President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled a monument to Russia's first post-Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin, praising a man reviled by many with dark memories of his rule in the chaotic 1990s.
At a ceremony in the late president’s home province on Tuesday, on what would have been his 80th birthday, Medvedev cast Yeltsin as a determined leader who, despite his flaws, carried Russia through tough times and set it on the right course.
"The path of the first president of our country was very difficult," he told a small crowd in the bitter cold at the monument, a wall bearing Yeltisn’s name and a tower carved with his image.
"Russia should be grateful to Yeltsin for the fact that during the most difficult time the country did not steer off the course of change, it carried out serious transformation and is moving forward today," Medvedev said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was steered into power by Yeltsin in 1999 and has often criticised his policies, heaped rare praise on the late leader on Tuesday.
"In the 1990s, Russia experienced a second birth and became an open, civilised state," Putin said at a lavish ceremony in Yeltsin’s honour at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre near the Kremlin.
He added that Yeltsin’s role in radical change was "huge".
A maverick who gained popularity for challenging the Kremlin’s Communist bosses by calling for faster reform, Yeltsin was elected Russia’s president in June 1991 and helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union months later.
COUP ATTEMPT
The monument in Yekaterinburg, some 1500 km (900 miles) east of Moscow, includes a carved relief of a stern-faced Yeltsin, who stared down the tanks of a hardline communist coup attempt and emerged as the undisputed leader of a new Russia.
He handed Putin the reins of power after a decade marred by economic hardship, war in Chechnya and a decline in Moscow’s global power. His health problems and bouts of drunkenness had drawn criticism.
Putin has in the past often contrasted Russia’s growing economic and political power during the oil-fuelled boom of his 2000-2008 presidency with the failures which millions of Russians associate with Yeltsin’s rule.
Accompanied by Yeltsin’s widow Naina, Patriarch Kirill and his own wife Lyudmila in the ornate halls of the Bolshoi, Putin listened to Russia’s former national anthem, composed by Mikhail Glinka and which Yeltsin adopted in 1993.
Putin later restored the Soviet anthem.
Putin crafted an image as a strong, sober leader governing an increasingly powerful Russia in direct contrast to Yeltsin.
In his resignation speech, Yeltsin asked "forgiveness for dreams that never came true".
Medvedev, who styles himself as champion of democracy, has appeared to improve Yeltsin’s image, pleasing those Russians who see the 1990s as a time of hope.
Medvedev and Putin have said they work in "tandem" and will decide together who will stand as the Kremlin’s candidate for president in March 2012.
