Boris Yeltsin

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"Yeltsin" redirects here. For the name, see Yeltsin (name).
This name uses Eastern Slavic naming customs; the patronymic is Nikolayevich and
the family name is Yeltsin.
Boris Yeltsin
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Boris Yeltsin-2.jpg
Yeltsin in 1999
1st President of Russia
In office
10 July 1991 31 December 1999
Prime Minister Ivan Silayev
Oleg Lobov (Acting)
Yegor Gaidar (Acting)
Viktor Chernomyrdin
Sergey Kiriyenko
Yevgeny Primakov
Sergei Stepashin
Vladimir Putin
Preceded by Inaugural holder (or Boris Yeltsin as the Chairman of the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR)
Succeeded by Vladimir Putin
Head of Government of Russia
In office
6 November 1991 15 June 1992
Preceded by Oleg Lobov (Acting)
(Chairman of the Council of Ministers Government of the Russian SFSR)
Succeeded by Yegor Gaidar (Acting)
(Prime Minister of the Russian Federation)
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR
In office
29 May 1990 10 July 1991
President Mikhail Gorbachev
Preceded by Vitaly Vorotnikov
Succeeded by Ruslan Khasbulatov (Acting)
First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party
In office
23 December 1985 11 November 1987
Leader Mikhail Gorbachev
(Party General Secretary)
Preceded by Viktor Grishin
Succeeded by Lev Zaykov
Personal details
Born Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin
1 February 1931
Butka, Ural Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Died 23 April 2007 (aged 76)
Moscow, Russia
Nationality Russian
Political party Independent (after 1990)
Other political
affiliations CPSU (19611990)
Spouse(s) Naina Yeltsina
Children 2, including Tatyana Yumasheva
Residence Moscow Kremlin
Alma mater Ural State Technical University
Signature
Central institution membership[show]
Other offices held[show]
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russian: ????? ?????????? ??????; IPA: [b?'r?is n??
k?'la?v??t? 'jel?ts?n] (About this sound listen); (1 February 1931 23 April 2007)
was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian
Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev,
Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful
political opponents. During the late 1980s, Yeltsin had been a member of the
Politburo, and in late 1987 tendered a letter of resignation in protest. No one had
resigned from the Politburo before. This act branded Yeltsin as a rebel and led to
his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure.

On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 12
June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of
the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), at that time one of the
15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Upon the resignation of Mikhail
Gorbachev and the final dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, the
RSFSR became the sovereign state of the Russian Federation, and Yeltsin remained in
office as president. He was reelected in the 1996 election, in which critics widely
claimed pervasive corruption; in the second round he defeated Gennady Zyuganov from
the revived Communist Party by a margin of 13.7% (54.4% to 40.7%), despite the
margin having been only 3.3% during the first round.[editorializing] However,
Yeltsin never recovered his early popularity after a series of economic and
political crises in Russia in the 1990s.

He vowed to transform Russia's socialist economy into a capitalist market economy

and implemented economic shock therapy, price liberalization, and nationwide
privatization. Due to the sudden total economic shift, a majority of the national
property and wealth fell into the hands of a small number of oligarchs.[1] The
well-off millionaire and billionaire oligarchs likened themselves to 19th century
robber barons. Rather than creating new enterprises, Yeltsin's democratization led
to international monopolies hijacking the former Soviet markets, arbitraging the
huge difference between old domestic prices for Russian commodities and the prices
prevailing on the world market.[2]

Much of the Yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption, and as a result of
persistent low oil and commodity prices during the 1990s, Russia suffered
inflation, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems that
affected Russia and the other former states of the USSR. Within a few years of his
presidency, many of Yeltsin's initial supporters had started to criticize his
leadership, and Vice President Alexander Rutskoy even denounced the reforms as
"economic genocide".[3]

Ongoing confrontations with the Supreme Soviet climaxed in the 1993 Russian
constitutional crisis in which Yeltsin illegally ordered the dissolution of the
Supreme Soviet parliament, which as a result attempted to remove him from office.
In October 1993, troops loyal to Yeltsin stopped an armed uprising outside of the
parliament building, leading to a number of deaths.[4] Yeltsin then scrapped the
existing Russian constitution, banned political opposition, and deepened his
efforts to transform the economy. On 31 December 1999, under enormous internal
pressure, Yeltsin announced his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of
his chosen successor, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin left office
widely unpopular with the Russian population.[5]

