked him, tied a bag over his head and threw him into the water. Allegedly, he barely swam to shore.

Alksandr Korzhakov claims that he saw Yeltsin lying wet on a police bench. According to him, this version is doubtful. Firstly, the killers could not have been such amateurs that the victim herself could, having fallen into icy water, untie the bag.

In addition, he examined the crash site and found out that the river under this bridge is shallow - about 1 meter deep. And the height is all 6 meters! Like, he couldn’t survive the fall.

Also interesting is the version of Elena Stepanova, the housekeeper of Yeltsin’s friends. There were rumors that she was Boris Nikolaevich's mistress. According to her version, Yeltsin went to a secret meeting with a woman, but drunk fell into a ditch.

She stated this in her interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2004. When the correspondent noticed that Boris Nikolaevich did not drink in 1989, Stepanova responded with a laugh: “What are you saying!”

In every joke...

It must be said that rumors about the drunkenness of the first Russian president began to result in completely anecdotal stories. Their reliability is very hard to believe. Although…

The adventures of the first president are colorfully described, for example, by Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Let's turn to his book “Ivan, smell your soul!” During a trip to the Kuzbass miners, after another drinking session, Yeltsin stopped a motorcade near a river, stripped down to his underpants and jumped into the water.

But these were still flowers. After that, he allegedly crawled ashore, took off his underpants and began to wring them out. He looked back towards the ladies accompanying the motorcade and showed his... manhood. Grinning, he added: “With such a powerful object, we will kill them all, commies.”

Totally overkill

There were also plenty of obviously unfair accusations of drunkenness. For example, there is an opinion that Mikhail Zadornov was assigned to deliver the 1992 New Year congratulations to the population instead of the head of state precisely because of the president’s “too festive” state.

Although this was, of course, not the reason, since such requests are recorded in advance. Moreover, Boris Nikolaevich still prepared a New Year’s address. And it even aired on December 30th. Congratulations directly on New Year's Eve were part of a festive entertainment television program.

The fact is that at that time this tradition was not yet fully established. Heads of state have been replaced by minor figures before. Although, of course, this is the first time that a comedian has received such an honor.

The Russian president's love of booze has not gone unnoticed in international culture. In the American animated television series The Simpsons, in the episode "The Springfield Files", the character Homer, after drinking alcohol, blows into a breathalyzer, which shows the highest level of intoxication, designated "Boris Yeltsin".

Boris Nikolayevich’s predilection for swinging is evidenced by the memoirs of his colleagues and subordinates, video chronicles of meetings, conferences, and journalists’ reports.

And yet there is not much comedy in Boris Nikolaevich’s alcoholic excesses. This is a clear reflection of how controversial his reign was. And there is a lot of tragedy in this, both for the country as a whole and for Yeltsin himself. His daughter Tatyana Yumasheva noted in one of her interviews that alcohol was a remedy for the colossal stress that the first Russian president faced during that difficult time.

Your AlcoHacker

Dmitry Trunov

Drunk, giving up position after position, Yeltsin was extremely convenient for the United States, and America approached his re-election in 1996 with all seriousness

Yeltsin inherited the craving for drinking. If he had not risen to power, he could have sold building materials in a drunken shop or crushed someone at a construction site, and even gone to prison for it. However, he got out, and instead, in a drunken affair, sold off the best Soviet enterprises, destroyed entire sectors of the economy and wiped out the population. But we don’t go to prison for this.

"The best in this screwed up country"

In his youth, Boris Nikolaevich’s alcoholic tendencies were kept in check by his wife Naina. Having moved to Moscow at the height of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, Yeltsin sent his security chief to secretly fetch a bottle - he smuggled it under his coat.

In the first years as president, Yeltsin could drink a lot, without distinguishing whether it was vodka, cognac, beer or wine. As usual, I took from a glass to a liter, starting right in the morning. He made decisions while drunk. He selected the closest personnel based on their ability to drink: Barannikov, Grachev, Korzhakov, Barsukov, Tarpishchev, Borodin, Shumeiko - they were all strong drinkers. Boris Nikolayevich did not trust weak drinkers, and he was right about that. If only because he himself, having gone overboard, kept throwing out some trick like the NATO bloc expanding to the east.

