Russian Ex-President B Yeltsin Dies

[Rasputin]

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died, the Kremlin says.
Mr Yeltsin was 76. The cause of death has not yet been announced. He had a history of heart trouble.

In 1991 he famously outmanoeuvred former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and then triumphed against parliament hardliners in 1993.

Mr Yeltsin became Russia's first democratically elected president after Mr Gorbachev resigned as Soviet leader in December 1991.

He won international acclaim as a defender of democracy when in August 1991 he mounted a tank in Moscow, rallying the people against an attempt to overthrow Mr Gorbachev's era of glasnost and perestroika.

Former President Boris Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, has died, a Kremlin official said Monday. He was 76.

60 Minutes' Mike Wallace interviewed Yeltsin in October 2000 about the Russian leader's legacy for his country.

Yeltsin, who became Russia's president in 1991 and survived two armed uprisings by hardline communists, resigned suddenly Dec. 31, 1999, after suffering several heart attacks and being hospitalized with pneumonia.

He was also the target of accusations he had accepted bribes. Putin granted Yeltsin lifetime immunity from prosecution upon his resignation.

In the interview with Wallace, Yeltsin insisted his health had improved, that his heart and emotional state were stable, but he did not appear well.

Yeltsin says of his battle with alcohol, saying "I did struggle. Of course I did," but says he has reduced his drinking since his 1994 heart attack.

He says he stopped drinking heavily back in 1994 after a heart attack left him noticeably weakened.

He admits he concealed his 1996 heart attack from the public until after the election that year, saying, "I was confident about my health."

The former president, who estimates his net worth at $300,000, denies that he and his family have foreign assets hidden away.

Confronted with statistics showing that the standard of living n Russia had fallen and that suicide, crime and alcoholism were increasing, Yeltsin said, "Your data is wrong. I don't believe your data."

Asked if he believed democracy was firmly established in the new Russia, Yeltsin answered, "Firmly."

"America has not become more influential than Russia. It has not," the former president insisted.

Rarely seen in public since his resignation, Yeltsin had spent most his time at his dacha outside Moscow working on his memoirs. Former premier Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin's predecessor, lives nearby, but he and Yeltsin have not met for years. Yeltsin would not elaborate on the reasons.

[Rasputin]

بوریس یلتسین رئیس جمهور پیشین روسیه درگذشت.
رسانه های روسیه این خبر را به نقل از بيانیه منتشر شده از سوی کاخ کرملین منتشر کرده اند.

آقای یلتسین، به دنبال فروپاشی اتحاد جماهیر شوروی در سال 1991 میلادی، در نخستین انتخابات دموکراتیک روسیه، به عنوان نخستین رئیس جمهور این کشور انتخاب شد.

جزییات این خبر، به زودی منتشر می شود.

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[Rasputin]

Yeltsin won Russia's first popular presidential election in a landslide in June 1991. Russia still was part of the Soviet Union, but the central government had started ceding power to the 15 republics.

Kremlin hard-liners trying to stop that process launched the failed coup in August, putting Gorbachev under house arrest. But Yeltsin took control of mass protests in Moscow, leading the democratic opposition to victory.

Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and confiscated its vast property. The ban was lifted in court about a year later, but by then Yeltsin had dealt the death blow to the tottering Soviet state. He and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus formed the Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991, declaring the Soviet Union extinct. Gorbachev resigned within the month.

Impatient to lead Russia into a new, prosperous era, Yeltsin quickly launched an economic-reform program that freed prices but sent them soaring, wiping out many people's savings. Inflation skyrocketed and production plummeted.

Years later, he expressed regret over the rush, and said he'd been "naive."

"I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich civilized future," he told the nation in a televised speech to announce his resignation on Dec. 31, 1999.

"I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt."

Tension grew between him and the Soviet-era parliament, climaxing in fall 1993 when Yeltsin disbanded the legislature. An armed standoff and street riots followed, and Yeltsin finally turned tanks against the parliament building. Scores of people were killed in the fighting.

Afterward, Yeltsin pushed through a constitution that guaranteed a strong presidency and allowed him to brush off any serious parliamentary challenges.

But growing hard-line influence led him to dump key reformers from his Cabinet, which alienated democratic forces. Their disillusionment grew after the start of the first Chechnya war and more hard-line gains in parliamentary elections in December 1995.

By early 1996, Yeltsin was deeply unpopular and presidential elections loomed in June. But true to form, Yeltsin rallied when things looked bleakest, manipulating the media, enlisting the aid of the so-called oligarchs who had enriched themselves on the spoils of the Soviet economy in a grueling campaign.

The campaign trips to Russian regions and exertion took a heavy physical toll, and by election day Yeltsin could not even make it to his scheduled polling station. Doctors later said he had suffered another mild heart attack during the campaign.

He underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery in November 1996, but continued to suffer from a series of other ailments. He also had long-running back trouble, and seemed increasingly shaky, both physically and mentally.

Russians questioned who was running the country — the doddering Yeltsin, or the aides and tycoons whom critics accused of exercising undue influence over Kremlin policy.

Yeltsin's increasing frailty seemed to reflect the declining fortunes of the country he led. During public appearances, he would often stumble, and his speeches were punctuated by long, inexplicable pauses — even when he had the text in front of him.

Russians expected another halting speech on New Year's Eve 1999, but he stunned the nation and the world with his resignation — having given no hint that he would ever give in to calls that he step down before his second term was up in spring 2000. He named his last prime minister, former KGB agent Putin, acting president — giving him a huge incumbent's advantage over any would-be challengers.

"Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new, smart, strong, energetic people," Yeltsin said.

"And we who have been in power for many years already, we must go."

After his dramatic exit, Yeltsin appeared rarely in public — popping up now and again at an official ceremony, holiday reception or tennis tournament. He traveled several times to China for what were described as health-boosting trips, and he looked fitter in retirement than he had in years.

Yeltsin met about once a month with Putin, usually at his dacha in Barvikha outside Moscow, he told an interviewer with Russian state television on the second anniversary of his resignation. He said he felt stronger than during the presidency, less weighed down by stress, and never regretted his abrupt departure. He felt certain that the reforms he championed would continue under Putin, he said.

"If I had doubts that the reforms might be reversed, I would not have resigned," Yeltsin said.

Yeltsin is survived by his wife, two daughters and several grandchildren. Funeral plans were not announced.

[Rasputin]

Yeltsin to be buried next to Gorbachev's wife

Moscow - Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin will be buried near Raisa Gorbachev, wife of Yeltsin's long-time rival and contemporary, Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian news agencies reported Tuesday.

Yeltsin's grave will be located in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery near those of Gorbachev and Alexander Lebedev, a powerful and controversial governor who, as Yeltsin's envoy, ended the First Chechen War in 1996, a cemetery official told Interfax.

The former president's wake was to take place starting at 1330 GMT on Tuesday in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral, seat of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Wednesday's funeral is expected to be attended by many current and former heads of state and world leaders, including former US presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, the Russian Foreign Ministry told Interfax.

Clinton on Tuesday called his colleague 'courageous and steadfast in the big issues: peace, freedom and progress.'

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