Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served as Russia's prime minister in the turbulent 1990s as the country was throwing off communism and developing as a market economy, died Wednesday. He was 72.

No cause of death has been released, but Chernomyrdin had grown thin in recent years and was reported to have been ill.

Chernomyrdin helped see Russia through some difficult times, including the economic devastation that followed the Soviet collapse and the war in Chechnya, and was much loved by Russians....