[A-List] Russia: Zyuganov tells it like it is

["Michael Keaney" <michael011@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Times
April 24, 2007
Yeltsin, the man who buried communism
Tony Halpin in Moscow

Television screens in Russia did not go blank yesterday. The music of
Tchaikovsky did not play.

The greatest legacy of Boris Yeltsin?s extraordinary life was the
ordinary manner in which his death was announced.

The clearing of TV programming and round-the-clock martial music had
been the signals sent in Soviet times to prepare the public for a
leader?s death.

Mr Yeltsin had ended all of that when he brought Soviet communism
crashing down and ushered in a new era of democracy. Russia repaid him
yesterday by taking his death calmly in its stride, even as many people
looked back on his presidency as a period of national humiliation and
personal hardship.

Russia?s first democratically elected leader died of heart failure aged
76 in Moscow?s Central Clinical Hospital on a day when the country had
celebrated a 5-0 drubbing of Spain by its women?s team at tennis, Mr
Yeltsin?s favourite sport. His death dominated the evening news
bulletins but even the state TV channels felt no need to interrupt
normal programming with flattering eulogies to his life.

Mr Yeltsin achieved another first yesterday. He was the first leader in
Russian and Soviet history to die quietly in retirement, having overseen
a peaceful transition to his successor.

He had helped to make Russia a normal country, liberating it from the
gerontocracy who had ruled in Soviet times and who would now have been
fighting for power even as the body of the old ruler was still warm. The
struggle to succeed Vladimir Putin will instead be fought out over the
next 11 months.

The Kremlin announced that Mr Yeltsin would be buried tomorrow at
Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Mr Putin declared it a national day of
mourning. In a televised address, Mr Putin described his predecessor as
a figure of global importance ?thanks to whom a whole new epoch has
started?.

?He was the first Russian President . . . A new, democratic Russia was
born, a free state open to the world. A state in which power truly
belongs to the people,? Mr Putin said.

Western leaders heaped praise on the man who had led Russia from 1991 to
1999 through the painful transition to a market economy and a more open
society.

President Bush called Mr Yeltsin an historic figure who had served his
country at a time of momentous change. He said: ?He played a key role as
the Soviet Union dissolved and helped to lay the foundations of freedom
in Russia.?

Tony Blair said: ?He was a remarkable man who saw the need for
democratic and economic reform and, in defending it, played a vital role
at a crucial time in Russia?s history.?

Baroness Thatcher said: ?Without Boris Yeltsin, Russia would have
remained in the grip of communism and the Baltic states would not be
free. He deserves to be honoured as a patriot and liberator.?

Sir John Major told the BBC: ?I think his tremendous work in terms of
instilling democracy is what will stand out when people have forgotten
the economic difficulties, and forgotten the miscellaneous matters about
whether he drank too much.?

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said: ?Boris Yeltsin was a large
personality in Russian and international politics, a courageous fighter
for democracy and freedom.?

Mr Yeltsin?s legacy received a more mixed response in Russia. Anatoli
Chubais, one of the architects of the ?shock therapy? market reforms
carried out under Mr Yeltsin, said: ?He brought us from captivity into
freedom. He took us from a country of lies . . . to a country which
tried to live in truth.?

Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader defeated by Mr Yeltsin in
the 1996 presidential elections, said: ?I have no good words for him.
There died a man whose deeds and political practice have proved to be a
great woe for Russia and for millions of people.?

For millions of ordinary Russians, who resented the ?Wild West?
capitalism that enriched a tiny elite as their own savings disappeared,
the response of the exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky was likely to be
most telling. He said: ?The guy was my mentor and Russia has lost its
greatest reformer.? 


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