Boris Yeltsin's resignation as President has been entirely in character. As it frequently did in the course of his presidency, further instability is likely to beset the largest country on earth in the immediate aftermath of his departure from office. Russia's difficult economic situation is but a symptom of a deeper political malaise. As acting president, the Prime Minister Mr Vladimir Putin, needs to steer the economy in the right direction rather than concentrate on the war in Chechnya.
In the course of his eight years in power, Mr Yeltsin has presided over dramatic change in Russia, some for the better and some for the worse. He played a major part in dismantling the command economy, the Communist Party and a system which drifted from idealism to terror and onwards to graft and corruption.
No politician did more to bring the Soviet Union to an end and to make Russia a part of the international community after an absence of nearly eighty years. His presidency saw Russians given permission to travel outside their country to any state which would accept them. This relaxation of the once tyrannical travel restrictions has already helped broaden the minds of tens of thousands of Russia's citizens.
Despite Russia's ongoing financial difficulties, a measure of progress has been made on the economic front. The food queues have almost gone, though many of them have thinned because high prices have put products beyond the reach of ordinary Russians. At times, the market economy appears to have flourished, at least for some. A privileged few in Russia, many of them linked to Mr Yeltsin's administration, are now wealthy beyond what anyone might have imagined a decade ago.
A modicum of democracy has been installed but there has also been a strongly negative side to Mr Yeltsin's reign. The average male life expectancy has fallen from close to the western European level to a figure below that of India. The first Chechen war, in which tens of thousands of unarmed civilians lost their lives, made Mr Yeltsin's period of office the bloodiest in Russia since Stalin died in 1953. In the area of human rights, Russia's standards have improved since the days of the gulags but people can still be arrested and locked away for being found on the streets without their internal passports or the papers which register them as residents of a specific location.
President Yeltsin's poor health, his erratic lifestyle and his often disastrous choice of associates, assured Russia of a turbulent period of change from communism to capitalism. His own opportunism has, instead of allowing for a strong democratic opposition, placed the communists perhaps permanently in position as Russia's second political force.
It seems likely that Russia's constitution will be respected and a peaceful transfer of power will take place after the presidential elections. For some, the temptation to put the communists, under Mr Gennady Zyuganov, back into power will be strong. But most Russians have signalled repeatedly that they do not wish to turn back the clock.
Following their decades of difficulty, they deserve an exceptional leader, strong enough to resist a drift towards nationalism and fascism and with the kind of stature that is desperately needed to reinvigorate Russia's economy and instil some much needed international confidence. Mr Vladimir Putin now seems very likely to become president. He has the qualities necessary to bring order to his vast country. His commitment to democracy, however, is open to question.