Smash hit

He had won power largely on a promise to end Soviet-era corruption, but proved strangely unable - or unwilling - to prevent the looting of state industry as it passed into private hands during his nine years in power. He steadfastly defended freedom of the press, but was a master at manipulating the media.

Yeltsin made a stunning debut as president. He introduced many basics of democracy, guaranteeing the rights to free speech, private property and multiparty elections, and opening the borders to trade and travel.

But he was at best an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of day-to-day administration - preferring instead to sack his government and appoint a new one when things went wrong. In 1998-99, as the economy fell into a deep recession, he fired his entire government four times.

Yeltsin also damaged his democratic credentials by using force to solve political disputes, though he always claimed that his actions were necessary to keep the country together.

Yeltsin sent tanks and troops in October 1993 to flush armed, hard-line supporters out of a hostile Russian parliament after they had sparked violence in the streets of Moscow.

And in December 1994, he launched a war against separatists in the southern republic of Chechnya. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the Chechnya conflict, and a defeated and humiliated Russian army withdrew at the end of 1996.

The war solved nothing - and Russian troops resumed fighting in the breakaway region in late 1999, in the dying days of Yeltsin's leadership.

In his final years in charge, Yeltsin was dogged by health problems and often seemed out of touch. He retreated regularly to his country residence outside Moscow and stayed away from the Kremlin for days, even weeks at a time. As the country lurched from crisis to crisis, its leader appeared increasingly absent.

Though full of bluster, he revealed more of his personal life and private doubts than any previous Russian leader had.

"The debilitating bouts of depression, the grave second thoughts, the insomnia and headaches in the middle of the night, the tears and despair ... the hurt from people close to me who did not support me at the last minute, who didn’t hold up, who deceived me - I have had to bear all of this," he wrote in his 1994 memoir, The Struggle for Russia.

Yeltsin resigned on live television on December 31, 1999, passing the baton to Mr Putin, then Prime Minister. In an emotional address, he told his countrymen: "I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. I would like to beg your forgiveness for not having justified your hopes."

Mikhail Gorbachev, effectively forced from office by Yeltsin, paid tribute today to his achievements, but pointedly noted his shortcomings. "I express the very deepest condolences to the family of the deceased on whose shoulders rest major events for the good of the country and serious mistakes," said Mr Gorbachev, also 76. "A tragic fate."

Also paying tribute was Boris Berezovsky, the businessmen who became Russia's richest man during the Yeltsin-era privatisations but is now exiled in Britain after falling foul of his successor. "I have lost my mentor and Russia has lost the greatest reformer in all its history," he said.

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