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MOSCOW - Boris Yeltsin, who clambered on to a tank to bury the Soviet Union, then led Russia falteringly through its first years of independence, died on Monday 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 3.45pm (1145pm NZT) Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin died in the Central Clinical Hospital as a result of a deteriorating cardio-vascular problem," said a Kremlin spokeswoman. He had suffered heart problems for years.
President Vladimir Putin, whom Yeltsin anointed as his heir before stepping down, ailing and out of touch, in the last hours of 1999, declared Wednesday 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 privatisation of state assets in exchange for his silence.
US President George W. Bush said Yeltsin "helped lay the foundations of freedom in Russia".
Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton, who met Yeltsin more than 15 times as president, called him a friend and added:
"Fate gave him a tough time in which to govern, but history will be kind to him because he was courageous and steadfast on the big issues: peace, freedom, and progress."
Yeltsin had the distinction of being Russia's first democratically elected head of state, and the first Kremlin leader to step down voluntarily.
Peasant family
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.
Once there, the charismatic and bear-like Yeltsin emerged as a leader of a growing rebellion against Communist rule. He was elected president of Russia -- still inside the Soviet Union -- in a landslide.
In August 1991, a clique of hardliners tried to stage a coup to halt Gorbachev's perestroika reforms, holding Gorbachev captive. Yeltsin, in perhaps his finest moment, climbed onto a tank outside government headquarters to rally the crowd against the plotters.
Four months later, he sat down at a Soviet hunting lodge in a forest in Belarus to signed an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union. He and his fellow signatories rang then-US President George Bush with the news, and only then told Gorbachev.
A triumphant Yeltsin became president of independent Russia and launched a breakneck campaign to dismantle Communism. That campaign succeeded in building the rudiments of a market economy, but it was messy and morally dubious.
State assets worth billions of dollars, and control of a large proportion of its vast natural resources, were sold to the new breed of "oligarchs" at a fraction of their real value. The same tycoons paid for Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996.
In 1994, Yeltsin sent troops into Chechnya to put down a separatist rebellion. The operation was a disaster, and the conflict rumbles on more than a decade later. Chechen rebels said on Monday that Yeltsin was a war criminal.
He also became known for gaffes, some of which seemed to be fuelled by vodka. In 1994, during a stopover in Ireland, he failed to emerge from his jet to meet the Irish prime minister. Aides said he was tired, not drunk.
"He made many mistakes," said Sergei, a 29-year-old student strolling down a Moscow street on Monday with friends. "It's too early to judge properly now, but in 10 or 20 years we will be able to judge."
- REUTERS
