native_name_lang imagesize party office primeminister native_name signature term_start image article_title term_end name otherparty
ru 200px independent -lrb- after 1990 -rrb- 1st president of russia yegor gaidar Борис Ельцин yeltsin signature.svg 10 july 1991 Борис Николаевич Ельцин.jpg boris yeltsin
 31 december 1999 boris yeltsin communist 1990 -rrb- party of the soviet union -lrb- 1961 --
boris yeltsin

boris nikolayevich yeltsin -lrb- ; ; 1 february 1931 -- 23 april 2007 -rrb- was a russian politician and the first president of the russian federation , serving from 1991 to 1999 .
originally a supporter of mikhail gorbachev , yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of gorbachev 's most powerful political opponents .
during the late 1980s , yeltsin had been a member of the politburo , and in late 1987 tendered a letter of resignation in protest .
no one had resigned from the politburo before .
this act branded yeltsin as a rebel and led to his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure .
on 29 may 1990 he was elected the chairman of the russian supreme soviet .
on 12 june 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of president of the russian soviet federative socialist republic -lrb- rsfsr -rrb- , at that time one of the 15 constituent republics of the soviet union .
upon the resignation of mikhail gorbachev and the final dissolution of the soviet union on 25 december 1991 , after which the rsfsr became the sovereign state of the russian federation , yeltsin remained in office as president .
he was reelected in the 1996 election , where critics widely claimed pervasive corruption ; in the second round he defeated gennady zyuganov from the revived communist party by a margin of 13,7 % -lrb- 54,4 % to 40,7 % -rrb- , despite the margin having been only 3,4 % during the first round .
however , yeltsin never recovered his early popularity after a series of economic and political crises in russia in the 1990s .
he vowed to transform russia 's socialist economy into a capitalist market economy and implemented economic shock therapy , price liberalization and nationwide privatization .
due to the sudden total economic shift , a majority of the national property and wealth fell into the hands of a small number of oligarchs .
the well-off millionaire and billionaire oligarchs likened themselves to 19th century robber barons .
rather than creating new enterprises , yeltsin 's democratization led to international monopolies hijacking the former soviet markets , arbitraging the huge difference between old domestic prices for russian commodities and the prices prevailing on the world market .
much of the yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption , inflation , economic collapse and enormous political and social problems that affected russia and the other former states of the ussr .
within a few years of his presidency , many of yeltsin 's initial supporters had started to criticize his leadership , and vice president alexander rutskoy even denounced the reforms as `` economic genocide '' .
ongoing confrontations with the supreme soviet climaxed in the 1993 russian constitutional crisis in which yeltsin illegally ordered the dissolution of the supreme soviet parliament , which as a result decided to try to remove him from office .
in october 1993 , troops loyal to yeltsin stopped an armed uprising outside of the parliament building , leading to a number of deaths .
yeltsin then scrapped the existing russian constitution , banned political opposition and deepened his efforts to transform the economy .
on 31 december 1999 , under enormous internal pressure , yeltsin announced his resignation , leaving the presidency in the hands of his chosen successor , then -- prime minister vladimir putin .
yeltsin left office widely unpopular with the russian population .
