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.

[Rasputin]

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin dies

Former President Boris Yeltsin, who hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union by scrambling atop a tank to rally opposition against a hard-line coup and later pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, died Monday at age 76.
Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin's death, and Russian news agencies cited Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration's medical center, as saying the former president died Monday of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital.

The first freely elected leader of Russia, Yeltsin was initially admired abroad for his defiance of the monolithic Communist system. But many Russians will remember him mostly for presiding over the steep decline of their nation.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up the complexity of Yeltsin's legacy in a condolence statement minutes after the death was announced. He referred to Yeltsin as one "on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors," according to the news agency Interfax.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Yeltsin "an important figure in Russian history."

No Americans, at least, will forget seeing him standing on the tank outside the White House (the Russian parliament building) resisting the coup attempt," Gates said while on a visit to Moscow.

Yeltsin was a contradictory figure, rocketing to popularity in the Communist era on pledges to fight corruption — but proving unable, or unwilling, to prevent the looting of state industry as it moved into private hands during his nine years in power.

Yeltsin steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media. His hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has proven far more popular even as he has tightened Kremlin control over both Russia's industry and its press.

Yeltsin amassed as much power as possible in his office — then gave it all up in a dramatic New Year's address at the end of 1999.

His greatest moments came in bursts.

After Communist hard-liners tried to overthrow Gorbachev and roll back democratic reforms in August 1991, Yeltsin stood atop a tank to rally resistance to the coup. He spearheaded the peaceful end of the Soviet state on Dec. 25 of that year.

Ill with heart problems, and facing possible defeat by a Communist challenger in his 1996 re-election bid, he marshaled his energy and sprinted through the final weeks of the campaign. The challenge transformed the shaky convalescent into the spry, dancing candidate.

But Yeltsin was an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of day-to-day government and nearly always blamed Russia's myriad problems on subordinates.

Yeltsin damaged his democratic credentials by using force to solve political disputes, though he claimed his actions were necessary to keep the country together.

He sent tanks and troops in October 1993 to flush armed, hard-line supporters out of a hostile Russian parliament after they had sparked violence in the streets of Moscow. And in December 1994, Yeltsin launched a war against separatists in the southern republic of Chechnya.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the Chechnya conflict, and a defeated and humiliated Russian army withdrew at the end of 1996. The war solved nothing — and Russian troops resumed fighting in the breakaway region in fall 1999.

In the final years of his leadership, Yeltsin was dogged by health problems and often seemed out of touch. He retreated regularly to his country residence outside Moscow and stayed away from the Kremlin for days, even weeks at a time. As the country lurched from crisis to crisis, its leader appeared increasingly absent.

Yet Yeltsin had made a stunning debut as Russian president. He introduced many basics of democracy, guaranteeing the rights to free speech, private property and multiparty elections, and opening the borders to trade and travel. Though full of bluster, he revealed more of his personal life and private doubts than any previous Russian leader had.

"The debilitating bouts of depression, the grave second thoughts, the insomnia and headaches in the middle of the night, the tears and despair ... the hurt from people close to me who did not support me at the last minute, who didn't hold up, who deceived me — I have had to bear all of this," he wrote in his 1994 memoir, The Struggle for Russia.

Yeltsin pushed through free-market reforms, creating a private sector and allowing foreign investment. In foreign policy, he assured independence for Russia's Soviet-era satellites, oversaw troop and arms reductions, and developed warm relations with Western leaders.

That was the democratic Yeltsin, who in August 1991 rallied tens of thousands of Russians to face down a hard-line Soviet coup attempt. Throughout his nearly decade-long leadership, he remained Russia's strongest bulwark against Communism.

But there was another Yeltsin.

He was hesitant to act against crime and corruption — beginning in his own administration — while they sapped public faith and stunted democracy. His government's wrenching economic reforms impoverished millions of Russians — poor people whose wages and pensions Yeltsin's government often went months without paying.

