Television screens in Russia did not go blank yesterday. The music of Tchaikovsky did not play.

The greatest legacy of Boris Yeltsin’s extraordinary life was the ordinary manner in which his death was announced.

The clearing of TV programming and round-the-clock martial music had been the signals sent in Soviet times to prepare the public for a leader’s death.

Mr Yeltsin had ended all of that when he brought Soviet communism crashing down and ushered in a new era of democracy. Russia repaid him yesterday by taking his death calmly in its stride, even as many people looked back on his presidency as a period of national humiliation and personal hardship.

Russia’s first democratically elected leader died of heart failure aged 76 in Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital on a day when the country had celebrated a 5-0 drubbing of Spain by its women’s team at tennis, Mr Yeltsin’s favourite sport. His death dominated the evening news bulletins but even the state TV channels felt no need to interrupt normal programming with flattering eulogies to his life.

Mr Yeltsin achieved another first yesterday. He was the first leader in Russian and Soviet history to die quietly in retirement, having overseen a peaceful transition to his successor.

He had helped to make Russia a normal country, liberating it from the gerontocracy who had ruled in Soviet times and who would now have been fighting for power even as the body of the old ruler was still warm. The struggle to succeed Vladimir Putin will instead be fought out over the next 11 months.

The Kremlin announced that Mr Yeltsin would be buried tomorrow at Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Mr Putin declared it a national day of mourning. In a televised address, Mr Putin described his predecessor as a figure of global importance “thanks to whom a whole new epoch has started”.

“He was the first Russian President . . . A new, democratic Russia was born, a free state open to the world. A state in which power truly belongs to the people,” Mr Putin said.

Western leaders heaped praise on the man who had led Russia from 1991 to 1999 through the painful transition to a market economy and a more open society.

President Bush called Mr Yeltsin an historic figure who had served his country at a time of momentous change. He said: “He played a key role as the Soviet Union dissolved and helped to lay the foundations of freedom in Russia.”

Tony Blair said: “He was a remarkable man who saw the need for democratic and economic reform and, in defending it, played a vital role at a crucial time in Russia’s history.”

Baroness Thatcher said: “Without Boris Yeltsin, Russia would have remained in the grip of communism and the Baltic states would not be free. He deserves to be honoured as a patriot and liberator.”

Sir John Major told the BBC: “I think his tremendous work in terms of instilling democracy is what will stand out when people have forgotten the economic difficulties, and forgotten the miscellaneous matters about whether he drank too much.”

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said: “Boris Yeltsin was a large personality in Russian and international politics, a courageous fighter for democracy and freedom.”

Mr Yeltsin’s legacy received a more mixed response in Russia. Anatoli Chubais, one of the architects of the “shock therapy” market reforms carried out under Mr Yeltsin, said: “He brought us from captivity into freedom. He took us from a country of lies . . . to a country which tried to live in truth.”

Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader defeated by Mr Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential elections, said: “I have no good words for him. There died a man whose deeds and political practice have proved to be a great woe for Russia and for millions of people.”

For millions of ordinary Russians, who resented the “Wild West” capitalism that enriched a tiny elite as their own savings disappeared, the response of the exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky was likely to be most telling. He said: “The guy was my mentor and Russia has lost its greatest reformer.”

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