Boris Yeltsin is dead at age 76

Russian President Boris Yeltsin greets his supporters during his pre election compaign trip in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, 1,000 km (600 miles) south of Moscow, in this Tuesday, June 11, 1996 file photo. Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy as the country's first post-Communist president, has died, a Kremlin official said Monday, April 23, 2007. He was 76. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

This is a surprise. From MSNBC News:

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.

He died of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital, news agencies quoted Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration’s medical center, as saying.

The 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.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up Yeltsin’s complex legacy Monday by referring to him as one “on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors.”

The Kremlin said the funeral would be Wednesday, a day of national mourning, and that Yeltsin would be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, where many of Russia’s most prominent figures are interred.

“Thanks to Boris Yeltsin’s will and direct initiative, a new constitution was adopted which proclaimed human rights as the supreme value,” said President Vladimir Putin, who was Yeltsin’s handpicked successor. He said his former mentor “gave people a chance to freely express their thoughts, freely elect authorities.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Yeltsin “an important figure in Russian history.”

I think what is important to understand about Yeltsin is that he was one of two central figures which prompted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev provided the real opening of the Soviet Union through his programs of Glasnost and Perestroika, hoping to change both the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union from within. What Gorbachev did was to unleash powerful social and political forces, suppressed by the Communist Party for decades, which really wanted to remove the stale, stagnant, Party system for something democratic and free. The Communist hard-liners didn't like this, and tried to remove Gorbachev in the August Putsch of 1991. It is here where Yeltsin made his mark in leading the resistance of the Soviet Coup from the Russian White House. It is here where Yeltsin made his famous speech denouncing the coup on top of a Russian tank on August 19, 1991.

Boris Yeltsin, president of Russian Federation reads a statement from atop a tank in Moscow in this Aug. 1991, file photo as he urged the Russian people to resist a hardline takeover of the central government. Seated at right is a Russian soldier covering his face. Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, has died, a Kremlin official said Monday, April 23, 2007. He was 76. (AP Photo/ file)

Here is the transcript of Yeltsin's famous speech:

Citizens of Russia: On the night of 18-19 August 1991, the legally elected president of the country was removed from power.

Regardless of the reasons given for his removal, we are dealing with a rightist, reactionary, anti-constitutional coup. Despite all the difficulties and severe trials being experienced by the people, the democratic process in the country is acquiring an increasingly broad sweep and an irreversible character.

The peoples of Russia are becoming masters of their destiny. The uncontrolled powers of unconstitutional organs have been considerably limited, and this includes party organs.

The leadership of Russia has adopted a resolute position toward the Union Treaty striving for the unity of the Soviet Union and unity of Russia. Our position on this issue permitted a considerable acceleration of the preparation of this treaty, to coordinate it with all the republics and to determine the date of signing as August 20. Tomorrow's signing has been canceled.

These developments gave rise to angry reactionary forces, pushed them to irresponsible and adventurist attempts to solve the most complicated political and economic problems by methods of force. Attempts to realize a coup have been tried earlier.

We considered and consider that such methods of force are unacceptable. They discredit the union in the eyes of the whole world, undermine our prestige in the world community, and return us to the Cold War era along with the Soviet Union's isolation in the world community. All of this forces us to proclaim that the so-called committee's ascendancy to power is unlawful.

Accordingly we proclaim all decisions and instructions of this committee to be unlawful.

We are confident that the organs of local power will unswervingly adhere to constitutional laws and decrees of the president of Russia.

We appeal to citizens of Russia to give a fitting rebuff to the putschists and demand a return of the country to normal constitutional development.

Undoubtedly it is essential to give the country's president, Gorbachev, an opportunity to address the people. Today he has been blockaded. I have been denied communications with him. We demand an immediate convocation of an extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies of the Union. We are absolutely confident that our countrymen will not permit the sanctioning of the tyranny and lawlessness of the putschists, who have lost all shame and conscience. We address an appeal to servicemen to manifest lofty civic duty and not take part in the reactionary coup.

Until these demands are met, we appeal for a universal unlimited strike.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, 1931-2007.