VOA慢速英语 2007 0428

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This week, Russia buried its former president with full honors in Moscow. Boris Yeltsin died Monday at age seventy-six. He served from nineteen ninety-one to nineteen ninety-nine. He will always be remembered as Russia's first democratically elected leader. But his record is seen as a mix of good and bad for the country.

 
A farewell ceremony in Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow
Boris Yeltsin rose within the Communist Party of the Soviet¹ Union. But in nineteen eighty-seven he rebelled against the Soviet system. He called for more reform. Within a month, he was dismissed as party chief in Moscow.

He became a leader of Russia's political opposition². In nineteen eighty-nine, he was elected to the Soviet parliament. Two years later he was elected president of the Russian republic -- at that time, the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist³ Republic. Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union.

That same year, nineteen ninety-one, a group of plotters from the military, Communist Party and KGB secret police tried to seize power. Leaders of the attempted overthrow⁴ detained Mister Gorbachev. But Mister Yeltsin climbed onto an army tank in Moscow to urge people to resist. The coup⁵ attempt failed.

 
Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev
Four months later, in December, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union collapsed⁶.

Yet in the years that followed Boris Yeltsin's heroic moment, his popularity fell. In October of nineteen ninety-three, he ordered the army to shell the parliament building to end an occupation by his opponents.

The next year, he ordered troops into Chechnya to crush a separatist rebellion. The war that followed resulted in more than seventy-five thousand deaths, mostly civilians⁷.

Yet Mister Yeltsin's presidency⁸ also led to open elections in Russia. It led to private property rights and the right to free speech. He pushed for economic reforms. But critics said those policies went too far, leaving millions of Russians in poverty. They said the restructuring gave too much economic power to a small number of very wealthy business people, known as oligarchs.

Boris Yeltsin had a history of heart problems and heavy drinking. He suffered a heart attack between the first and second rounds of balloting⁹ in the nineteen ninety-six presidential election. His condition, though, was kept hidden. In nineteen ninety-nine, six months before the end of his second term, Mister Yeltsin resigned.

To take his place, he chose his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy. Mister Putin was then elected president in two thousand and re-elected four years later. This week he remembered Mister Yeltsin as a man thanks to whom "a new democratic Russia was born."

Political scientists say history will remember Boris Yeltsin as a leader who was democratic in some ways but not in others. They say Russia under Mister Yeltsin was a far more open place than it was during Soviet times -- and more open than it is now. 

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, written by Brianna Blake. I’m Steve Ember.

1 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

2 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

3 socialist   

n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的

参考例句：

• China is a socialist country,and a developing country as well.中国是一个社会主义国家，也是一个发展中国家。
• His father was an ardent socialist.他父亲是一个热情的社会主义者。

4 overthrow   

v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆

参考例句：

• After the overthrow of the government,the country was in chaos.政府被推翻后，这个国家处于混乱中。
• The overthrow of his plans left him much discouraged.他的计划的失败使得他很气馁。

5 coup   

n.政变；突然而成功的行动

参考例句：

• The monarch was ousted by a military coup.那君主被军事政变者废黜了。
• That government was overthrown in a military coup three years ago.那个政府在3年前的军事政变中被推翻。

6 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

7 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。

8 presidency   

n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期)

参考例句：

• Roosevelt was elected four times to the presidency of the United States.罗斯福连续当选四届美国总统。
• Two candidates are emerging as contestants for the presidency.两位候选人最终成为总统职位竞争者。

9 balloting   

v.（使）投票表决( ballot的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Clark took a commanding leading in the early balloting. 在最初投票时，克拉克遥遥领先。 来自辞典例句
• The balloting had stagnated, he couldn't win. 投票工作陷于停顿，他不能得胜。 来自辞典例句