Today, Aug. 19, is the day that in 1991 made all the difference for the liberation of Russia and the slave states of the former Soviet Union. It was on this day that hardline Soviet Communists took Mikhail Gorbachev captive, hoping to replace his reform-minded government with strict Communists who could save the USSR and return it to its "glory days" of murder, repression and world intimidation.
The hardline Communist coup didn't work, primarily because Russia's first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, stood up to the Communists' tanks and demonstrated the power of personal courage and democratic legitimacy. By the end of 1991, Yeltsin's Russian government and the other elected governments of the old Soviet world had abolished the Soviet Union.
Today, about half of the Russian people claim to wish they had the old Soviet Union back. They blame democracy for government corruption and a poor economy. They forget the millions murdered by the Soviet Communists and they have yet to figure out that their only hopes to rid themselves of corruption and poverty are democracy and freedom.
Vladimir Putin has corrupted the government and rigged the economy against the people. Russians, it's up to you to use the tools of democracy to remove Putin now before his tyrannical machine is too big to stop peacefully. You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Frank Warner
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