Yeltsin’s “rest” was very expensive for the country. In 1991, for example, when it was not yet armed and not very rebellious, a state of emergency was declared in the Chechen-Ingush Republic. The generals were preparing to send troops into Grozny and disperse the fledgling separatists from there once and for all, but Yeltsin, having signed the decree, did not set specific tasks, went off to rest in Zavidovo, and no one could reach him by phone. The decree on the state of emergency was simply canceled after that.

Since the beginning of 1994, the president has practically not been involved in current affairs. Workplace he leaves immediately after lunch, disrupting all schedules and refusing meetings. Topical economic matters are being shouldered by Chernomyrdin.

Drunk everyday life Boris Nikolaevich very soon ceased to be a secret at the international level, and at the CIS summits the presidents of the fraternal republics began to solder him so that he would be more pliable and softer. But the “partners” in the West have succeeded most in this.

In his memoirs, Strobe Talbott, the first deputy secretary of state of the United States, writes, for example, that ex-President Richard Nixon assessed the first president of Russia this way: “He may be a drunk, but he is the best we can have in this screwed-up country.”

Talbott generally shows a very broad panorama of Boris Yeltsin’s foreign policy. The President, for example, was drunk more than once during telephone conversations with Clinton, and during his visits to “friend Bill” he generally behaved quite like himself. After being confronted with this geopolitical factor a couple of times, Clinton finally decided, "At least he's not aggressive when he's drunk." Moreover, it soon turned out that the drunken Russian Tsar could be manipulated.

“In large plenary sessions on both sides of the table, Yeltsin played the decisive, even domineering leader who knows what he wants and insists on getting it,” Talbott writes. - During closed meetings, he became susceptible to Clinton's persuasion and exhortations. Then, during the final press conferences, Yeltsin went out of his way to hide how accommodating he was behind closed doors.”

In order to “persuade” the Russian guarantor, the persons accompanying him were removed from the negotiations under plausible pretext. After this, Yeltsin could be taken lukewarm. Clinton simply learned to agree with everything in principle, to utter many beautiful and correct words, to assure Boris Nikolayevich of the most tender friendship. But the decisions were always made by Americans. Clinton and Yeltsin, by the way, met 18 times - more than any other leaders of the United States and the USSR-Russia. Clinton said: “Even drunk Yeltsin is better than most of the sober Russians who could have replaced him.”

Since the drunk Yeltsin, who gave up position after position, was indeed so convenient for the United States, America approached his re-election with all seriousness. In 1996, for example, the American embassy warned staff in Moscow that there might be election fraud in favor of Yeltsin and demanded that they “distance themselves from election monitoring.” It is not without reason, as Sergei Baburin assures, that not so long ago, while still president, Dmitry Medvedev said: “Hardly anyone has any doubts about who won the presidential elections in 1996. It was not Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.”

Yeltsin approached the re-election as a very old man, destroyed by irrepressible drunkenness. In the summer of 1995, Boris Nikolayevich, after a liter of forty-degree liquor, suffered the first heart attack in his presidential years in the toilet. The guarantor was tormented by constant headaches, heart pain, and pressure changes. He took a large number of pills, including those containing drugs, continuing to drink almost every day as if nothing had happened.

During these years, security chief Korzhakov had already learned to hide alcohol from Yeltsin and greatly dilute the drinks served to the table. The number of heart attacks that Boris Nikolaevich had during the year of the presidential race is difficult to even calculate. The most reasonable thing for him would be to refuse elections. However, what kind of intelligence can be expected from an old man who is always drunk, sick, under the influence of drugs and under pressure from loved ones? And his loved ones - his wife Naina and daughter Tatyana, Yumashev - needed his power more than his life in order to enjoy privileges, hastily fill their chests and feel safe for at least some more time.

That year, the frail Kremlin elder, who had previously fought against privileges and ancient grandfathers in the CPSU, opened up truly endless prospects for the oligarchs and the West. While they were using their money to cook up a victory for him, Yeltsin could not even get dressed to address the people before the second round. This appeal was recorded, somehow getting him out of bed and dressing him to the waist. Boris Nikolaevich addressed the people without pants.

