good talk

You guys are tough, you can take it. Alexander Lebed distinguished himself as the Russian Commander of the Tula Paratroop Division during the War in Afghanistan. A big, beefy guy who had been one of the Russians' Heavyweight Boxers, the Russians often preferred guys as their Generals who looked like they could leap in and start doing it themselves. During the attempted Communist Coup of 1991 the 3-Star General Lebed was ordered to use tanks against the Government of Mikhail Gorbachev, he refused. No admirer of Communism, his own father had been thrown in jail for being Late to Work. In reference to the Communists' lip service to Everybody being Equal to Everybody Else, Lebed said, "It's Ridiculous to say that a Corporal is Equal to a General." Resigning from the Army Lebed ran for the Presidency of Russia in 1996, held in wide Public Esteem and thought to be Uncorruptible in Contrast to about Everybody Else, Lebed finished third with 14.5% of the Vote. In the Run-Off 2 weeks later between the incumbent Boris Yeltsin and the Communist Gennady Zyuganov, Lebed threw his support behind Yeltsin gaining him the Presidency. But later that year Lebed and Yeltsin had a falling out resulting in Lebed deriding Yeltsin as "A Sick Old Man," and saying of the Presidency of Russia, "I will have it." Unusually Prescient, a Year before the Russian Stock Market Crash, Lebed said, "There's supposed to be forty million Stock-Holders in Russia, in Reality there's forty million Fools." In 1998 Lebed was Elected as the Governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, the 2nd largest Russian Province, as he bided his time. On April 28, 2002 Alexander Lebed was killed in a Helicopter Crash, he was "52." As soon as I Heard that Lebed had been killed and how he had died I knew that he had been Murdered. Alexander Ivanovich was a Good Man and the World Can Use More of Those.