Boris Yeltsin: Difference between revisions

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin Борис Николаевич Ельцин
1st President of the Russian Federation
In office July 10 1991 – December 31 1999
Preceded by	(None)
Succeeded by	Vladimir Putin
Personal details
Born	February 1 1931 Butka, Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union
Died	April 23, 2007(2007-04-23) (aged 76) Moscow, Russia
Nationality	Russian
Spouse	Naina Yeltsina
Signature

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Template:Audio-ru) (February 1 1931 – April 23 2007) was the first President of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999. The Yeltsin era was a dramatic period in Russian history — a period marked by revolutionary political change, introduction of democracy — together with enormous political and social problems, one of them being open widespread corruption.

In June 1991, Yeltsin came to power on a wave of high expectations for change and disillusionment with the Communist rule. On June 12, Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic with 57% of the vote, becoming the first popularly elected president in Russian history. But Yeltsin never recovered his popularity after endorsing radical economic reforms in early 1992 (see Russian economic reform in the 1990s), which were widely blamed by his opponents for deteriorating the living standards of most of the Russian population. By the time he left office, Yeltsin was a deeply unpopular figure in Russia, with an approval rating as low as two percent by some estimates.

Following the dissolution of Soviet Union in December 1991, Yeltsin—vowing to transform Russia's socialist planned economy into a capitalist market economy—endorsed a program of "shock therapy," cutting Soviet-era price controls and introducing drastic cuts in state spending. The reforms immediately devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare entitlement programs. By mid decade, Russia had suffered an economic downturn more severe than the United States or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression. Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell 50 percent, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, income inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, hyperinflation wiped out many families' savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.

In August 1991, Yeltsin won international plaudits for casting himself as a democrat and defying the August coup attempt of 1991 by hard-line Communists. But he left office widely despised as a desperate, ailing autocrat among the Russian population, according to one commentator. As president, Yeltsin's conception of the presidency was highly autocratic. Yeltsin either acted as his own prime minister (until June 1992) or appointed men of his choice, regardless of parliament. His confrontations with parliament climaxed in the October 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, when Yeltsin called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, blasting out his opponents in parliament. Later in 1993, Yeltsin imposed a new constitution with strong presidential powers, which was approved by referendum in December.

After the 1998 Russian financial crisis, Yeltsin was at the end of his political career. Just hours before the first day of 2000, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of Vladimir Putin.

Early life

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Boris Yeltsin (right) and his old rival and Russia's last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev (left), after the Soviet coup attempt of 1991

Boris Yeltsin was born in the village of Butka, in the Talitsky District of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. His father, Nikolai Yeltsin, was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation in 1934 and sentenced to hard labor in a gulag for three years. After his release he remained unemployed for some time and then worked in construction. His mother, Klavdiya Vasilyevna Yeltsina, worked as a seamstress.

Boris Yeltsin studied at Pushkin High School in Berezniki in Perm Krai. He was fond of sports (in particular skiing, gymnastics, volleyball, track and field, boxing and wrestling) despite losing two fingers when he and some friends sneaked into a Red Army supply depot, stole several grenades, and tried to dissect them.

Yeltsin received his higher education at the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk, majoring in construction, and graduated in 1955. The theme of his degree paper was "Television Tower".

From 1955 to 1957 he worked as a foreman with the building trust Uraltyazhtrubstroi. From 1957 to 1963 he worked in Sverdlovsk, and was promoted from construction site superintendent to chief of the Construction Directorate with the Yuzhgorstroi Trust. In 1963 he became chief engineer, and in 1965 head of the Sverdlovsk House-Building Combine. He joined the ranks of the CPSU nomenklatura in 1968 when he was appointed head of construction with the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee. In 1975 he became secretary of the regional committee in charge of the region's industrial development.

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. He later commented on his communist views:

"I sincerely believed in the ideals of justice propagated by the party, and just as sincerely joined the party, made a thorough study of the charter, the program and the classics, re-reading the works of Lenin, Marx and Engels."

In 1977 as party boss in Sverdlovsk, he ordered the destruction of the Ipatiev House where the last Russian tsar had been killed by Bolshevik troops. The Ipatiev House was demolished in one night, early in the morning of September 18, 1977. 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 appointed to the Politburo, and was also "Mayor" of Moscow (First Secretary of the CPSU Moscow City Committee) from December 24 1985 to 1987. 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. His initiatives became popular among Moscow residents.

