From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/24/2007 2:42 AM
Monday, April 23, 2007

CIS: Yeltsin Held 'Pride Of Place' In New Epoch

Russia -- Former president Boris Yeltsin, at the Davis Cup tennis match in Moscow, 03Dec2006
Yeltsin in 2006
(AFP)
PRAGUE, April 23, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Leaders of former Soviet states have been remembering former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the man who presided over the final days of the USSR and escorted Russia into a rocky decade of economic and political reforms.



The former Russian president died of heart failure this afternoon in Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, Kremlin officials said. He was 76 (read Yeltsin's obituary).



Yeltsin had long suffered from heart problems, and his death was not unexpected. But his unique position as the overseer of the final days of the Soviet Union left many officials today remembering a man who leaves a complicated legacy.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president who saw his power quickly give way to Yeltsin's in the last days of the USSR, said the two men had "serious differences."

Shevardnadze Remembers

In a condolence statement issued shortly after Yeltsin's death was announced, Gorbachev called the former president a man who was responsible for both "great deeds for the country and serious errors."

Former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze was a Yeltsin supporter and a fellow reformist leader in the early years of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the post-Soviet alliance Yeltsin helped to forge.




MORE: Coverage in Russian from RFE/RL's Russian Service.