MOSCOW – Boris Yeltsin was a courageous fighter, an instinctive democrat who helped dismantle the totalitarian Soviet apparatus of a monolithic Communist Party, freeing millions in Eurasia.

Yet when he died Monday, at age 76, many Russians regarded their nation’s first freely elected president as a failure, or worse.

Yeltsin “was a revolutionary leader at a revolutionary moment,” said Andrew Kuchins, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. But that moment, it seems, has long passed.

Yeltsin’s successor, President Vladimir Putin, has muzzled the media, restricted the independence of parliament and governors, effectively crippled opposition political parties and filled many high state offices with veterans of the Soviet and Russian secret services. A pollster recently measured his approval rating here at over 80 percent.

Larger than life during his tenure, Yeltsin shrank from public view following his 1999 retirement and recently has rarely given interviews. Only after his death was the big, bumptious politician with the soft pink features and wave of white hair seen again on Russian television.

Putin spoke to the nation four hours after the announcement of Yeltsin’s death to praise his predecessor – and one-time patron – as a man “thanks to whom a whole new epoch has started.”