In the course of the Yeltsin era, per capita income fell about 75%, and the nation's population fell by more than 2 million, due largely to the steep decline in public health.

Yeltsin was a master of Kremlin intrigues, and preferred the chess game of politics to the detail work of solving economic and social problems. He played top advisers off against each other, and never let any of them accumulate much power, lest they challenge him.

He fired the entire government four times in 1998 and 1999. The economy sank into a deep recession in summer 1998, but Yeltsin rarely commented on the troubles and never offered a plan to combat them.

He was quick to act if anyone threatened his hold on power, standing fast even when his traditional allies called on him to step down. He easily faced down an impeachment attempt by the Communist-dominated lower chamber of parliament in May 1999.

In foreign affairs, he struggled to preserve a role for his former superpower. He called for a "multipolar world" as a way to counterbalance what Russia perceived as excessive U.S. global clout, and in spring 1999 he sent Russian troops rushing to Kosovo — ahead of NATO peacekeepers — to underline that Moscow would not be elbowed out of European affairs.

He wrangled with the West in disputes over NATO expansion and Russia's relatively warm relations with Iran and Iraq. But as Russia's political and economic might withered, Yeltsin had little to offer other nations.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born Feb. 1, 1931, into a peasant family in the Ural Mountains' Sverdlovsk region. As a mischievous child, he lost his thumb and index finger while playing with a stolen grenade. When he was 3, his father was imprisoned in dictator Josef Stalin's purges. His alleged crime was owning property before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Yeltsin was, by his own account, a garrulous, scrappy boy who loved pranks and was quick to fight. And from the start, he bucked authority.

He was expelled from elementary school for criticizing a teacher at a school assembly. Early in his career as a construction engineer, he was given written reprimands 17 times in one year — "a record," he would later recall proudly. And his long career as a Communist Party official was rife with battles with higher party officials.

He was educated as an engineer and married a fellow student, Naina Girina. They had two daughters.

At age 30, Yeltsin joined the Communist Party after a brief career in construction in Sverdlovsk city, now Yekaterinburg. He became a full-time party official in construction in 1969, and seven years later was named the region's party boss.

In 1985, Gorbachev, intent on his own reforms, brought Yeltsin to Moscow, where he shook up the city's party hierarchy. The strapping, silver-haired Yeltsin cut a popular figure in the capital, making a point of riding city buses instead of a limousine, standing in long lines in grocery stores and loudly demanding why managers were stashing away food for favored customers instead of selling it to ordinary consumers.

A bitter rivalry soon grew between him and the more cautious Gorbachev. When Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev at a party meeting in November 1987, accusing him of a sluggish approach to reform, Gorbachev fired him.

In the old days, that would have ended Yeltsin's career. But he stormed back to power in 1989, winning a Soviet parliament seat in the first real election in 70 years. The following year, Yeltsin dramatically quit the Communist Party, walking out of its final convention.

His popularity grew. Yeltsin was a natural with crowds, shaking hands and bantering in a booming voice. For many Russians, he had the unpolished charm of a "muzhik" — a tough peasant with common sense and a fondness for vodka.

Even then, Yeltsin's career was punctuated by bouts of bizarre behavior that the public chalked up to alcohol. Red-faced pranks, missed appointments, inarticulate and contradictory public statements continued into his presidency, blamed by aides on jet lag, medication or illness.

[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.'

[Rasputin]

Russia bids farewell to Yeltsin

Russia bid a solemn farewell Wednesday to Boris Yeltsin, its first post-Soviet leader, in a funeral presided over by some two dozen white-robed priests, with a crowd of dignitaries including President Vladimir Putin and two former U.S. leaders in attendance.
The elaborate Cathedral of Christ the Savior echoed with priests' chanting and the a capella choir singing the funeral liturgy during the 85-minute ceremony. It was a placid finale for one of the most dramatic and controversial figures of modern political history.

