Today marks exactly one year since the sudden death of Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin. He died on 23 April 2007 at the age of 77 from heart failure.
The main event of the day is the unveiling of a monument at the grave of the late head of state at Novodevichy Cemetery, where he is buried. The monument is an Orthodox cross with a half-mast Russian flag made of different types of stone covering the grave. According to the monument's sculptor, Georgy Frangulyan, it represents "a symbol of the new Russia". During the course of the unveiling ceremony, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Alexy II, will perform a requiem litia.
In Yekaterinburg, where for many years Russia's first president lived and worked, a series of events has also been planned. Boris Yeltsin's classmates, who studied with him at the Urals Polytechnic Institute (now Ural State Technical University), will attend a memorial service at a church in the city and then lay flowers at a portrait of their comrade in the Yeltsin Urals Center.
A memorial plaque made of black marble will be placed in a park in the village in which Russia's first president was born. On the plaque there is an engraved portrait of Boris Yeltsin and words once said by him: "In my life I achieved the most important thing: Russia will no longer turn back…."
Of course, the events listed are not the only acts to commemorate Russia's first president. Vladimir Putin has ordered that the Presidential Library be named after Yeltsin. The federal budget will allocate 1.667 billion rubles annually from 2008-2010 for the establishment and functioning of the library. In Nizhny Novgorod, a tennis center due to be built on the bank of the Volga will be named after the former president.
After 2000, Eltsin rarely appeared on screens and expressed his views. And after his death he was almost completely forgotten. Moreover, a rather paradoxical situation has developed over the past year.
On the one hand, at the highest level no one denies the scale of Boris Yeltsin's personality and the level of his achievement. Opening the ceremony today at Novodevichy Cemetery, Vladimir Putin called his predecessor the brightest politician of the 20th century.
On the other hand, the pre-election rhetoric and the general tone of the recent speeches by senior officials, and even by President Putin himself, show that the assessment of Yeltsin's epoch is almost diametrically opposed to his personal assessment. This is often used for political manipulation. Politicians speak from rostrums about the wild Nineties as if speaking about the "end of the world", which only ended with the departure of the late president from the Kremlin.
However, it's pointless to expect anything else. Too little time has passed for the Yeltsin epoch, which was full of mistakes, failures and questionable successes, to be assessed properly.
Alexander Popov
Photo: ITAR-TASS
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