Moscow – Russia bade a solemn farewell Wednesday to Boris Yeltsin, its first post-Soviet president, with a sonorous funeral under the gilded arches of a cathedral near the Kremlin and burial in a leafy cemetery near the banks of the Moscow River.
Two dozen white-robed priests led the service before a crowd of dignitaries, including Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, President Vladimir Putin, and other world leaders of his era, including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Sir John Major, former British prime minister.
The Cathedral of Christ the Savior echoed with the priests and a choir singing the Russian Orthodox funeral liturgy during the service, which was televised live.
It was a quiet finale for one of the most dynamic figures of Russia’s recent history.
A black Mercedes hearse carried Yeltsin’s flag-draped coffin from the cathedral. At a spot closer to Moscow’s prestigious Novodevichy Cemetery, it was transferred to a caisson, and an armored, military-green reconnaissance vehicle pulled it along a street strewn with red carnations.
It was borne slowly to the grave as priests, relatives and VIPs walked behind.
The coffin was reopened so that Yeltsin’s widow, Naina, could gently caress his cheek and kiss his face. She, their two daughters and other relatives said final farewells, and the coffin was lowered into the ground.
His relatives made the sign of the cross, the Russian national anthem played, and a cannon fusillade rang out.
The solemn procession brought together Russia’s leading politicians, artists and intellectuals, many of them political foes and almost all of them veterans of a more chaotic, desperate and – to some – freer era.
Yeltsin was a key engineer of the end of the Soviet Union and led Russia into often-chaotic attempts to recover from decades of communist repression and economic stagnation.
