Vladimir Putin, Russian president, on Monday night hailed Boris Yeltsin as the father of a democratic Russia. “A man has died thanks to whom a whole new era began. A new democratic Russia was born: a free state open to the world, and a state in which power really does belong to the people,” Mr Putin said.
Yeltsin, the first elected president of the Russian Federation and a man who played a key role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, died of heart failure on Monday, aged 76.
His image was flashed around the world in 1991 as he stood atop a tank to challenge the hardline coup against then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and he later established the foundations of democracy and a market economy in Russia.
But Russians look on his legacy with mixed feelings. The “shock therapy” economic reforms he championed led to a dizzying economic decline and concentration of the nation’s resources in the hands of a few super-wealthy “oligarchs”.
He also ordered tanks in 1993 to crush a rebellion by the hardline – but elected – Russian parliament that opposed his reforms, and in 1995 launched the first war against the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya.
Yeltsin may ultimately have created the economic framework for Russia’s recovery thanks to high oil prices in recent years. But some observers also said on Monday the chaotic oligarchy under Yeltsin in the late 1990s had opened the way for Mr Putin’s clampdown on political freedoms.
“On the one hand, he gave free rein to the development of democracy but on the other he started the process in which it would be taken away,” said Irina Khakamada, a former opposition presidential candidate.
Yeltsin had kept a low profile after stepping down from office on the eve of the millennium and backing Mr Putin, then Russian prime minister, as his successor.
He was long dogged by heart problems – and a known liking for hard liquor – and underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery in 1996 after suffering aheart attack, hushed up at the time, during that year’s presidential election campaign.
Mr Putin telephoned Yeltsin’s widow, Naina, to express his condolences on Monday. Officials said the former president’s funeral would take place on Wednesday, which Mr Putin said would be a day of national mourning.
Mr Gorbachev, with whom Mr Yeltsin frequently clashed, like many of those paying tribute on Monday, highlighted the contradictions of his character and record.
“I express my deep condolences to the family of the deceased, who leaves behind him great deeds to the benefit of the country, and serious mistakes.”