In 1987, after a confrontation with hardliner Yegor Ligachev and 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. He expressed his discontent with both the slow pace of reform in society and the servility shown to the General Secretary, then asked to resign from the Politburo, adding that the City Committee would decide whether he should resign from the post of first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of "political immaturity" and "absolute irresponsibility", and at the plenary meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee proposed relieving Yeltsin of his post of first secretary. Nobody backed Yeltsin. Criticism of Yeltsin continued on November 11, 1987 at the meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee. After Yeltsin admitted that his speech had been a mistake, he was fired from the post of first secretary of the Moscow City Committee. He was not exiled or imprisoned, as once would have been the case, but demoted to the position of first deputy commissioner for the State Committee for Construction. After being fired, Yeltsin was hospitalized and later (confirmed by Nikolai Ryzhkov) attempted suicide. He was perturbed and humiliated but began plotting his revenge. His opportunity came with Gorbachev's establishment of the Congress of People's Deputies. He recovered, and started intensively criticizing Gorbachev, highlighting the slow pace of reform in the Soviet Union as his major argument.

Yeltsin's criticism of the Politburo and Gorbachev led to a smear campaign against him, in which examples of Yeltsin's awkward behavior were used against him. An article published in Pravda described him as being drunk at a lecture during his visit to the United States, an allegation which appeared to be confirmed by a TV account of his speech. However, popular dissatisfaction with the regime was very strong, and these attempts to smear Yeltsin only added to his popularity. In another incident, Yeltsin fell from a bridge. Commenting on this event, Yeltsin hinted that he was helped to fall from the bridge by the enemies of perestroika, but his opponents suggested that he was simply drunk.

President of the RSFSR

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Yeltsin (far left) with his personal bodyguard Alexander Korzhakov stands on a tank to defy the August coup in 1991.

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 May 1990, he was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR (RSFSR). He was supported by both democratic and conservative members of the Supreme Soviet, which sought power in the developing political situation in the country. A part of this power struggle was the opposition between power structures of the Soviet Union and the RSFSR. 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. Instead, he said that he would put his head on the railtrack in the event of increased prices. Yeltsin took office on July 10.

On August 18 1991, a coup against Gorbachev was launched by hardline communists headed by Vladimir Kryuchkov. 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. The White House was surrounded by the military but the troops defected in the face of mass popular demonstrations. Yeltsin responded to the coup by making a memorable speech from the turret of a tank. By August 21 most of the coup leaders had fled Moscow and Gorbachev was "rescued" from Crimea and then returned to Moscow. Yeltsin was subsequently hailed by his supporters around the world for rallying mass opposition to the coup.

Although restored to his position, Gorbachev's powers were now fatally compromised. Neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands as support had swung over to Yeltsin. Through the fall of 1991, the Russian government took over the union government, ministry by ministry. In November 1991, Yeltsin issued a decree banning the Communist Party throughout the RSFSR.

In early December 1991, Ukraine voted for independence from the Soviet Union. 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.

On December 24, the Russian Federation took the Soviet Union's seat in the United Nations. The next day, President Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union ceased to exist (see Collapse of the Soviet Union), thereby ending the world's largest and most influential communist regime. Economic relations between the former Soviet republics were severely compromised. Millions of native Russians found themselves in the newly formed "foreign" countries.

President of the Russian Federation

Radical reforms

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Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar (left), architect of Yeltsin's 1992 economic reforms, at the 1992 meeting of prime ministers of the newly independent former Soviet states in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Just days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin resolved to embark on a program of radical economic reform, with the aim of restructuring Russia's economic system—converting the world's largest socialist planned economy into a market-oriented capitalist one. During early discussions of this transition, Yeltsin's advisers debated issues of speed and sequencing, with an apparent division between those favoring a rapid approach and those favoring a gradual or slower approach.

In late 1991 Yeltsin turned to the advice of Western economists, and Western institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury Department, who had developed a standard policy recipe for transition economies in the late 1980s. This policy recipe came to be known as the "Washington Consensus" or "shock therapy," a combination of measures intended to liberalize prices and stabilize the state's budget. Such measures had been attempted in Poland, and advocates of "shock therapy" felt the same could be done in Russia. Some Russian policymakers were skeptical that this was the way to go, but the approach was favored by Yeltsin's deputy, Yegor Gaidar, a 35-year-old Russian economist inclined toward radical reform.

In January 1992, Gaidar convinced Yeltsin to introduce a program of "shock therapy" in Russia. On January 2, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of 'macroeconomic stabilization,' a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization program, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending.