Yeltsin kept a low profile after his resignation, though he did occasionally
publicly criticise his successor. Yeltsin died of congestive heart failure on 23
April 2007.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Communist Party membership
3 Moscow
4 Resignation
5 President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
6 President of the Russian Federation
6.1 Yeltsin's first term
6.1.1 Radical reforms
6.1.2 Confrontation with parliament
6.1.3 Chechnya
6.1.4 Privatization and the rise of "the oligarchs"
6.1.5 Korean Air Lines Flight 007
6.1.6 1996 presidential election
6.2 Yeltsin's second term
6.2.1 Attempt of impeachment in 1999
6.2.2 Mabetex Corruption
6.2.3 Resignation
7 Illness
8 Life after resignation
9 Death and funeral
10 Memorials
11 Honours and awards
12 Bibliography
13 See also
14 References
15 External links
Early life and education[edit]

Boris Yeltsin (second from left) with childhood friends

Boris Yeltsin was born in the village of Butka, Talitsky District, Sverdlovsk,
USSR, on 1 February 1931.[6] In 1932 after the state took away the entire harvest
from the recently collectivised Butka peasants, the Yeltsin family moved as far
away as they could, to Kazan, more than 1,100 kilometres from Butka, where Boris'
father, Nikolai, found work on a construction site. Growing up in rural Sverdlovsk,
he studied at the Ural State Technical University (now Urals Polytechnic
Institute), and began his career in the construction industry.[7] In 1934 Nikolai
Yeltsin was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced to hard labour in a
gulag for three years.[8]

Following his release in 1936 after serving two years, Nikolai took his family to
live in Berezniki in Perm Krai, where his brother Ivan, a blacksmith, had been
exiled the year before for failing to deliver his grain quota.[9] Nikolai remained
unemployed for a period of time and then worked again in construction. His mother,
Klavdiya Vasilyevna Yeltsina, worked as a seamstress. Boris studied at Pushkin High
School in Berezniki. He was fond of sports (in particular skiing, gymnastics,
volleyball, track and field, boxing and wrestling) despite losing the thumb and
index finger of his left hand when he and some friends furtively entered a Red Army
supply depot, stole several grenades, and tried to disassemble them.[10]

In 1949 he was admitted to the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk, majoring

in construction, and he graduated in 1955. The subject of his degree paper was
"Construction of a Mine Shaft".[11] From 1955 to 1957 he worked as a foreman with
the building trust Uraltyazhtrubstroy. From 1957 to 1963 he worked in Sverdlovsk,
and was promoted from construction site superintendent to chief of the Construction
Directorate with the Yuzhgorstroy Trust. In 1963 he became chief engineer, and in
1965 head of the Sverdlovsk House-Building Combine, responsible for sewerage and
technical plumbing. He joined the ranks of the CPSU nomenklatura in 1968 when he
was appointed head of construction with the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee. In
1975 he became secretary of the regional committee in charge of the region's
industrial development. In 1976 the Politburo of the CPSU promoted him to the post
of the first secretary of the CPSU Committee of Sverdlovsk Oblast (effectively he
became the head of one of the most important industrial regions in the USSR); he
remained in this position until 1985.[citation needed]

Communist Party membership[edit]

Yeltsin was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 17
March 1961[12] to 13 July 1990,[13] and a nomenklatura member from 1968.

In 1977, as a party official in Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin was ordered by Moscow to

destroy the Ipatiev House where the last Russian tsar had been killed by Bolshevik
troops. The Ipatiev House was demolished in one night on 27 July 1977.[14] Also
during Yeltsin's time in Sverdlovsk, a CPSU palace was built which was named "White
Tooth" by the residents.[15] During this time, Yeltsin developed connections with
key people in the Soviet power structure. In January 1981 Yeltsin was awarded the
Order of Lenin, the Soviet Union's highest medal, for "the service to the Communist
Party and the Soviet State and in connection with the 50th birthday".[6] In March
1981 Yeltsin was elected as a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union.[6]

Moscow[edit]