Title: Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies - CBS News
Headings: Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies
Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies
Content: Photo Essay: Boris Yeltsin
He stood on top of a tank during the 1991 coup attempt by Communist hard-liners like a big game hunter celebrating his kill. But in 1993, he ordered tanks to shell upstart members of Parliament. He broke up the old Soviet Union, but then invaded Chechnya when the region joined the rush for independence. He presided over the abolition of the old KGB, but then named a KGB veteran as his heir apparent. However, what angered many Russians was how Yeltsin the crusader against Soviet corruption presided over a fire sale of state-owned industries to Kremlin insiders, which created a small cadre of Russian billionaires overnight. Meanwhile, during his tenure many ordinary Russian citizens saw their savings wiped out, their jobs evaporate, the society their parents and grandparents had created disintegrate. "He was one of us," said Galina Alexandrovna, a Moscow resident, recalling the heady days after the Soviet collapse. " When we elected him we all shouted, 'Hurrah for Boris Yeltsin' but then Russia started selling itself off and we the simple people didn't like what was happening." Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, eulogized Yeltsin, both a comrade and a nemesis, as one "on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors," according to the news agency Interfax.