Former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin dies

[steven]

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

http://www.buffalonews.com/260/story/60158.html

[buffy]

U R too late steven, we've already been discussing this topic in great depth over here

[speaker]

He sounds like such a real character! I never realized that he was so good and so bad. He turned Russia around and yet he stabs Russia in the back by making his pals super rich while others starved. And the dancing and that stuff! Kind of reminds me of Truman playing the piano or Clinton playing the saxophone.
Sounds like someone will be writing books about him.