MOSCOW: Mstislav Rostropovich, the legendary Russian cellist who became a powerful emblem of resistance to the Soviet communist system, died on April 27 in a Moscow hospital. He was 80.

Russian President Vladimir Putin led the tributes to Rostropovich, describing his death as “a terrible loss” and offering his condolences to the family in comments broadcast on state television.

“I know how bravely he fought until the last minute against the most difficult ailment. Today we have lost a dear and close person, and Russia, the whole world, has lost a great musician and humanist,” Putin said.

Rostropovich had been ill for some time and had been receiving treatment at a Moscow cancer clinic. Dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn also honoured the memory of Rostropovich, who came to his aid against persecution from the Soviet authorities after he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970.

“The departure of Mstislav Rostropovich is a bitter blow for our culture,” said Solzhenitsyn, the author of celebrated works about the Soviet prison camp system.

“Goodbye dear friend!” he added, in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies.

French President Jacques Chirac describing Rostropovich’s life as a “work of art” that “illuminated the history of our times, of Russia, and of freedom.”

A lying in state will occur in the musical conservatory in Moscow on Saturday and the funeral will be on Sunday in the country’s largest cathedral, Christ the Saviour, organisers said.

Rostropovich will then be buried in the grounds of Moscow’s 16th-century Novodevichy convent in a ceremony mirroring Wednesday’s funeral for Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin.

Rostropovich will be buried alongside the celebrated Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich, one of his mentors, who was also persecuted by the Soviet authorities.