Title: Boris Yeltsin - HISTORY
Headings: Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Contents
Boris Yeltsin’s Early Years
Did you know? Boris Yeltsin was the first freely elected leader in Russia’s 1,000-year history.
Boris Yeltsin’s Political Comeback and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Boris Yeltsin as President
Russia After Boris Yeltsin
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Content: Rebellious even as a youth, Yeltsin lost two fingers while playing with a hand grenade. He left Berezniki for Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in 1949 to attend the Urals Polytechnic Institute. As a student there, he trained to become a civil engineer, played volleyball and met his future wife, Naina Iosifovna Girina, with whom he would have two daughters. Did you know? Boris Yeltsin was the first freely elected leader in Russia’s 1,000-year history. Upon graduation, Yeltsin worked as an overseer of residential construction projects. He also stepped into the political arena, becoming a Communist Party member in 1961 and joining Sverdlovsk’s provincial party committee seven years later. After he served as party chief (roughly equivalent to governor) of the province from 1976 to 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev summoned him to Moscow. Within a year, Yeltsin was party chief there and a non-voting member of the policy-making Politburo. He became well known for railing against corruption, going so far as to fire hundreds of lower-level functionaries.