After Yeltsin's 1989 visit to the United States of America. Quoted in Leon Aron: "Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life" (St. Martin's Press, 2000)
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What have they done to our poor people?... [the] pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments... I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans.
— Boris Yeltsin
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "What have they done to our poor people?... [the] pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments... I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans." in the context of "After Yeltsin's 1989 visit to the United States of America. Quoted in Leon Aron: "Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life" (St. Martin's Press, 2000)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Boris Yeltsin" (Quotes, 1980s)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
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About Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Russian and former Soviet politician who served as the first President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1990, he later stood as a political independent, during which time he was viewed as being ideologically aligned with liberalism and Russian nationalism.
About Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Russian and former Soviet politician who served as the first President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1990, he later stood as a political independent, during which time he was viewed as being ideologically aligned with liberalism and Russian nationalism.
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