Accounts & Images of Yeltsin’s Funeral
The BBC has some images of Yeltsin’s funeral and Oleg Shchedrov of Reuters gives a good account of the ceremony and procession to the burial. Both are weaved together below . . .
A gun-carriage pulled former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s coffin through the streets of Moscow on Wednesday to the cemetery where he is to be buried with full state honors.
The road to the Novodevichye cemetery was strewn with carnations and mourners including Russian President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. President Bill Clinton walked behind to the sound of a funeral march played by a military band.
Yeltsin’s widow, Naina, could be seen weeping and mopping her eyes with a white handkerchief as she followed the gun carriage, pulled by an armored vehicle and flanked by a military honor guard.
Earlier, in a three-hour funeral service, Naina and her two daughters Tatyana and Yelena, their eyes puffy from crying, sat beside Yeltsin’s open coffin as a stream of serving and past Russian politicians and foreign guests filed past.
A somber-looking Clinton, one half of what was known for its public banter and bonhomie as “the Bill and Boris show,” stooped to put his right arm around Naina’s shoulder, pulling her tightly towards him and then patting her gently on the back.
In a moment of reconciliation, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — a long-standing rival left without a job when Yeltsin dismantled the Soviet Union — kissed Naina and whispered words of condolence as he gripped Yelena’s hand.
The funeral service was a vivid reminder of the changes brought by Yeltsin, the man who became Russia’s first democratically elected president.
It took place in a Russian Orthodox church — not the secular ceremony in Moscow’s Hall of Columns that the Soviet Union laid on to see off its leaders.
Bearded Russian Orthodox clerics in richly embroidered robes sang psalms that rang out through the cathedral of Christ the Saviour, blown up by Josef Stalin and rebuilt under Yeltsin as a symbol of national revival.
Metropolitan Yuvenaly, the second most senior cleric in the Orthodox church, told mourners Yeltsin had given people the freedom they sought. “Russia today lives a full life and is returning to its historic traditions. Witness to that is the fact that for the first time in 100 years were are bidding farewell to a Russian head of state in a church, with prayers.”
. . . “My mum thought Yeltsin was great because he gave us democracy. My dad hates him because he thinks he ruined a great country. I came here to have a last chance to see this man,” said Marina Shestakova, who filed past Yeltsin’s coffin as it lay in state earlier on Wednesday.
In another break with the Soviet past, Yeltsin was to be buried later in the day not alongside previous Kremlin leaders on Red Square but at the capital’s Novodevichye cemetery alongside actors, writers and performers. | Read more…
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