Title: Russia after the Soviet Union – Russiapedia Russian history
Headings: Russian history:
Russia after the Soviet Union

Russian history: Russia after the Soviet Union
Cracking the Soviet bloc
Loving the past… from a safe distance
New leader for a new Russia

Content: New leader for a new Russia
The man who put an end to the USSR was raised to power by Mikhail Gorbachev. Ironically, he went on to depose his mentor and destroy his empire. Boris Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931 near Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). His father spent several years in Stalin’s labour camps – Yeltsin joined the Communist Party only during Khrushchev’s anti-Stalinist reforms. He toiled in construction and worked through the party ranks, but it wasn’t until Gorbachev’s rise to power that he’s got his career break. Hand-picked by Gorbachev to shake up the corrupt Moscow party hierarchy, Yeltsin proved himself an eager reformer. However, he soon grew weary of the pace of “perestroika”. In 1990 Yeltsin quit the Communist Party. A year later he emerged as the first elected president of the Russian Federal Republic within the USSR. Yeltsin came to power on a wave of optimism, hailing a new era of democracy and economic freedom.