Yeltsin - failure is his own impotence - Revol

BORIS YELTSIN
After the repressive rule of czars and Communist dictators, the first freely elected leader in the 1,000-year history of Russia was Boris Yeltsin. A flamboyant champion of the underdog, Yeltsin almost overnight made himself an international figure. In the anti-Communist sweep of the historic June 1991 election he became president of the Russian Federation, the largest and richest of the 15 Soviet republics.

Yeltsin was born in Sverdlovsk on Feb. 1, 1931. A construction engineer, he joined the Communist party in 1961. In 1976 he became first secretary of his provincial party organization. Under the wing of Mikhail Gorbachev, he had a meteoric rise to the post of party leader in Moscow in 1985. By 1987 Yeltsin's abrasive personality and attacks on the competence of party members led to an even more dramatic downfall. The same traits resurrected him in a landslide election to the Soviet parliament in 1989, and he left the party the next year. An advocate of decentralization, he defined himself as a populist alternative to Gorbachev.

Often at odds with the Soviet president, the Russian leader became his strongest ally in August 1991 when Gorbachev was ousted in a coup. Yeltsin heroically defied the eight-man cabal of party hard-liners who confined Gorbachev in the Crimea for three days. Yeltsin rallied military support and inspired a popular uprising against the takeover plot to cripple the reform movement.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and Yeltsin became the most powerful figure in Russia. Clashes between Yeltsin and hard-liners in parliament prevented meaningful reforms. On Sept. 21, 1993, he temporarily dissolved the parliament. Many legislators rose in armed rebellion. On October 4, with army support, he defeated the hard-liners and assumed control of the government. Despite health problems, Yeltsin fought back from single-digit personal approval ratings to win the presidential election in July 1996.

On Feb. 15, 1996, Yeltsin announced that he would run in the June presidential election, ending speculation that he would retire from politics because of his health problems and low popularity ratings. Yeltsin ran against Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist party nominee; the fiery nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky; Aleksandr Lebed, a retired general; and former President Gorbachev. Zyuganov and the Communists had come in first in Russia's parliamentary elections in December 1995 and at the time of Yeltsin's announcement led the president by a wide margin in public-opinion polls. The results of the election, however, were much closer, and a runoff election was scheduled for later in the summer.

On new years eve 1999, Yelsin decided to retire and officially handed power over to his Prime-Minister Vladimir Pouten, pending an election in the Spring.