[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I)]
[June 16, 1992]
[Pages 950-951]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the State Dinner for President Boris Yeltsin of Russia

June 16, 1992
    Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the White House. Mr. President and 
Mrs. Yeltsin, and distinguished guests all, Barbara and I are delighted 
to welcome you here tonight on a day that I think history will record as 
something very, very special. I am very pleased with the arrangements 
that we were able to work out with President Yeltsin today. I think it's 
good for mankind. I think it's good for the generations here and the 
generations to come. So you're here on an historic occasion, and we 
couldn't be more pleased.
    Mr. President, tonight's dinner is a little bit more formal than the 
blue jeans and sweaters that we wore back up there at Camp David in 
February, but I believe the progress we made today would not have been 
possible without that private time we spent together and then without 
the hard work of our Secretary and your Foreign Minister, our Secretary 
of Defense, your Defense Minister, our Ambassador, your Ambassador. As I 
said this morning as I welcomed you to the White House, this meeting 
marks a new kind of summit, not a meeting between two powers that are 
struggling for global supremacy but between two partners striving to 
build a democratic peace.
    This new relationship has its roots in the new Russian revolution, 
and that revolution owes so much to our guest here tonight. Just as 
crises show the mettle of a man, so too they show the strength of an 
idea. When, back in August of 1991, the old

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guard threatened to take Russia backward, Boris Yeltsin led the defense 
of democracy from the building the Russians call the White House. The 
coup plotters set out to destroy democracy, and instead, thanks to the 
courage of this man, they made it stronger.
    Mr. President, you've been described many times as a maverick, a 
word coined in the American heartland to capture the independent streak 
that sets some individuals apart from the crowd. Well, I think our 
fellow Texans Jim Baker and Bob Strauss would agree you possess a 
certain spirit that you find on the plains of the West. And tonight we 
honor your courage and celebrate the new possibilities now open to us.
    Think back to the cold war climate that marked earlier summits and 
how far we've come. How much safer, how much more hopeful to meet 
tonight as friends united by common ideals. More than 150 years ago de 
Tocqueville predicted that the United States and Russia would one day be 
the world's two great powers, rivals for world dominance. We must prove 
that prophecy was only true for a time and that our two nations can 
forge a new future in freedom.
    Our governments will work to build stronger ties for the sake of 
peace and prosperity. We in this country must reach out, provide the 
assistance that can help Russia's democratic revolution succeed.
    But the bonds that knit democracies together can never be created by 
government alone. Democracies grow together through the countless 
encounters that take place every day between private individuals--
professionals, business and labor, artists and educators--in your 
country and ours. Gone are the days when vast parts of our countries 
were off-limits to foreign visitors. Under our new open lands agreement, 
for the first time Russian and American officials, and more important, 
Russian and American citizens, will be free to travel anywhere in each 
other's country to witness the customs and heritage that set us apart 
and the common humanity that draws us together.
    So tonight, Mr. President, I offer this toast in the spirit of 
friendship to the new partnership between our people, to the success of 
the new Russian revolution, and to the health and happiness of Boris 
Yeltsin, the President of Russia.

                    Note: The President spoke at 8:20 p.m. in the State 
                        Dining Room at the White House.