Russia to bury former President Yeltsin

Moscow, Apr 25: Russia will bury former President Boris Yeltsin today and observe a day of national mourning for the man who dismantled the Soviet Union and led Russia in its first chaotic years of independence.

In a break with the past that fitted Yeltsin's maverick style, he was to be buried not alongside previous Kremlin leaders on Red Square but at the capital's Novodevichye cemetery near to composer Dmitry Shostakovich and writer Anton Chekhov.

Former US President Bill Clinton -- who forged a close personal relationship with Yeltsin in the 1990s -- was to attend the funeral, along with about a dozen former and serving heads of state and senior foreign officials.

The funeral service was to be held around midday (0800 GMT) at the cathedral of Christ the Saviour, a church blown up by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and rebuilt under Yeltsin in a potent symbol of Russia's rebirth.

Yeltsin died from heart failure on Monday at the age of 76.

Vladimir Putin ordered a state funeral for the former president.

Late into the night, mourners filed past Yeltsin's open coffin at the cathedral.

In accordance with a decree issued by Putin, flags across the vast country were flying at half mast and television stations took entertainment programmes off the air.

Yeltsin was hailed around the world as a hero in the late 1990s as he took on the Soviet establishment, at one point climbing on a tank to rally a crowd against hardline coup plotters who wanted to turn back the perestroika reforms.

Months later, he was the driving force behind an agreement to split up the Soviet Union into independent states.

But his eight years in office were marked by economic meltdown, political chaos, a costly war against rebels in Chechnya and drink-fuelled gaffes.

His economic ''shock therapy'' cost millions of people their savings and his officials sold off state assets to politically connected businessmen for a fraction of their true value.

For many Russians the flowering of democracy seemed more like anarchy. After he stepped down the pendulum swung the other way and Putin, with the approval of the majority of voters, turned back many of Yeltsin's reforms to impose tighter state control over politics, the media and the economy.

Reuters

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