This is a time of miracles. A time of complete chaos. Everyone survived as best they could. There was everything and there was nothing. If there was nothing in the USSR, then after its collapse it turned out - “and what the hell happened to it.” Gorbachev's successor, Boris Yeltsin, led the country. Our entertainment portal will not talk about his method of rule. We will tell you about his drunken antics. So, let's read Interesting Facts about a gray-haired joker. Enjoy:

Brian Jones and Ernest Hemingway were most likely Boris Yeltsin's favorite personalities. Throughout his presidency, Yeltsin's bad habits progressed, to the delight of the West. There are a lot of cases related to Borka’s drunkenness.

Just the facts:

1. Boris Yeltsin was the first democratic elected president Russia.
2. He started with 57% of the votes and finished with an impressive 2%.
3. At 76, he consumed enough alcohol to fend off 8 generations of Mormons.
4. He once walked down Pennsylvania Avenue in his underpants, hoping to get a pizza (no other leader showed more dedication to capitalism than he did).

1. Kyrgyzstan - 1992. In 1992, the people of Kyrgyzstan became detached from the Soviet Union and invited Boris Yeltsin to join them. Or maybe Askar Akayev wanted to tell a state secret about how to care for your eyebrows.

However, Akayev forgot two things: Boris Yeltsin was talented at playing spoons, both musical instrument, and was also an amazing magician! The main trick was the disappearance of liquid on the tables. Yeltsin ended up using Akayev's shiny bald head as a striking surface for his spoons! An innovative maneuver in the history of international relations.

2. Stockholm - 1997. In 1997, a conference was held in Sweden regarding nuclear weapons. Yeltsin began the evening by drinking champagne and ranting about how Swedish meatballs reminded him of the face of tennis star Bjorn Borg. He then nearly falls off the stage.

It didn't end there, announcing to the entire world that Germany and Japan had nuclear weapons, that it was currently in Finland, and (to the surprise of everyone in the Kremlin) that Russia was to reduce its nuclear stockpile by one third.

He subsequently promised to lead a global ban on nuclear weapons. Everyone at the conference was horrified, and the assistants began to struggle for survival. During the interruption, they insisted that “he misspoke.” Well, many were responsible for their words. Borka was as lucky as a drowned man.

3. Berlin - 1994. In 1994, a Russian delegation was sent to Berlin to visit the last Russian troops in Germany. Considering that Russian troops were stationed in Germany after World War II, this was a big deal. Of course, Yeltsin decided to bring them together at one table, and they restore the final scene from the film "Society" by Brian Yuzny. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is incredibly bored with the Cold War.

Don’t rejoice under Yeltsin, he will wash it all away!

Yeltsin began the final relay race and took on the role of conductor of the group. Then he danced like a maniac, rewarding the German dancers with a nervous smile, blowing kisses into the audience, and singing songs in an incomprehensible (even for Russian) speech. Most likely it was the Wookiee language. Probably, in the opinion of Boris Yeltsin, it was ideally suited as a language of diplomacy.

4. Washington, DC - 1995. When foreign dignitaries did not develop plans to destroy Soviet Union, they spent time at Blair House, the official guest house of the White House. At one of these moments, Borya was visiting. And then one night in 1995, Blair House security personnel shit themselves when a drunken Yeltsin slipped past them and headed toward Pennsylvania Avenue—in his underwear.

First President Russian Federation left an indelible mark in the memory of his people. especially some of his actions, which can hardly be called adequate...

As the prologue of “Revelations of “Tsar Boris I”” (as he liked to call himself):
“I came to the conclusion that alcohol is the only thing. a means to relieve stress. That stress in 1993 was so great that I still don’t know how I survived it. And I remember that this load became lighter after a few glasses.”

Political scientists and the media characterized Yeltsin as a charismatic personality, noted the unusual and unpredictability of his behavior, eccentricity, lust for power, tenacity, and cunning.

Opponents argued that Yeltsin was characterized by cruelty, cowardice, rancor, deceit, and a low intellectual and cultural level.

In 2007, Mark Simpson wrote in The Guardian:
“A perpetually drunken scoundrel who reduced most of his people to unimaginable poverty while simultaneously enriching his clique fantastically. A man who began his career as a populist campaigning against the relatively modest corruption of party functionaries later became the head of a country in an era of widespread corruption and banditry unparalleled in history. He not only kowtowed to Western interests, but also presided over the near-final destruction of his country as a political and military force on the world stage. He trampled Russia into the mud so that we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves.”

