Russian president (19919), born in Bukta, WC Russia. He studied at the Urals Polytechnic, and began his career in the construction industry. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961, and was appointed first secretary of the Sverdlovsk region in 1976. He was inducted into the Central Committee in 1981 by Gorbachev, and briefly worked under the new secretary for the economy, Ryzhkov, before being appointed Moscow party chief in 1985. A blunt-talking reformer, he rapidly set about renovating the corrupt Moscow machine, and was elected a candidate member of the Politburo in 1986, but in 1987, at a Central Committee plenum, after he had bluntly criticized party conservatives for sabotaging political and economic reform (perestroika), he was downgraded to a lowly administrative post. He returned to public attention in 1989 by being elected to the new Congress of USSR People's Deputies, and in June 1991 he was elected president of the Russian Federation.
Following the attempted coup to oust Gorbachev in August 1991, Yeltsin's political standing greatly increased when he led the protestors who defeated the coup, and following the break-up of the Soviet Union in December 1991 he remained in power as president of the Russian Federation. He continued to press for reform, but met increasing resistance from more conservative elements in the parliament. In 1993 he called for a referendum to measure his support, received a firm vote of confidence, and proposed a new constitution for Russia. Further confrontation with conservative hard-liners followed, leading to his decision to suspend parliament (Sep 1993), and a subsequent conflict involving the shelling of the Moscow parliament building (Oct), from which he emerged with his position strengthened. However, in 19956 opposition grew as a result of ongoing economic problems and the war in Chechnya, and although successful in the 1996 elections, continuing ill health caused him major difficulties. At the end of 1999 he surprised the world by announcing his resignation.
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Boris Yeltsin Борис Ельцин |
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| 1st President of the Russian Federation | |
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In office July 10, 1991 – December 31, 1999 |
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| Preceded by | None (Sworn in as president after Soviet Union Leader Mikhail Gorbachev) |
| Succeeded by | Vladimir Putin |
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February 1, 1931 Butka, Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union |
| Spouse | Naina Yeltsina |
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин (help·info)) (born February 1, 1931) was the first President of Russia from 1991 to 1999.
Early life
Boris Yeltsin was born in the village of Butka, in the Talitsa district of Sverdlovsk Oblast in Russia. His father, Nikolai Yeltsin, was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation in 1934 and sentenced to hard labor in a gulag for three years.
Yeltsin studied at Pushkin High School in Berezniki in Perm Krai.
Yeltsin received his higher education at the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk, majoring in construction, and graduated in 1955.
CPSU member
Yeltsin was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to July 1990, and began working in the Communist administration in 1968. Also during Yeltsin's stay in Sverdlovsk, a CPSU palace was built which was named "White Tooth" by the residents. During the 30 years of his activities as a communist, Yeltsin developed connections with key people in the Soviet power structure. He was promoted to these high-rank positions by Mikhail Gorbachev and Yegor Ligachev who presumed that Yeltsin would be "their man". Yeltsin was also given a country house (dacha) previously occupied by Gorbachev. During this period Yeltsin portrayed himself as a reformer and populist (for example, he took a trolleybus to work), firing and reshuffling his staff several times.
In 1987, after a confrontation with hardliner Yegor Ligachev and eventually with Mikhail Gorbachev about Gorbachev's wife, Raisa, meddling in affairs of the state, Yeltsin was sacked from his high-ranking party positions. On October 21, 1987 at the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Yeltsin, without prior approval from Gorbachev, lashed out at the Politburo. In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of "political immaturity" and "absolute irresponsibility", and raised the question of relieving Yeltsin of his post of first secretary at the plenary meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee. Criticism of Yeltsin continued on November 11, 1987 at the meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee. Yeltsin was fired from the post of first secretary of the Moscow City Committee. After being fired, Yeltsin was hospitalized and reportedly (later confirmed by Nikolai Ryzhkov) attempted suicide.
Yeltsin's criticism of the Politburo and Gorbachev led to a smear campaign against him. However, the popular dissatisfaction with the regime was very strong, and any attempt to smear Yeltsin only added to his popularity. Another accident that befell Yeltsin during this time was his falling from a bridge. Commenting on this event, Yeltsin hinted that he was helped to fall from the bridge by the enemies of perestroika.
