Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin had a weird relationship. There was the time the Russian president gave the U.S. president a pair of that said 鈥淵eltsin 96鈥 and 鈥淐linton 96.鈥 There was also the time Clinton when Yeltsin called the U.S. press 鈥渁 disaster鈥 at a press conference.
But perhaps the weirdest incident in their professional relationship was when Yeltsin got drunk and wandered into the street in his underwear, trying to get a pizza.
The incident happened during Yeltsin and Clinton鈥檚 first meeting in Washington in September 1994. Although there were glancing media reports about it over the years, it wasn鈥檛 widely reported on until 2009, when author Taylor Branch published his book The Clinton Tapes, based on his interviews with the president.
鈥淪ecret Service agents discovered Yeltsin alone on Pennsylvania Avenue, dead drunk, clad in his underwear, yelling for a taxi,鈥 in his book. 鈥淵eltsin slurred his words in a loud argument with the baffled agents. He did not want to go back into Blair House, where he was staying. He wanted a taxi to go out for pizza.鈥
When Branch asked Clinton how the situation ended, the president shrugged and said, 鈥淲ell, he got his pizza.鈥 But the next night, Clinton recalled, Yeltsin tried to do it again.
鈥淓luding security, he made his way down the back stairs into the Blair House basement, where a building guard mistook him for a drunken intruder,鈥 Branch wrote. 鈥淵eltsin was briefly endangered until converging Russian and American agents sorted out everyone鈥檚 affiliation.鈥 Because the guards mistook him for an intruder, 鈥淐linton thought this incident, although contained within Blair House, exposed even greater risk than the pizza quest.鈥
Unfortunately, these nighttime escapades illustrated a larger problem that Yeltsin had with alcohol. The Washington Post has that during the 1995 press conference where Yeltsin called the U.S. press 鈥渁 disaster,鈥 he was drunk on white wine. In another Post article, the former deputy secretary of state under Clinton that the reason the U.S. president had laughed so hard at Yeltsin鈥檚 鈥渄isaster鈥 jibe was because he was trying to cover for how drunk the Russian president was. Another time, Yeltsin called Clinton while inebriated and asked him to hold a secret meeting on a submarine.
During Yeltsin鈥檚 presidency from 1991 to 1999, his alcoholism worsened to the point where he was frequently stumbling and falling over. He also exhibited inappropriate behavior on camera, such as when he in front of reporters. These antics have now become a part of his legacy as a world leader.
Upon his death in 2007, the German newspaper Der Spiegel nodded to this fact with a notably blunt : 鈥淭he Rise and Fall of the Drunken Czar.鈥
