Title: Boris Yeltsin | Russia | The Guardian
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Russia
Boris Yeltsin
Jonathan Steele

Content: Boris Yeltsin | Russia | The Guardian
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Russia
Boris Yeltsin
Russia's first elected president, he earned admiration and hatred for his role in burying the Soviet Union
Yeltsin's life in pictures
Audio: Ian Traynor on Yeltsin's legacy (7m 12sec)
Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin makes a toast at an awards ceremony in Moscow in 1998. Photograph: Sergey Chirikov/EPA
Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin makes a toast at an awards ceremony in Moscow in 1998. Photograph: Sergey Chirikov/EPA
Jonathan Steele
Mon 23 Apr 2007 03.09 EDT
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Boris Yeltsin, who has died aged 76, was the most controversial figure in recent Russian history, provoking even stronger emotions in his compatriots than Mikhail Gorbachev, the man he replaced in the Kremlin. While Gorbachev presided over the decline of the Communist party and the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, it was Yeltsin, Russia's first elected president, who buried the Soviet Union itself. For that he earned euphoric admiration from some of his fellow-citizens and raging hatred from others. Yeltsin's second outstanding claim to fame was his decision to launch Russia towards market reforms via the route known as "shock therapy", again covering himself with an avalanche of praise and fury. Then, in October 1993, in a bizarre episode for an emerging democracy, he ordered tanks to assault the seat of the Russian parliament in the climax of an 18-month struggle with elected deputies.