In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and high credit costs shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. Many state enterprises shut down as they found themselves without orders or financing. The living standards of much of the population were devastated. In the 1990s Russia suffered an economic downturn more severe than the United States or Germany had undergone six decades earlier in the Great Depression.

Russian commentators and even some Western economists, such as Marshall Goldman, widely blamed Yeltsin's Western-backed economic program for the country's disastrous economic performance in the 1990s. Many politicians began to quickly distance themselves from the program. In February 1992, Russia's vice president, Aleksandr Rutskoy denounced the Yeltsin program as "economic genocide." By 1993 conflict over the reform direction escalated between Yeltsin on the one side, and the opposition to radical economic reform in Russia's parliament on the other.

Confrontation with parliament

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Tanks shell the Russian White House or parliament building on October 3, 1993 on Yeltsin's orders.

Also throughout 1992, Yeltsin wrestled with the Supreme Soviet and the 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. In December 1992, the 7th Congress of People's Deputies succeeded in turning down the Yeltsin-backed candidacy of Yegor Gaidar for the position of Russian prime minister.

The conflict exacerbated on March 20, 1993 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.

On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin announced in a televised address his decision to disband the Supreme Soviet and Congress of People's Deputies by decree.

In his address Yeltsin declared his intent to rule by decree until the election of the new parliament and a referendum on a new constitution, triggering the constitutional crisis of October 1993. 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 Aleksandr Rutskoy was sworn in as the acting president.

Between September 21-24, Yeltsin was confronted by significant popular unrest, encouraging the defenders of the parliament. Moscow saw what amounted to a spontaneous mass uprising of anti-Yeltsin demonstrators numbering in the tens of thousands marching in the streets resolutely seeking to aid forces defending the parliament building. The demonstrators were protesting the new and terrible living conditions under Yeltsin. Since 1989 GDP had declined by half. Corruption was rampant, violent crime was skyrocketing, medical services were collapsing, food and fuel were increasingly scarce and life expectancy was falling for all but a tiny handful of the population; moreover, Yeltsin was increasingly getting the blame.

By early October, Yeltsin had secured the support of Russia's army and ministry of interior forces. In a massive show of force, Yeltsin called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, Russia's parliament building, blasting out his opponents.

Candidates identified with Yeltsin's economic policies were overwhelmed by a huge anti-Yeltsin vote, the bulk of which was divided between the Communist Party and ultra-nationalists. The referendum, however, held at the same time, approved the new constitution, which significantly expanded the powers of the president, giving Yeltsin a right to appoint the members of the government, to dismiss the prime minister and, in some cases, to dissolve the Duma. [4].

Privatization and the rise of "the oligarchs"

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A number of prominent oligarchs, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky (far right), pictured with Boris Yeltsin in the mid-1990s

Despite efforts to "improve" the government, the network of Russian government institutions remained almost as extensive as during the Soviet era. It harbored myriads of bureaucrats heavily involved in bribery and corruption.

Privatization of state property in 1993 was a very significant event. Officially, privatization was announced as fair distribution of state property among the citizens. In actuality, ordinary citizens obtained nearly worthless vouchers (one voucher was worth one bottle of vodka), whereas the people at the key positions in the governing structures gained enormous amounts of wealth. In many cases these were former communists who were in the best position because of their connections to the government. Privatization was advertised as part of the struggle against the forces that wanted to restore communism in the country.

After gaining an absolute power in the country, Yeltsin allegedly violated the law by appointing his relatives to key government positions. His daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, a former computer programmer, became a presidential adviser in 1996.

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. His state during the incident was characterized by the journalist as "unsober". This episode was captured on tape [5]. According to General Alexander Korzhakov, in September 1994 Yeltsin ordered his press secretary Vyacheslav Kostikov thrown into the 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. The official explanation was that he had overslept.

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. The deal allowed Chechnya greater autonomy but not full independence; see First Chechen War.

Yeltsin's second term

Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton in 1999.

In July 1996, Yeltsin was re-elected as president with financial support from influential business oligarchs who owed their wealth to their connections with Yeltsin's administration. 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, his opponents allege that 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 ruble, to collapse in the 1998 financial crisis.

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.

On May 15, 1999, Yeltsin survived yet another attempt of impeachment, this time by the democratic and communist opposition in the State Duma. He was charged with several unconstitutional activities - most importantly, the signing of the Belavezha Accords, dissolving the Soviet Union in December 1991, the coup-d'état in October 1993, and initiating the war in Chechnya in 1994. None of these charges received the two-thirds majority of the Duma which was required to initiate the process of impeachment of the president.

