YELTSIN, Boris Nikolayevich
First President of the Russian Federation

Boris Yeltsin (Борис Николаевич Ельцин) was born February 1 1931 in the village of Butka,  in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals. A former member of the Politburo, he was the first president of the Russian Federation. He was a colorful figure who ruled the country during the socially and economically turbulent 1990s, before resigning on the eve of the new millennium.     

Early life

Yeltsin graduated in 1955 from the Kirov Polytechnic in Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk), specializing in construction. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked in the construction industry, starting out as a foreman and rising to become head of construction with the regional Communist Party Committee in 1968. While at the helm in Yekaterinburg, Yeltsin oversaw the destruction of the Ipatiev House, the site of the murder of the Russian royal family.

Yeltsin, who had joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1961, was named first secretary of the industrially strategic Sverdlovsk Region Committee of the CPSU in 1976.

He held this position until 1985, when General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin secretary for construction issues for the Central Committee. Later the same year he was named first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, a post later replaced by the Moscow Mayor.

In November 1987 he was removed from his position on the Central Committee, following criticism of the pace of Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms. Having resigned from the Politburo, Yeltsin looked for backers to retain his post in the city administration. He had little support, however, and was demoted to a lower government position dealing with construction issues.

Rise to power

Despite a difficult period following this humiliation, Yeltsin made a come back two years later, taking advantage of greater freedom of speech to criticize Gorbachev’s reforms and build up support. In March 1989, he was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies representing Moscow and in March 1990, he gained a seat on the Supreme Soviet of Russia.

In July 1990, Yeltsin left the CPSU. In the summer of 1991 he was elected President of the Russian Federation, defeating Gorbachev’s preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov by winning 57% of the popular vote.

Two months later, when a coup was organized by CPSU hardliners to oust Gorbachev from power, Yeltsin acted. Delivering a speech condemning the coup from the top of a tank in front of the Russian White House, order was restored and Gorbachev was able to return from house arrest in the Crimea. By the time he arrived back in Moscow, however, Yeltsin had the upper hand and his government gradually took over each ministry of the Soviet Union in late 1991. Yeltsin banned the CPSU in November 1991.

Following a pro-indendence referendum in Ukraine in December 1991, Yeltsin met with his counterparts from Ukraine and Belarus in Belovezh Forest, near Brest, Belarus. They signed the Belavezha Accords, on December 8, founding the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and declaring the end of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev, who was not part of the meeting, resigned on 25 December 1991.  

First Term

Yeltsin was now the leader of Russia and he started pushing through transition to a free market economy.
Along with Anatoly Chubais, his deputy for economic policy, Yeltsin started to privatize state enterprises in the early 1990s. Advertized as a way to spread ownership as widely as possible, vouchers were issued to all Russian citizens to purchase shares in the state enterprise of their choice. Middlemen quickly moved in to buy the vouchers for cash and a small class of oligarchs developed. Yeltsin was heavily criticized for tolerating this corruption, which led to a large amount of the nation’s wealth falling into the hands of very few people.

In late 1991 he sought the advice of Western economists, and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury Department, which had developed the concept of “shock therapy”for transition economies. This policy was favoured by Yeltsin’s deputy, Yegor Gaidar and in January 1992, Yeltsin order a raft of measures to liberalise the economy as well as an austerity regime to control inflation.   

This had significant consequences for the Russian economy, those dependent on welfare programs suffered and hyperinflation wiped out many Russians’ savings.

By 1992, the economic chaos had become a threat to Yeltsin’s powerbase. He failed in December 1992 to get his preferred candidate for prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies. In March of that year, an unsuccessful attempt was also made to impeach him, before a vote of no-confidence, which Yeltsin won, took place the following month. Yeltsin disbanded the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s Deputies in September 1993, violating the constitution.  

In October 1993 his political rivals declared Vice President General Alexander Rutskoi the new president. Having seized the Moscow Mayor’s Office and attacked Ostankino television station, troops loyal to Yeltsin stopped the attempted coup and the ringleaders were arrested. Hundreds of people had died in street clashes before the army committed to backing Yeltsin, firing at the Russian White House and sending in special forces to storm the building.  

In December 1993, Yeltsin passed a new constitution which significantly increased the president’s powers.   

The following year, Yeltsin sent troops to Chechnya, starting the First Chechen War. Russian forces would remain in Chechnya until 1996, when a peace deal was successfully negotiated by Yeltsin’s security chief, Alexander Lebed. Chechnya gained greater autonomy, but not independence, at the cost of thousands of lives.

In 1992, following American requests, Yeltsin confirmed that some U.S. prisoners of war were kept in labor camps in the Soviet Union. He further released information about Korean Air Lines Flight 007, shot down by Soviet forces in 1983.

Second Term

To gain support before the 1996 election campaign, Yeltsin privatized further state assets, boosting the government coffers and gaining the support of the oligarchs.  

His health problems and increasing unpopularity had blighted his campaign, but with Chubais playing a prominent role he secured the backing of oligarchs to finance the campaign and use their media assets to promote Yeltsin’s candidacy. He toned down the unpopular economic reforms and during the campaign the IMF announced a loan to Russia of $10 billion. Yeltsin won a second term. He underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery later that year.    

The economy was also to be a major issue in his second term. In 1998, Russia experienced a profound economic crisis, defaulting on its debts to the detriment of financial markets and causing the ruble to collapse.

In March 1998 Yeltsin fired the entire cabinet, attempting to replace Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko with Viktor Chernomyrdin. His nomination was rejected by the State Duma, however. The following month Yevgeny Primakov was confirmed as the new prime minister but was shortly himself replaced by Sergei Stepashin.

In May 1999 another attempt was made to impeach Yeltsin, by democratic and communist opposition in the State Duma. The attempt failed and Yeltsin fired the cabinet, a few months later. He replaced Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin with Vladimir Putin, who he named as his successor.  

Also in the summer of 1999, he sent Russian troops back into Chechnya, drawing criticism from foreign leaders such as U.S. President Bill Clinton. Yeltsin had earlier opposed the NATO campaign in Yugoslavia.  

On December 31 1999, Yeltsin submitted his resignation, naming Vladimir Putin as his successor.

Various sources indicate that Yeltsin struggled with an addiction to alcohol, saying that he was under the influence during, or unable to attend, numerous state functions.

Post Resignation

Following his resignation, Yeltsin’s health deteriorated and he withdrew to some extent from the public eye. He continued to enthusiastically support Russian sportsmen and criticized aspects of Vladimir Putin’s policy, although he maintained he was the right man to lead Russia.   

Yeltsin died April 23, 2007 and was buried in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, Moscow, on 25 April 2007. Prior to the funeral his body lay in state in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow. Yeltsin was the first Russian statesman in 113 years to be buried in a church ceremony. President Putin declared the day of his funeral to be a day of national mourning, with flags flown at half-mast.

Yeltsin was married and had two daughters. He published three books: an autobiography in1990, the Struggle for Russia in 1994 and Midnight Diaries in 2000.

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