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Yeltsin Center to Open in Ekaterinburg
The Center for the Historical Heritage of First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin will be set up in Ekaterinburg, Yeltsin’s hometown, with a branch in Moscow. Advisor to the Russian president Vladimir Shevchenko announced that yesterday at a meeting with Sverdlovsk Region Governor Eduard Rossel. The sum of 1.225 billion rubles of federal funds will be spent on the center annually, although the Communists vow to oppose the project. Under the law “On Centers of the Historical Heritage of Presidents of the Russian Federation No Longer in Office,” passed by the State Duma in April, the center will consist of a museum, an open library and an archive. The centers are to be headed by the former president, if alive, or an heir and exist as a foundation. The authorities “have no right to interfere in the center’s activities, except in cases specified in legislation.”
One of the central streets of Ekaterinburg and the institute where he studied there have been named after Yeltsin already. In addition, the public Urals Boris Yeltsin Center also exists. It exhibits documents, books and photographs of the first president that are mainly connected with his years in Sverdlovsk Region.
The Communist Party is categorically against the creation of a Yeltsin Center. “Only respected, leading people can be memorialized, and Mr. Yeltsin is not those things” declared Nikolay Alyanich, second secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. “He has a huge anti-rating. We are talking about a person who fired on his own parliament and wages war against his own citizens in Chechnya. He was immoral.” The Communists have already held protest actions against the renaming of the Urals Technical University.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 28, 2008
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