Boris Yeltsin dead at 76

[Hoosier Daddy]

[quote]Boris Yeltsin is dead at age 76
Former Russian president led country after Soviet Union breakup


MOSCOW -

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.

He died of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital, news agencies quoted Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration’s medical center, as saying.

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 Yeltsin’s complex legacy Monday by referring to him as one “on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors.â€

[Dr. Whiplash]

MOSCOW - Authorities say it will not be necessary to embalm the former Russian president. He will be ignited following a ceremony on the lawn of the Stolichnaya complex.