President of the RSFSR
In March 1989, Yeltsin was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies as the delegate from Moscow district and gained a seat on the Supreme Soviet. In an attempt to gain more power, on June 12, 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty and Yeltsin quit the CPSU in July 1990.
On June 12, 1991, Yeltsin won 57% of the popular vote in the democratic presidential elections for the Russian republic, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov. In his election campaign, Yeltsin criticized the "dictatorship of the center", but did not suggest the introduction of a market economy. Yeltsin took office on July 10. Gorbachev was held in Crimea while Yeltsin raced to the White House of Russia (residence of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR) in Moscow to defy the coup. Yeltsin responded to the coup by making a memorable speech from the turret of a tank. Yeltsin was subsequently hailed by his supporters around the world for rallying mass opposition to the coup. Neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands as support had swung over to Yeltsin. In November 1991, Yeltsin issued a decree banning the Communist Party throughout the RSFSR. A week later, on December 8, Yeltsin met with Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and the leader of Belarus, Stanislau Shushkevich, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, where the three presidents announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that they would establish a voluntary Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union at that time, Yeltsin kept the plans of the Belovezhskaya meeting in strict secrecy and the main goal of the dissolution of the Soviet Union was to get rid of Gorbachev, who by that time had started to recover his position after the events of August. Mikhail Gorbachev has also accused Yeltsin of violating the people's will expressed in the referendum in which the majority voted to keep the Soviet Union.
Post-Soviet presidency
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the acceleration of economic restructuring became one of Yeltsin's main priorities with his government overseeing a massive privatization of state-run enterprises. However, the Yeltsin government's incompetence and the destructive activities of pro-inflation forces caused the Russian economy to further deteriorate.
Yeltsin's reform program took effect on January 2, 1992 (see Russian economic reform in the 1990s for background information). The people in Yeltsin's circle who controlled credit policy during this time gained huge profits by credit manipulations.
Certain politicians quickly began to distance themselves from Yeltsin's program; and increasingly the ensuing political confrontation between Yeltsin on the one side, and the political opposition to radical economic reform on the other, became centered in the two branches of government. Aleksandr Rutskoy, who headed an anti-corruption committee, claimed to collect "eleven suitcases" of documents that demonstrated the criminal activity of Yeltsin's close associates: former acting premier (later vice-premier) Yegor Gaidar, state secretary Gennady Burbulis, minister of press and information Mikhail Poltoranin and former vice-premiers Vladimir Shumeiko and Alexander Shokhin, chairman of the State Property Committee Anatoly Chubais and foreign minister Andrey Kozyrev. In response, Yeltsin fired Aleksandr Rutskoy from the position of the chairman of the anti-corruption committee and accused Rutskoy himself of corruption and having a Swiss bank account.
Throughout 1992, opposition to Yeltsin's reform policies grew stronger and more intractable among those concerned about the condition of Russian industry, among regional leaders who wanted more independence from Moscow and among his rivals fighting for their pieces of state property. Russia's vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoy, denounced the Yeltsin program as "economic genocide."
Also throughout 1992, Yeltsin wrestled with the Supreme Soviet and the Russian Congress of People's Deputies for control over government, government policy, government banking and property. In the course of 1992, the speaker of the Russian Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, came out in opposition to the reforms, despite claiming to support Yeltsin's overall goals.
The conflict exacerbated on March 20, 1992 when Yeltsin, in a televised address to the nation, announced that he was going to assume certain "special powers" in order to implement his program of reforms. In response, the hastily-called 9th Congress of People's Deputies attempted to remove Yeltsin from presidency through impeachment on March 26, 1993. Yeltsin's opponents gathered more than 600 votes for impeachment, but fell 72 votes short of the required two-thirds majority. Further, on April 25, 1993 Yeltsin had won the popular referendum of confidence in him and his reform program over the parliament.
On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin disbanded the Supreme Soviet and Congress of People's Deputies by decree, which contradicted the Russian 1978 Constitution, updated in 1991constitution (1992 edition, in Russian), which stated:
Article 121-6. The powers of the President of Russian Federation cannot be used to change national and state organization of Russian Federation, to dissolve or impede the activity of any elected organs of state power; otherwise, the President loses his powers immediately.Yeltsin's decree stipulated the transitional period until the election of the new parliament, the State Duma and the referendum on the new constitution. On the night after Yeltsin's televised address, the Supreme Soviet declared Yeltsin removed from presidency, by virtue of his breaching the constitution, and Vice-President Rutskoy was sworn in as the acting president. However, with the support of the army and militia forces, Yeltsin held control, managing to isolate the parliament both physically and in the media.