Rod Liddle in The Times on the occasion of Yeltsin’s death, in his article, paid much attention to the former president’s addiction to alcohol: “No one else in Russian history has managed to save the state hundreds of liters of formaldehyde by reliably drinking alcohol not just during life, but also in power "

The Wall Street Journal wrote: “Yeltsin’s worst enemy was himself. Drunken antics not only undermined his health, but also became symptoms of the incompetence of the Kremlin authorities.

Clinton was tolerant of Yeltsin's drunkenness until the negotiations in Helsinki on NATO expansion. After dinner, Clinton expressed concern: “Not good. He consumed more than a guy should in his condition and with his past. Every time I see him, I have the feeling that I have to remind him: the world is counting on you, you can’t just go to the bottom”;

Yeltsin was also drunk during his first telephone conversation with Clinton after the inauguration of the American president; - in April 1993, Yeltsin drank a lot of alcohol during a boat trip with Clinton around Fr. Vancouver; - during his first visit to the USA in the summer of 1989, after getting off the plane, he turned away from the official delegation greeting him and peed on the wheel;

In June 1991, at a dinner in honor of President Bush, Yeltsin ate caviar with his hands and licked it off his fingers; - Clinton had experience with alcoholics. Clinton's father was an alcoholic.

And I remember once we, the president’s advisers, were horrified by the state Yeltsin was in.

In his foreign policy Yeltsin agreed to any concessions, the main thing was to have time between glasses..... It was Yeltsin’s passion for alcohol that explains B. Clinton’s success in achieving his political goals.

Yeltsin's first official visit to Kazakhstan on the eve of the "putsch" was magnificently organized. After the usual “loading” at lunch, Yeltsin decided to play with spoons. First he hit his leg, as expected, and then with a crash he began to hit his subordinate on the head. The spectators were ready to burst from the laughter that stifled them. Yeltsin remembered this “creative” discovery: then, in a drunken stupor, he always banged spoons on neighboring heads. Once he even hit Akaev’s presidential head with a metal spoon...

From the book by V. Zhirinovsky “Ivan, smell your soul!”:

“They say that somewhere in Kemerovo, during a trip to the miners, Yeltsin, after another drinking session, stopped a motorcade near a river, stripped down to his underpants and went into the water. He climbed out onto the shore and, to the horror of the men, but to the hidden happiness of the ladies accompanying the motorcade, took off his underpants, He began to twist them. And then he looked in their direction and showed his “object,” grinning and adding: “With such a powerful object, we will kill them all, commies.”

Korzhakov: “Drunkenness in the Kremlin began in the morning. At about 11 o’clock Yeltsin called on a direct line:

Well, Alexander Vasilyevich, isn’t it time to have lunch? “Lunch” began and lasted all day until dinner. It’s good if you managed to bring the boss home at 10 or 11 at night. This was a normal day."

30.9.1994. Yeltsin was returning from the USA. His plane landed in Ireland, where Yeltsin was to meet with the Irish Prime Minister.
Yeltsin never showed up, he was too drunk. Then Naina Iosifovna whispered to Korzhakov with holy innocence: “Boris Nikolaevich got up, probably wanted to go to the toilet, but fell, wet himself and lies motionless.”
And then Yeltsin publicly said, to Clinton’s laughter, that he simply overslept. Yeltsin's heart condition worsened, the blood vessels became clogged. Yeltsin's reluctance to give up alcohol further worsened this condition.

Alcohol affects the heart, blood vessels, and blood supply to the body. Yeltsin swallowed a huge amount of pills, mixtures and continued to drink Korzhakov: Yeltsin periodically received blood transfusions to cleanse the body. However, his whole life was one of complete disintegration.”

After winning the elections in 1996, they spent a whole month preparing for the inauguration of the presidency. We built a special stands. Then, the ceremony was shortened from 2 hours to 40 minutes. And then, when they realized that Yeltsin could not stand it, they shortened the ceremony to 5 minutes.

How Yeltsin conducted in Germany

Korzhakov: During lunch, he drank a lot of dry red wine - the German waiter did not have time to add more. Yeltsin frolicked: he cackled in a rich baritone, gesticulated loosely and spoke outright nonsense. When we arrived at the city hall, Yeltsin got out of the Mercedes and approached the Berlin police band. And suddenly he snatched the baton from the stunned conductor and settled down at the console. He started waving his arms.

