MOSCOW, 24 April 2007 — Boris Yeltsin, who clambered on to a tank to bury the Soviet Union, then led Russia falteringly through its first years of independence, died yesterday aged 76.
World leaders showered Yeltsin with tributes for bringing freedom and democracy to Russia after decades of totalitarian rule, and pushing through market reforms that though brutal have helped to turn Russia into a vibrant economy.
But he was resented by millions of Russians who lost their savings to his economic “shock therapy,” lost sons in his war against Chechen rebels and watched him — at times apparently drunk — blunder through international summits.
“Today at 15:45 (1145 GMT) Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin died in the Central Clinical Hospital as a result of a deteriorating cardio-vascular problem,” said a Kremlin spokeswoman.
President Vladimir Putin, whom Yeltsin chose as his heir before stepping down, ailing and out of touch, in the last hours of 1999, declared tomorrow a day of national mourning. “A man has passed away thanks to whom a whole new epoch was born,” said Putin. “A new democratic Russia was born, a free state open to the world. A state in which power truly belongs to the people.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, whom Yeltsin effectively ousted, offered a qualified tribute. “I express the very deepest condolences to the family of the deceased, on whose shoulders rest major events for the good of the country, and serious mistakes,” Gorbachev said.
Critics say one of Yeltsin’s gravest failings was to allow chaos that led to widespread disillusionment with democracy. That later allowed Putin, backed by most Russians, to roll back many of Yeltsin’s reforms.
But Yeltsin, living quietly in retirement at his villa near Moscow, never spoke out against Putin. Some reports said Yeltsin struck a deal under which he would not be prosecuted over the murky privatization of state assets in exchange for his silence.
US President George W. Bush said Yeltsin “helped lay the foundations of freedom in Russia.”
Born into a poor peasant family in the Ural mountains, Yeltsin grew up in one room of a wooden hut. He rose through the Communist ranks and was handpicked by Gorbachev to be party boss in Moscow.
