Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, died on Monday after suffering a heart attack.
MOSCOW: Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, died on Monday after suffering a heart attack.
He was aged 76.
Interfax news agency quoted 'informed medical sources' as saying that Yeltsin, who had a long history of heart problems, had died when his heart suddenly stopped.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, was among the first to express condolences.
"I offer my deepest condolences to the family of a man on whose shoulders rested many great deeds for the good of the country and serious mistakes, a tragic fate," the former Soviet leader was quoted by Interfax as saying.
A bear of a man with a penchant for flamboyant gestures, Yeltsin will perhaps be best remembered around the world for bravely clambering onto a tank sent into Moscow in 1991 by communist hardliners attempting a coup in the dying days of the Soviet Union.
He then introduced historic reforms that dragged a bankrupt communist economy into the modern age, unleashed political pluralism and allowed a vibrant, freewheeling media.
During his eight-year rule, Yeltsin's reputation suffered from frequent reports of heavy drinking, secret hospitalisations after heart attacks, and launching of the disastrous war in Chechnya.
To this day, an overwhelming majority of Russians blame Yeltsin for Russia's slide from superpower status to economic basket case and second fiddle to the United States on the international stage.
The White House on Monday mourned Yeltsin as 'a historic figure' and offered its condolences to his widow, his relatives, and all of Russia.
"He was an historic figure during a time of great change and challenge for Russia. Our condolences go to Yeltsin's wife, their family and the people of Russia," said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Only the rise of Yeltsin's successor, ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin, has reversed those feelings of humiliation.
Yeltsin was born in 1931 near the Ural mountains city of Yekaterinburg and became a construction engineer before embarking on a political career in the Communist Party.
In 1991, he was elected the Russian Federation's first president and in August of the same year he rallied Russian democrats to defy a junta of generals and other apparatchiks who ousted Gorbachev in a coup.
The Soviet Union collapsed in December and Yeltsin ushered in the new Russia.
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