Boris Yeltsin, the president who escorted Russia to democracy’s door, dies at 76

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.\nKremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed Yeltsin’s death, and Russian news agencies cited Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration’s medical center, as saying the former president died Monday of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital.\nThe 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.\nMikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up the complexity of Yeltsin’s legacy in a condolence statement minutes after the death was announced. He referred to Yeltsin as one “on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors,” according to the news agency Interfax.\nU.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Yeltsin “an important figure in Russian history.”\n“No Americans, at least, will forget seeing him standing on the tank outside the White House (the Russian parliament building) resisting the coup attempt,” Gates said while on a visit to Moscow.\nYeltsin was a contradictory figure, rocketing to popularity in the Communist era on pledges to fight corruption – but proving unable, or unwilling, to prevent the looting of state industry as it moved into private hands during his nine years in power.\nYeltsin steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media. His hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, has proven far more popular even as he has tightened Kremlin control over both Russia’s industry and its press.\nYeltsin amassed as much power as possible in his office – then gave it all up in a dramatic New Year’s address at the end of 1999.