Thousands Say Farewell to Sobchak

ST. PETERSBURG -- Tens of thousands of people came to say farewell to former Mayor Anatoly Sobchak on Thursday, remembering him with nostalgia as one of Russia's leading democrats.


Sobchak, who died last weekend at age 62 from an apparent heart attack, was buried at twilight at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery as everyday mourners pushed and shoved to try to get past security and join members of the political elite gathered by his grave.


He was buried alongside Galina Starovoitova, a voice for democracy in the State Duma who was gunned down in St. Petersburg in 1998.


When Sobchak, a law professor, became St. Petersburg's first mayor in 1991 - changing the Soviet face of Leningrad in one fell swoop by restoring its tsarist name - he gave his former pupil Vladimir Putin his first job as a policy-maker and appointed him his deputy in the city administration.


But as Putin, now the acting president, returned to his political roots Thursday to pay his last respects to Sobchak, the day was filled with rancor over the corruption allegations that surfaced against Sobchak in recent years.


Time after time, mourners claimed the campaign against Sobchak had hounded him to his grave. Even Putin had words of recrimination about Sobchak's death.


"He did not die, he fell victim to persecution," Putin said in an interview with Radio Baltika.


Putin made an unexpected visit early in the morning to the Tavrichesky Palace where Sobchak's body was lying in state.


He slipped past lines of mourners that stretched over 1.5 kilometers to join the former mayor's family in the first intimate minutes of the wake.


Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, sat next to Sobchak's widow, Lyudmila Narusova, who laid her head on Putin's shoulder and wept.


Details of Putin's movements throughout the day were shrouded in secrecy. Security officials said earlier in the week that they had reason to believe an attempt on Putin's life was planned by members of Chechen terrorist groups.


Russia has been fighting a ferocious war against Chechen separatists and much of Putin's political popularity rests on the unrelenting military action in the republic. Thursday's events passed without any attacks.


An estimated 50,000 people filed past Sobchak's coffin in the palace, the seat of the pre-revolutionary parliament, to bid farewell to Sobchak.


Putin slipped in through side doors to the religious service in the Transfiguration of the Savior Cathedral and bypassed crowds to get into the burial service at the monastery.


Other members of the political elite gave speeches at Sobchak's public wake in which they mourned the loss of one of Russia's most vibrant democrats.


"A man has died without whom dozens of people in today's political elite would simply not have made it," said Anatoly Chubais, the head of Unified Energy Systems, who also came from St. Petersburg as an early architect of Russia's privatization program.


"This was a person who made history and also became a part of history," he said. "He was loved and listened to, but he was also hated, persecuted and destroyed."


Sobchak's career as mayor soured swiftly as corruption charges surfaced against him. Some have accused Sobchak's former deputy Vladimir Yakovlev of building his political career by spreading the allegations about Sobchak.


Sobchak lost to Yakovlev in the 1996 elections in the wake of the allegations.


Out of office, Sobchak was fair game for prosecutors. When they questioned him in October 1997, Sobchak complained of heart trouble. He soon slipped out of town for Paris for medical treatment.


Irina Khakamada, one of the co-leaders of the Union of Right Forces, was one of many who blamed the corruption allegations for Sobchak's heart condition.


"His heart did not survive the cruelty of Russia," she said at the wake in the palace. "But he never gave up his hope of making St. Petersburg a great capital. This is now our inheritance and should not disappear."


Another exile from Russia also hounded by corruption allegations, Sergei Stankevich, who was a colleague of Sobchak's in the early days of his St. Petersburg administration, returned to Russia for the first time since he fled to Poland in 1995 to pay his last respects.


"I did have doubts about the outcome of my trip but it was an important decision to make," he said. "Sobchak was a leading democrat of the first wave and I had to say goodbye to him."


A grim-faced Grigory Yavlinsky, who arrived in the middle of the wake, would said only that he "was very sorry Sobchak was not with them today."


His co-leader of the Yabloko faction, former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, pointed out that dozens of members of Sobchak's administration now occupied leading positions in Moscow politics.


He said it was time to return to St. Petersburg and that he was ready to be the first - a statement that was seen as his beginning a campaign for St. Petersburg's gubernatorial elections.


Boris Berezovsky said he went to the wake because he and Sobchak were of the same mind.


Yakovlev was conspicuous by his absence. Sobchak's widow had sent out a bitter message Wednesday asking him to stay away. She said that if anyone from his administration arrived at the memorial Thursday it would be "blasphemy."


Putin, however, met with Yakovlev on Thursday in a closed-door session to discuss economic matters, Yakovlev's press secretary said.


As thousands of St. Petersburgers stood in line for up to four hours in temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius to pay their respects to Sobchak, the mood was of regret at the tarnishing of his name and of sadness at the loss of a man seen as one of Russia's true romantic democrats.


Any mention of how St. Petersburg's reforms had not brought much prosperity to the ordinary people of the city was swept aside.


"We just came to say goodbye to a man who did a lot for this city," said Natalya Ivanovna, 60, who was shivering after two hours of standing in the cold. "He changed the face of the city, he was eloquent, a true member of the intelligentsia."


"We had rested all our hopes for the future on him. Too many like him have left this life," said Nadezhda Maximova, 40, who was wiping away tears as she left the Tavrichesky Palace.


Few of the people waiting in line to catch a brief glimpse of the former mayor had harsh words for him.


But some of those who had come to mourn him did say he had made mistakes.


"Sobchak was an eloquent speaker, but he did not know how to manage things. People in the city became much poorer while he was mayor," said Vladimir Yezhorov, 40, a bus driver.


Many in the crowd said they would vote for Putin for president, pointing out that his mentor Sobchak had always supported him.