Boris Yeltsin

Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.
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COUNTRY: Russia
PERSON: Boris Yeltsin

HEADLINE: Biographies

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin is president of Russia.

Yeltsin was born on Feb 1, 1931 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), Russia. He grew up in dire circumstances on a collective farm, but excelled in school and became a strong athlete, shining especially in volleyball. He trained as an engineer at the Urals M. Kirov Polytechnic Institute and worked in construction from 1955 to 1968.

Yeltsin joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961 and became first secretary of the Sverdlovsk District Central Committee in 1976. In 1985 he was appointed secretary of the Central Committee for Construction of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In December of that year he became the first secretary of the Moscow City Communist Party Committee, a post equivalent to that of a mayor in Western cities. He moved to institute several reforms, especially regarding the city's bureaucracy, which was mired in several unnecessary layers.

Yeltsin was discredited while serving as a nonvoting member of the Communist Party Politburo because he wanted more extensive political and economic reforms than even Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was implementing. In 1989 he became a member of the Congress of People's Deputies, part of the Soviet legislature, and in July of that year he founded the independent "interegional group" that vowed to speed up perestroika and fight the hard-line communist elements within the legislature. He was elected chairperson of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation on May 30, 1990 (effectively the president at that time) and began taking steps to reduce the power of the Soviet government and increase the power of the Russian government. In May 1991 Yeltsin was elected to the newly created post of president, receiving 61% of the vote. He was the first Russian president ever elected by direct popular vote.

Yeltsin was a key figure in the breakup of the Soviet Union after the failed Aug. 18, 1991 coup in which hard-line communists tried to reverse the trend of reform that Yeltsin and Gorbachev had been promoting. Yeltsin played an important role in mobilizing opposition to the coup as he jumped on top of a Soviet tank outside the Russian legislature to call on the people of the Soviet Union to resist Communist Party hard-liners who were trying to undo the reforms that had taken place since 1986. He became increasingly powerful after the failed coup and on Dec 7, 1991 he met with presidents Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine and Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus and declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed and had been replaced by a Commonwealth of Independent States.

Yeltsin has encountered numerous obstacles in his campaign to reform Russian society and the economy, notably from hard-liners, former communists, and nationalists. Despite crushing an October 1993 insurrection by Soviet-era parliamentarians, Yeltsin continues to face resistance from a legislature whose hard-line majority reflects a growing public anxiety over the disorganization, lawlessness, and financial insecurity of Western reforms. Largely perceived as a weak ruler by a society historically cynical about politics in general, Yeltsin has so far been unable to fill the void left by the demise of the Communist Party and the central authority it once enforced with its long arms. In September 1997 he announced that he will not seek a third term when his presidency ends in 2000.

[Sources: Encyclopedia of Russian History; The New York Times]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998