Boris Yeltsin (1931 - 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the first president of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999. [1] A construction engineer who rose through the Communist Party apparatus, he broke with the leadership in the late 1980s, became the figurehead of resistance to the August 1991 coup attempt, and led Russia through the dissolution of the Soviet Union and a contested programme of market reform. [2]
Early life and party career
Yeltsin was born on 1 February 1931 in the village of Butka in the Urals, into a peasant family that suffered during collectivisation. He trained as a civil engineer at the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, and worked in construction management before moving into full-time party work. [1]
He joined the Communist Party in 1961 and became first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee in 1976, a post he held for nearly a decade. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev brought him to Moscow, where he was appointed head of the city party organisation and gained a reputation for attacking privilege and bureaucratic corruption. [3]
Break with the Soviet leadership
In 1987 Yeltsin criticised the slow pace of reform at a Central Committee plenum and was removed from his Moscow post and from the Politburo. Rather than ending his career, the dismissal made him a popular figure. He returned through the new competitive elections, winning a Moscow seat to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, and in 1990 was chosen chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian republic, resigning from the Communist Party the same year. [1]
In June 1991 he was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the first direct presidential election in Russian history. That August, when hardliners detained Gorbachev and attempted to seize power, Yeltsin publicly defied them from outside the Russian parliament building, and the coup collapsed within days. [2] In December 1991 he signed, with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, the agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Presidency of Russia
Yeltsin's government launched rapid price liberalisation and privatisation. The reforms ended chronic shortages and created a private sector, but were accompanied by hyperinflation, a severe contraction of output, the collapse of savings, sharp falls in life expectancy, and the concentration of major industrial assets in a small number of hands. [4]
Conflict with the parliament culminated in October 1993, when Yeltsin ordered the dissolution of the legislature and, after armed resistance, the shelling of the parliament building; scores of people were killed. A new constitution, approved by referendum in December 1993, established a strong presidency. [2] From 1994 his government fought a war in Chechnya that caused heavy civilian casualties and ended in a withdrawal in 1996.
Despite very low approval ratings, he was re-elected in 1996 in a campaign heavily supported by business interests and state media. His second term was marked by ill health, frequent changes of prime minister, and the financial crisis and default of August 1998. [3]
Resignation and legacy
On 31 December 1999 Yeltsin resigned, handing power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom he had appointed months earlier. He withdrew almost entirely from public life and died in Moscow on 23 April 2007. [1]
Assessments of his record remain divided. He is credited with dismantling one-party rule, permitting a free press and competitive elections, and preventing a restoration of Soviet power; he is also held responsible for economic policies that impoverished much of the population, for the Chechen war, and for concentrating authority in the presidency. [4] A presidential centre in Yekaterinburg is devoted to his era.
