Doctors used to say that people who die in an alcoholic coma inflict a severe insult to the brain, and this seems to have been the cumulative effect of his rule in Russia on the Russian people. They loved our Levis and yearned for our freedom, or so the story goes, so we endorsed for them a drunken clown whose lucid moments were devoted to the enrichment of his cronies. Sometimes he would defend parliament, at other times shell it with tanks. Why? Don’t remember, it’s all kind of woozy. Anyway, the man was a sport.

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