bild

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, left, holds notes given to him by Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, right, during a special session of the Russian Federation Parliament in this Friday, August 23, 1991, photo. Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy as the country's first post-Communist president, has died, a Kremlin official said Monday, April 23, 2007. He was 76. (AP Photo/Boris Yurchenko)