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YELTSIN Story #1

I confess to always having a soft spot for Boris Yeltsin. He is the most Russian of any Russian I’ve ever met. I have a couple of stories about him. Although it doesn’t directly involve him, here is the first.

I was trapped at the US Embassy in Moscow during the public riots at the Duma in 1993, when Yeltsin stood on the tank with a bullhorn.

We (my boss and myself) had left our hotel in Moscow and went to the Embassy before lunch. We needed to talk to the attaché and sort out the details of an aircraft we were going to escort from Tiksi AB, Russia to Eielson AFB, AK.

It was for a joint Russian/USAF Arctic Search and Rescue exercise.

We were sitting in the Marine bar in the embassy, drinking $1 Budvar as the sun went down and things started getting a bit dicey outside.

The US embassy in Moscow is on the same square as the Duma. People had started to congregate and protest, CNN was there, and it looked like it was going to get ugly.

Marines stopped drinking and went to their dorm. I looked at my boss and the Attache, and said, ‘We need to get back to the hotel’.

The Marines initially wouldn’t let us leave. We had to prove that we were not embassy personnel and then they let us out the gate.

Walking through the square amidst all of the protesters was a very surreal experience. I had to piss as we finished crossing the square and saw a small area in a park that guys were using.

I looked at the Major and said, ‘got to go pee.’

He looked around the crowd nervously and said, ‘Hurry up and don’t talk to anyone.’

Well, I talked to a couple of guys while doing my business and walked out of the park with an empty bladder and a liter bottle of beer. My accent is weird to Russians. At first they ask me if I am Jewish (?). Once I explain that I’m from Texas they are all smiles and ask me how many cows I own.

My new friends hooked us up with a buddy of theirs that was driving out of the city center and was willing to drop us off at the hotel for a few rubles. It was a win/win.