I am a Soviet man, and Yeltsin is a Soviet man - maybe our grandchildren will be different.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My father was an immigrant from Russia and my mother was first generation.
If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay!
I knew President Yeltsin well. He would never have tolerated government officials demonstratively showing off the millions they acquired through corruption, the way it's done today.
A Soviet man is a product of invisible changes, degradation and progressive deformation. Breaking the chain of those changes is hard. Perhaps they are irreversible.
Of course, everyone knows my story of being born in Russia and moving to the United States at 7. For a few years people would say, 'Well, she's living in the United States, but she's Russian.'
No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island.
My mother is Irish, my father is black and Venezuelan, and me - I'm tan, I guess.
We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.
I'm half-Welsh, half-Russian. My maternal grandmother is Russian. I've very much a mongrel, which is good in a way because it makes me quite a blank canvas.
You gotta understand, my great-grandfather was German and Irish. My grandmother was Indian, and my grandfather was African-American, so we all got a little something in us.