Yeltsin was a key engineer of the end of the Soviet Union and led the country into often-chaotic attempts to become pluralistic and thriving after decades of Communist repression and economic deterioration. He was widely admired for valor in opposing the 1990 hard-line coup attempt and for his joie de vivre. But he was widely derided for his heavy drinking and despised for allowing the sell-off of Russia's industrial gems to insiders while millions of his countrymen plunged into poverty.

"The whole dramatic history of the 20th century was reflected in the fate of Boris Nikolayevich," a letter from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II said, using Yeltsin's patronymic. "Being a strong individual, he took upon himself responsibility the fate of the country at a difficult and dangerous time of radical change."

The letter was read at the funeral by Metropolitan Yuvenaly, who led the service — televised live on Russia's two main state-run channels and others. The church said Alexy was unable to attend because he was undergoing medical treatment.

Before the funeral, more than 20,000 people had filed through the gold-domed cathedral, which is the site of the Russian Orthodox Church's most important services, to view the body of Yeltsin, who died Monday at age 76. After the viewing ended, dignitaries including former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush arrived and offered condolences to Yeltsin's black-clad widow Naina.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, also attended. Gorbachev's reform attempts set in motion a wave of open dissatisfaction with the Soviet system. Yeltsin, once a Gorbachev ally, became an adversary as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Many of the mourners said they admired Yeltsin for breaking the grip of monolithic Communism and moving the country to pluralism — and said they fear his successor Putin is reversing the progress.

"I came here to pay respect to Boris Nikolayevich for everything he has given us: freedom and the opportunity to realize ourselves," said 73-year-old Svetlana Zamishlayeva. But now, she said, "there is a certain retreat from freedom of the press, from fair elections, from all kinds of freedom."

Other mourners agreed.

"The policy course that he set is being dismantled today," said Nikita Belykh, leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party that has become increasingly marginalized during Putin's seven years in office.

He suggested that Yeltsin may have expected Putin to continue his policies when he resigned and turned over the presidency to Putin on New Year's Eve 1999. "We all make mistakes," Belykh said outside the church.

Communist lawmakers meanwhile expressed resentment of Yeltsin's role in bringing an end to the Soviet Union. They refused to stand for a moment of silence called in Yeltsin's memory at the opening of the Wednesday session of the lower house of parliament, news agencies reported.

"We will never give honor to the destroyer of fatherland," Communist deputy Viktor Ilyukhin was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency.

Yeltsin was to be buried later in the day in Novodevichy Cemetery, arguably Russia's most prestigious burial ground. It holds the graves of an array of Russia's artistic elite, including those of Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Anton Chekhov.

Many countries sent lower-ranked retired politicians and diplomats to the funeral — a reflection of the funeral's quick timing but also perhaps of Yeltsin's uncertain legacy as unsteady democrat, Communist scourge and incomplete reformer.

The Soviet Union was an atheist state, so it seemed fitting Russia's first post-Soviet president was accorded religious rites. Though he made appearances at church services, Yeltsin was not regarded as an overtly pious man, but the Russian Orthodox Church was grateful for his support.

"By his strength, he helped the restoration of the proper role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the life of the country and its people," church spokesman Metropolitan ***ill said in a statement.

Yeltsin is widely remembered for his bold and principled stand against the 1990 hardline Communist coup attempt against Gorbachev and for launching Russia on the path to political pluralism.

"He gave us a choice — not just a choice between cheese and ham, but the possibility to think for ourselves," said mourner Alla Gerber, the head of Russia's Holocaust Foundation. "He took us out of the claws of that terrible regime."

But Yeltsin disappointed Russians by failing to bring political, economic and social stability to the nation. Many were outraged, as well, by his sale of the nation's industrial might and natural resources in shadowy auctions, by the disintegration of the public health care system and by pensions that turned to cinders in the fires of raging inflation.