Born in Butka, Ural Oblast, to a peasant family, Yeltsin grew up in Kazan, Tatar ASSR. After studying at the Ural State Technical University, he worked in construction. Joining the Communist Party, which monopolized power in the state and society, he rose through its ranks and in 1976 became First Secretary of the party's Sverdlovsk Oblast committee. Initially a supporter of the "perestroika" reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin later criticized them as being too moderate, calling for a transition to a multi-party representative democracy. In 1987 he was the first person to resign from the party's governing Politburo, establishing his popularity as an anti-establishment figure. In 1990, he was elected chair of the Russian Supreme Soviet and in 1991 was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Allying with various non-Russian nationalist leaders, he was instrumental in the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December that year, at which the RSFSR became the Russian Federation, an independent state. Yeltsin remained in office as president and was reelected in the 1996 election, although critics claimed pervasive electoral corruption.