On August 9, 1999 Yeltsin fired his prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, and for the fourth time, fired his entire cabinet. In Stepashin's place he appointed Vladimir Putin, relatively unknown at that time, and announced his wish to see Putin as his successor.

Resignation

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Yeltsin (right) resigned in favor of Vladimir Putin (left) on December 31, 1999.

On December 31, 1999, in a surprise announcement made live on Russian television, Yeltsin said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would take over as acting president, with elections due to take place on March 26, 2000. Yeltsin asked for forgiveness for what he acknowledged were errors of his rule, and said Russia needed to enter the new century with new political leaders. Yeltsin said: "I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes."

Life after resignation

Yeltsin's personal and health problems received a great deal of attention in the global press. As the years went on, he was often viewed as an increasingly unstable leader, rather than the inspiring figure he was once seen as. The possibility that he might die in office was often discussed.

Yeltsin maintained a low profile since his resignation, making almost no public statements or appearances. However, on September 13, 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis and nearly-concurrent terrorist attacks in Moscow, Putin launched an initiative to replace the election of regional governors with a system whereby they would be directly appointed by the president and approved by regional legislatures. 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.

On February 1 2006, Yeltsin celebrated his 75th birthday. He used this occasion as an opportunity to criticize a "monopolistic" U.S. foreign policy, and to state that Vladimir Putin was the right choice for Russia. He also disputed accusations of corruption and the term "Family."

Death

Kremlin spokesperson Alexander Smirnov confirmed Boris Yeltsin's death on 23 April, 2007. An unidentified medical source reported to Interfax that he died of heart failure. He was 76. He will be buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery on 25 April, 2007.

International reaction

Russia - Russian president Vladimir Putin telephoned Mr Yeltsin’s wife, Naina Yeltsina, following the news of Mr Yeltsin’s sudden passing, and passed on his most profound and sincere condolences to her and all her family.

Russia - Shortly after the news broke, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issued a statement, saying:

"I offer my deepest condolences to the family of a man on whose shoulders rested many great deeds for the good of the country and serious mistakes — a tragic fate".

United States - President George W. Bush said in a statement:

"President Yeltsin was an historic figure who served his country during a time of momentous change. He played a key role as the Soviet Union dissolved, helped lay the foundations of freedom in Russia, and became the first democratically elected leader in that country's history."

United States - Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said:

"No Americans at least will forget seeing him standing on the tank outside of the (Russian) "White House" resisting a coup attempt"

European Union - President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso said:

"As president, he had enormous challenges and difficult mandates, but he certainly brought East and West closer together and helped replace confrontation by cooperation"

France - In a message to Naina Yeltsina, President Jaques Chirac said that:

"the world will keep of President Yeltsin the memory of a man who, by his courage, his tenacity and his political direction, knew to make the triumph of freedom and engage Russia on the way to democracy.

Germany - Chancellor Angela Merkel said:

"Yeltin was a great personality in Russian and international politics, a brave fighter for democracy and freedom and a true friend of Germany"

United Kingdom - Prime Minister Tony Blair said

"He was a remarkable man who saw the need for democratic and economic reform and in defending that reform he played a vital role at a crucial time in Russia's history."

Finland - President Tarja Halonen commented:

"President Yeltsin had a significant role in developing democracy in Russia .. I respect Yeltsin's work for developing Russia, and I enact my condolences to the people of Russia on account of Yeltsin's death"

Estonia - President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said:

Yeltsin "played a significant role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian regime and the birth of a new Russia, whereby he contributed to democratic changes in Europe during the 1980s and 1990s."

Serbia - President Boris Tadić offered

"deepest condolences to the family, Russian people and Vladimir Putin for death of the first democratic Russian leader".

Denmark — Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said:

"It's sad news, that Boris Yeltsin is dead. We owe the former Russian president respect for standing ground for the democracy of Russia."

Sweden — Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said:

"Without a doubt, President Yeltsin — with all the human weaknesses no one is free of — was one of the truly great men of our age. When all was uncertain in the disintegrating Soviet Union, he was the one to set a new course by abolishing the Soviet Union and recognising the independence of the three Baltic States. His repudiation of Communism was unequivocal, and he clearly directed the new Russia towards ever closer cooperation with the rest of Europe. He was a great person in the history of Russia and of Europe."

External links

• CNN Cold War - Profile: Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin