Russian TV Star’s Funeral Display Of Mass Discontent Services Had Undercurrent Of Protest Against Failure To Stop Crime

Russians buried the most beloved victim of their post-Soviet crime wave Saturday amid an outburst of politically charged grief and an open feud between President Boris N. Yeltsin and the mayor of Moscow over who is to blame.

After three days of mourning in which tens of thousands of people brought flowers to his coffin, slain television personality Vladislav Listyev was laid to rest in a Moscow cemetery beside a larger-than-life photograph of him in his spectacles and suspenders.

Women pressed their lips against the black-framed picture. Men wept. First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg N. Soskovets railed against “barbarianism in our own home.” A rock star urged people to stop paying taxes and spend the money to arm themselves.

Not since the 1989 death of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov have so many Russians mourned. Like his funeral, Saturday’s had a somber undercurrent of popular protest - this time against the authorities’ failure to stop crime. The television star was buried next to Vladimir Vysotsky, a Soviet-censored actor, poet and singer whose funeral in 1980 was also a display of mass discontent.

Listyev, 38, a witty, charismatic journalist and talk show host who was to have transformed the state-owned Ostankino network into Russian Public Television by April 1, was shot to death Wednesday night in the entryway of his Moscow apartment building.

He was the second high-profile journalist to be slain in Moscow in five months and the latest in a harrowing series of mob-related assassinations of wealthy business people, bankers, entertainers, sports figures and members of Parliament.

Police issued sketches of two suspects in the apparent contract killing. Speculation about who ordered the crime centered on organized crime middlemen who stood to lose their take of advertising income in Listyev’s restructuring.

With presidential elections 14 months away, Russian

leaders performed spin control on the national grief. Speaking to Listyev’s colleagues Thursday, Yeltsin accused Moscow city authorities of “turning a blind eye” to criminal infiltration of business and government.

While acknowledging his own failings in the war on crime, he said that the city’s chief prosecutor and its police chief should be fired.

Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, widely viewed as an unde clared presidential rival, called Yeltsin’s statement “an emotional outburst” and opposed the men’s dismissal.