"I want to apologize
for our unfulfilled dreams. What we thought would be easy has
proved painfully difficult. I would like to apologize for having
failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we
would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian
past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one
go. I myself believed in this. We haven't managed to make this
leap, and I was naive in thinking we could."
Boris Yeltsin, President of Russian Federation, as a personal
aside at the announcement of his resignation on December 31,
1999, six months short of fulfilling his second term in office.
Quoted in the New York Times the same day in an article by Celestine
Bohlen entitled "Yeltsin Resigns, Naming Putin as Acting
President to Run in March Election."
"I want to apologize
for our unfulfilled dreams. What we thought would be easy has
proved painfully difficult. I would like to apologize for having
failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we
would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian
past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one
go. I myself believed in this. We haven't managed to make this
leap, and I was naive in thinking we could."