Title: Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies - CBS News
Headings: Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies
Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies
Content: 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. Perhaps frustrated by Russia's stumbling out of the gate after the Soviet era, he increasingly concentrated power in his own hands — and finally handed it over to Putin, the former KGB colonel who rose rapidly through the Kremlin ranks. After Putin took power, he was careful to cultivate the image of the anti-Yeltsin. The second Russian president always appears sober where Yeltsin often was not; Putin is decisive where Yeltsin waffled, firing Cabinet after Cabinet. Putin appears calculating where Yeltsin could be spontaneous, to the point of being impulsive.