Yeltsin Was Hurt by Rollback of Reforms

MOSCOW — Boris Yeltsin died a broken man, devastated that the democratic ideals he had tried to nurture were gradually being extinguished by his hand-picked successor, President Putin, friends and former colleagues said yesterday.

Russia's first freely elected leader lived his last seven years as a virtual recluse, never daring to criticize Mr. Putin in public under an apparent deal to protect members of his family from criminal prosecution.

But Yegor Gaidar, Mr. Yeltsin's first prime minister and the man behind the "shock therapy" reforms to liberalize Russia's economy, said his former boss was deeply hurt to see his democratic legacy frittered away.

"I saw him frequently after his retirement," Mr. Gaidar told the Daily Telegraph. "He was happy about Russia's economic prosperity, but he was extremely sad about what was happening in the political sphere."

Other friends recalled how he would watch the evening television news with increasing despondency, as it grew more and more restrained as broadcast outlets came under renewed Kremlin control.

Yeltsin allowed genuine freedom of the press during his rule, ignoring pleas from close aides to curtail freedom of expression when criticism of his rule increased in the mid-1990s.

"He was extremely tolerant of criticism," said Alexander Volin, a former Yeltsin aide. "It must have hurt but he never showed it."

But most Russians seem to share Mr. Putin's indifference for Yeltsin's purported democratic credentials, remembering instead the economic misery that shock therapy brought them.

Yet thousands queued outside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior — destroyed by Stalin but rebuilt by Yeltsin — to pay their respects to a man now widely reviled.

These were his diehard fans — aging intellectuals and rights activists.

Many had stood with him in 1991 when Yeltsin clambered on to a tank to declaim against the hardline communists who had seized power in a coup. Tearfully, they shuffled past his open coffin, draped in the Russian flag, and laid flowers as Orthodox priests chanted prayers and wafted incense.

Veiled and dressed in black, his two daughters and their children and grandchildren sat silently beside the dais, occasionally raising their heads to acknowledge the mourners.

Yeltsin, a figure tormented by bouts of depression and ill health for much of his life, seemed finally at peace.

Mourners later spoke of their fondness for Yeltsin and defended him from the widespread derision of their countrymen.

He was, they said, a man misunderstood and unappreciated in his own time.

"After my family and relatives, Boris Yeltsin was the most important person in my life," said Zhanna Melnikova, a 76-year-old literary critic who campaigned for him. "He gave people back their freedom, which is why so many hate him.

"People were not ready to accept the fact that freedom meant personal responsibility. It was a concept they could not understand and could not accept."

While many Russians mourn the passing of the Soviet Union, those on the cathedral steps preferred to remember him as the man who gave Russia renewed hope for a better future.

"He was a great man," said Mikhail Strigin, a retired Naval officer. "He broke the spine of the Communist Party, brought democracy back to Russia and brought Russia back into the fold of the civilized world.

"Of course, we loved him. He was a typical Russian bear who never spared himself for the sake of the country."