Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich

▪ 2008

 Russian politician

born Feb. 1, 1931 , Sverdlovsk [now Yekaterinburg], Russia, U.S.S.R.

died April 23, 2007 , Moscow, Russia

as independent Russia's first popularly elected president (1991–99), guided the country through a stormy decade of political and economic retrenching, but he was plagued by recurrent heart problems, an ongoing war with the breakaway republic of Chechnya, the failure of his free-market reforms to spur economic growth, and erratic behaviour (some of which was later confirmed to be related to excessive alcohol consumption). Yeltsin attended the Urals Polytechnic Institute and worked (1955–68) in construction until he began full-time work in the Communist Party, which he had joined in 1961. In 1976 he became first secretary of the Sverdlovsk oblast party committee. After Mikhail Gorbachev came to national power, he chose Yeltsin (1985) to clean out the corruption in the Moscow party organization, and the next year he elevated Yeltsin to the Politburo (as a nonvoting member). As the mayor of Moscow, Yeltsin proved an able and determined reformer, but he began condemning the slow pace of reform, challenging party conservatives, and criticizing Gorbachev. Yeltsin was forced to resign from the Moscow party leadership (1987) and from the Politburo (1988). In March 1989 he won a seat in the new Soviet parliament, and on May 29, 1990, the parliament of the Russian S.F.S.R. elected him president of the republic against Gorbachev's wishes. Yeltsin took steps to give the Russian republic more autonomy, declared himself in favour of a market-oriented economy and a multiparty political system, and quit the Communist Party. His victory in the first direct popular elections for the presidency of the Russian republic (June 1991) was seen as a mandate for economic reform. Two months later, during the brief coup against Gorbachev by hard-line communists, Yeltsin rallied resistance in Moscow while calling for the return of Gorbachev. Yeltsin emerged as the country's most powerful political figure, and when the Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, the Russian government under his leadership assumed many of the former superpower's responsibilities. By the late 1990s, however, the events in Chechnya, lagging economic reforms, and political maneuvering dominated much of the government. In 1999 the Duma (parliament) initiated an impeachment drive against Yeltsin but was unable to secure the necessary votes to proceed. Yeltsin announced his resignation on Dec. 31, 1999, naming as acting president Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who granted him immunity from future prosecution.

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