Dan Rather

Last Sunday, The New York Times reported that journalists at Russian News Service, Russia's largest independent news network, had been told by new managers loyal to President Vladimir Putin that from now on at least 50 per cent of the stories the network airs about Russia need to be "positive".

It seems, in retrospect, a fitting start to a week that saw the death of Boris Yeltsin, the larger-than-life first president of Russia. Because a hard look at the legacy of the man, who slayed the Soviet Union and spawned modern-day Russia, reveals a decidedly mixed picture. Yeltsin's triumphs were huge - at least 50 per cent good news - but his failures, too, were significant. And Yeltsin's shortcomings continue to resonate in Russia - in stories, for example, such as that of the edict imposed on the Russian News Service.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

Worth remembering

It is worth remembering how the media-censoring President Putin came to power. After a relatively obscure rise in President Yeltsin's Kremlin, Yeltsin appointed Putin a first deputy prime minister on the same day that the temperamental president fired the latest in a string of prime ministers. In the course of a day, Putin went from head of the FSB domestic security service to acting prime minister, next in line for the Russian presidency.

And then, on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin resigned, handing his designated successor the presidency and the chance to run as an incumbent in the upcoming presidential election. Yeltsin, who was under investigation for money-laundering and corruption, retired to his dacha with Putin's presidential grant of immunity from prosecution.

If it was a quid pro quo, it was a Faustian bargain for Russia, not to mention the world. Under Yeltsin, a culture of corruption took hold when the sell-off of former state-owned enterprises created a new class of oligarchs; Putin has masterfully used selective prosecution of this same corruption to consolidate power within his Kremlin. At the same time, he has placed restrictions on the news in all media, and given rise to a culture of intimidation and fear in Russian press and politics.

The democracy that Boris Yeltsin did so much to give birth to in Russia is in danger of being smothered in its crib by his successor.

It is a sad irony for the legacy of a man who was not only Russia's first democratically elected leader but also seemed to possess a true democratic spirit. Remembrances of Yeltsin inevitably start with his heroic stand atop a Soviet tank in 1991, a move that thwarted a hard-line communist coup. But as great as that moment was, it is too easily offset by memories of Yeltsin ordering tanks to fire on the Russian parliament two years later. Perhaps a better way to honour Yeltsin is to remember Russia's 1996 presidential campaign.

Faced with a serious challenge from Gennadi Zyuganov, a candidate who wanted to bring back Russian communism, Yeltsin threw everything his ailing body had into the campaign. Suddenly he was everywhere, glad-handing crowds, dancing onstage with rock bands and causing Western audiences to hold their collective breath lest he gave himself a heart attack.

Yeltsin survived that battle, beating back the communists again, this time with a victory at the polls. And some 11 years later, Russians could watch dignitaries from around the world pay last respects to their first president - as the funeral, by order of the Kremlin, was carried live on state-owned Russian television.