Boris Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931, in the Ural Mountain region of Siberia, where Yuri and Tonia escaped to during the Revolution, in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. In 1955, he received a degree in construction engineering from Kirov Ural Polytechnic Institute. In the late 1960s, Yeltsin entered local politics after joining the Soviet Communist Party. In the mid-1980s, he was called to Moscow by new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to run the construction agency. In 1990, Yeltsin quit the Communists, tearing up his party card in public to protest Gorbachev’s slow pace of reforms.
Boris Yeltsin was elected Russian President in 1991 and 1996. He was the one who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s transition to a free market. In 1999, Yeltsin resigned, handing power over to Vladimir Putin.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton stressed Yeltsin’s achievement in a television speech on Monday: “He believed that democracy was the best system. I think it was in every fiber of his being.” (Courtesy of Kommersant)