Title: Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies - CBS News
Headings: Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies
Ex-Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin Dies
Content: In the course of the Yeltsin era, per capita income fell by a staggering 75 percent, and the nation's population fell by more than 2 million. Vodka consumption soared. Yeltsin was a master of Kremlin intrigues, and preferred the chess game of politics to the detail work of solving economic and social problems. He fired the entire government four times in 1998 and 1999. The economy sank into a deep recession in the summer of 1998, but Yeltsin rarely commented on the troubles and never offered a plan to combat them. While he seemed to lurch from policy to policy, he seemed steadfast in his determination to hold onto power. He easily faced down an impeachment attempt by the Communist-dominated lower chamber of parliament in May 1999. In foreign affairs, he struggled to preserve a role for Russia, which for centuries had defined itself as one of the great world powers. He called for a "multipolar world" as a way to counterbalance U.S. global clout, and in spring 1999 dispatched Russian troops to Kosovo, ahead of NATO peacekeepers, to underline that Moscow would not be elbowed out of European affairs. He wrangled with the West over NATO expansion and Russia's close relations with Iran and Iraq.