New elections of the State Duma were held on December 12, 1993, in which the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and communists showed very good results, unlike the party "Russia's Choice", supported by Yeltsin.
Despite efforts to "improve" the government, the network of Russian government institutions remained almost as extensive as during the Soviet era.
After gaining an absolute power in the country, Yeltsin allegedly violated the law by appointing his relatives to key government positions. These actions were in direct violation of the Russian Federation Law "On the State Service", which states:
Article 21. A citizen cannot be accepted to state service in case he/she has is a relative of a state servant and their state service involves direct supervision of one by the other.During Yeltsin's presidency, several of his awkward behaviors became widely known. On August 29, 1994, Yeltsin attempted to direct an orchestra during his visit to Germany. In September 1994 (according to General Alexander Korzhakov), Yeltsin ordered his press secretary Vyacheslav Kostikov thrown into Volga river in order to humiliate him. On September 30, 1994, Yeltsin failed to come out from the plane for an official meeting with the Irish Prime Minister.
In December 1994, Yeltsin ordered the military invasion of Chechnya in an attempt to restore Moscow's control over the separatist republic. Yeltsin later withdrew federal forces from Chechnya under a 1996 peace agreement brokered by Aleksandr Lebed, then Yeltsin's security chief.
In July 1996, Yeltsin was re-elected as president with financial support from influential business oligarchs who previously gained their wealth because of their connections to Yeltsin's administration. According to General Korzhakov, Roman Abramovich was the major finance manager of Yeltsin's family. Despite only gaining 35% of the first round vote in the 1996 elections, Yeltsin successfully defeated his communist rival Gennady Zyuganov in the runoff election. Later that year, Yeltsin underwent heart bypass surgery and remained in the hospital for months.
During Yeltsin's presidency, he received US$40 billion in funds from the IMF and other international lending organizations which were supposed to support him politically and help Russia's economy. However, most of these funds were stolen by people from Yeltsin's circle and placed in foreign banks .
In 1998, a political and economic crisis emerged when Yeltsin's government defaulted on its debts, causing financial markets to panic and the country's currency, the ruble, to collapse.
On May 15, 1999, Yeltsin survived yet another attempt of impeachment, this time - by the democratic and communist opposition in the State Duma.
On August 9, 1999 Yeltsin fired his prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, and for the fourth time, fired his entire cabinet. Yeltsin was famous throughout his life for impulsive firing and reshuffling his staff.
During the 1999 Kosovo war, Yeltsin strongly opposed the NATO military campaign against Yugoslavia and warned of possible Russian intervention if NATO deployed ground troops to Kosovo.
Yeltsin continued as president of Russia until December 31, 1999, but the events of 1991 proved to be something of a high-water mark for him, historically and personally.
As an alleged condition of Yeltsin's support of Putin, Putin warranted that neither Yeltsin nor members of his "Family" (the popular term that designates the circle of people who governed the country during his presidency) would be prosecuted for unconstitutional use of military force against the lawful parliament, violation of laws, corruption, bribery or treason.
Life after resignation
Yeltsin's personal and health problems received a lot of attention in the global press.
Yeltsin has remained very low-key since his resignation, making almost no public statements or appearances. Yeltsin, together with Mikhail Gorbachev, publicly criticized Putin's plan as a step away from democracy in Russia and a return to the centrally-run political apparatus of the Soviet era.
In September 2005, Yeltsin underwent a hip operation in Moscow after breaking his femur in a fall while vacationing on the Italian island of Sardinia.
Yeltsin and the members of his family that were involved in his administration enjoy a comfortable, wealthy life. According to General Alexander Korzhakov, Roman Abramovich handles the Yeltsin family finances.
On February 1, 2006, Yeltsin celebrated his 75th birthday. According to the Guinness Book of World Records Yeltsin holds the world record for being the most hospitalized political figure. The French vodka brand Boris Jelzin Vodka (German transliteration) is named after Boris Yeltsin.
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