A public viewing to pay last respects to the late Yegor Gaidar, one of the leading architects of free market reforms in post-Soviet Russia, has begun in Moscow.
The public ceremony is being held in the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital, after which Gaidar will be cremated according to his own wishes, Maria Gaidar, the politician's daughter, said.
Maria said the funeral would be held in a close family circle.
Gaidar reportedly died when a blood clot became dislodged on Wednesday. He was 53.
Gaidar was one of the young reformers, including Anatoly Chubais and Boris Nemtsov, who Yeltsin surrounded himself with in the early 1990s and was acting prime minister during the second half of 1992.
Gaidar is survived by his wife, three sons and daughter.
MOSCOW, December 19 (RIA Novosti)
