Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich, << YEHLT sihn, buh RYEES nyih kuh LAH yih vyihch >> (1931-2007), was president of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was elected in 1991, while Russia was a republic of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin played a major role in the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Yeltsin was born on Feb. 1, 1931, in the village of Butka, near Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). In 1955, he graduated from Ural Polytechnic Institute (now Ural Federal University). He joined the Communist Party in 1961 and became head of the local party in Sverdlovsk in 1976. In 1985, he became chief of the party organization in Moscow and a secretary of the party’s Central Committee. In 1986, he became a candidate (nonvoting) member of the party’s ruling Politburo. However, the party removed Yeltsin from these posts in 1987 and 1988 after he openly criticized Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s approach to reform. Yeltsin was elected to the parliament of the Soviet Union in 1989 and to the parliament of the Russian republic in 1990. The Russian parliament elected him speaker of the Supreme Soviet, the parliamentary body responsible for most legislative activity. Later in 1990, Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party. In July 1991, he became the first popularly elected president in Russian history.
In August 1991, a group of conservative Soviet Communist officials staged a coup against Gorbachev. Yeltsin led opposition to the coup, which failed after three days. Yeltsin’s role in defying the coup earned him increased power and prestige both at home and abroad.
On Dec. 8, 1991, Yeltsin and the presidents of Belarus and Ukraine formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.). They declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Most of the other Soviet republics soon joined the C.I.S. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned, and the Soviet Union was officially dissolved.
From the beginning of Yeltsin’s term, he supported major economic reforms, including a rapid shift to private enterprise. However, his policies brought rapid inflation (price increases) and a recession (decline in business activity), and his program faced opposition from parliament. Yeltsin accused the parliament of resisting reform, and he disbanded it in 1993.
Another major difficulty for Yeltsin was the conflict in Chechnya, a region in southwestern Russia that had begun demanding independence in 1991. Russia invaded the region in December 1994 to oppose the separatists. A cease-fire ended the fighting in 1996, shortly before Yeltsin was reelected. In 1997, Yeltsin and the Chechen leader signed a peace agreement. However, conflict continued in the region into the 2000’s.
The economic situation in Russia worsened in the second half of the 1990’s, and Yeltsin struggled to maintain control of the country. In 1998, the crisis worsened, and the Russian monetary unit, the ruble, collapsed in value. That same year, Yeltsin fired his prime minister, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who had served in that post since 1992. From August 1998 to August 1999, Yeltsin appointed three different prime ministers. On Dec. 31, 1999, Yeltsin resigned and named Vladimir V. Putin, the last of these prime ministers, as acting president. Putin granted Yeltsin immunity from prosecution. Yeltsin died on April 23, 2007.