Spectators, correspondents and musicians also had a lot of fun. They have never seen anything like this anywhere and are unlikely to see it again.
And the president accepted the hoots and screams as enthusiastic recognition of his talent as a conductor.

Few people know that in the president’s car there was always a special suitcase, which always contained a set of bottles of strong drinks and several sandwiches - any event was suitable for the occasion.

And how did the journalists whisper to each other when they saw the president of the country, completely drunk, being carefully led by the arms from the plane after the meeting of the heads of the CIS?
P. Voschanov: “During the days of the August 1991 coup, people sincerely decided to defend democracy, their president. We sat on the steps and lit fires. The nights were already cold then. I didn’t doubt for a second that if hostilities had started then, they would all have died. Meanwhile, below the ground floor, in the bomb shelter of the White House, a table was set, and Yeltsin and his inner circle were drinking, waiting for the situation to be resolved.

At the end of 1989, Yeltsin toured the United States with speeches. In Soviet newspapers, reprints from foreign ones appeared that Yeltsin spoke while drunk, and his poorly coordinated movements were shown on television. Kevin Connolly, a BBC correspondent in Moscow recalled that in 1991 in Novokuznetsk, Yeltsin after a “legendary binge” I slept through several meetings. As the journalist noted, “this was years before Yeltsin’s drunkenness became a subject for cartoonists around the world.” In 2009, at a banquet in Tashkent, after the signing of the Bishkek agreements, Yeltsin tapped his forehead and the foreheads of the presidents sitting next to him with two spoons. After the banquet, Yeltsin could hardly stand on his feet: he was led by Gaidar and Grachev.

In 2007, Mark Simpson in The Guardian called Yeltsin "a perpetually drunken scoundrel who reduced most of his people to unimaginable poverty while fantastically enriching his cabal."
An editorial in The Guardian noted: "The meeting where the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus worked on a plan to break up the Union ended in a drunken quarrel."

The Times correspondent in Moscow, Michael Binion, wrote that Yeltsin, “weakened by illness, and even more so by vodka, had lost control of the country,” “he left office a broken man, arousing universal contempt.” American millionaire Louis Bantle, sponsor of free rehabilitation center for recovery from alcoholism, in 2008 said that Russia had “a 10-year delay in development, because President Yeltsin was an active, functioning alcoholic” Korzhakov: In 1990. into the smoke, a drunken EBN in his broken-down Moskvich knocked down a man to death at night. And he got away with this murder completely with impunity. Gennady Zyuganov called Yeltsin “a drunken, decayed, immoral person” who was not capable of leading the state. On September 1, 1998, at a meeting of the State Duma, Zyuganov said:

“The president was absolutely drunk and insane for two days last week... We don’t have a president, we have a drunken, insane person” 02/8/1999 at a press conference Zyuganov: “... we believe that a document should be prepared that would limited the autocracy of one helpless, weak-willed, drunken person who sits in the Kremlin. And more precisely: he is either lying in a hospital bed or in a sanatorium.

He had never worked a full week since mid-summer 1995...” The Economist: “Most Russians despised Yeltsin, in part because of the humiliation they saw him subjecting the country to with his drunken, clown antics.” Korzhakov. "Boris Yeltsin: from dawn to dusk":

“Yeltsin drinks a lot in the book. He drinks on the first page. He drinks on page one hundred and one. And on two hundred and one he drinks. Naturally, he drinks on three hundred and one. If there were more pages in Korzhakov’s book, then Yeltsin would drink on six hundred and one.”

Irina Lisnichenko “FACTS”: “When we drank to Russian-Ukrainian friendship at Yeltsin’s in Sverdlovsk, a “dose” of less than half a liter of vodka per person was considered frivolous.”

According to the FOM, 57% have a negative assessment of Yeltsin’s historical role, 25% have a positive assessment (in 2000, immediately after his resignation, this ratio looked more depressing - 67% versus 18%).

According to the Levada Center, 67% in 2000 and 70% in 2006 assessed the results of his reign negatively, 15% and 13%, respectively, positively.

This is what, for some reason, our TV channels (and the media) did not finish and did not show, which for a whole week, before the opening of the “Block in Motion” by the President, tried hard to knock out tears of emotion from the population with “Yeltsin’s Private Life” in order to prepare the population listen with enthusiasm to the President’s speech (especially after his words: “...we must...”).