|
Former President Boris Yeltsin's widow Naina bids farewell at the coffin of her husband laying in state in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow April 25, 2007. [Photo: Reuters]
Russia buried the country's first President Boris Yeltsin in the central area of the historic Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow on Wednesday.
Thousands of Russians from across the country queued in lines in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in central Moscow over Tuesday night, where Yeltsin was lying-in-state, to show their last respect to the late president, who died on Monday of heart failure at the age of 76.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, former British Prime Minister John Major and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, joined many other foreign leaders, diplomats and senior officials and attended the funeral.
Putin has declared April 25 a day of national mourning for Yeltsin.
The State Duma, lower house of the Russian parliament, paid a minute's silence on Wednesday morning to mourn Yeltsin, who initiated the two-chamber parliament, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Other foreign leaders, such as Chinese President Hu Jintao, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel,South African President Thabo Mbeki, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom, have also expressed their condolences.
Born on Feb. 1, 1931, Yeltsin graduated from a Ural Polytechnic in 1955, and worked as a construction worker before he joined the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union in 1961.
In May 1990, he became president of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation and withdrew from the party two months later. He was elected president of the Russian Federation in 1991 and won a second term in 1996.
Several months before his term came to an end, he shocked the world by announcing his resignation from the post and transferred power to Vladimir Putin on Dec. 31, 1999.
The former Russian president has been suffering from heart diseases. In November 1996, he underwent a successful 7-hour quintuple heart bypass operation.
Yeltsin supported the initiative to restore the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1991 and took part in the ceremony of laying the last stone of the golden-dome building, a new icon for Moscow.
He is survived by Widow Naina Iosifovna Yeltsin, 75, daughters, grandchildren and other relatives who attended the funeral service.
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
|
