R3 a3-2012 russian history gorbachev to putin class three yelsin 2012 - 2013

Russian History Gorbachev to Putin – Year 5 Boris Yelsin

Gulf Coast State College Encore

Adjunct Professor – Joe Boisvert

Fall 2012 – Spring 2013

President of the Russian Federation• Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Russian

politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.

• Born: February 1, 1931, Butka• Died: April 23, 2007, Moscow• Party: Communist Party of the Soviet

Union• Spouse: Naina Yeltsina (m. 1956–2007)• Presidential terms: November 6, 1996 –

December 31, 1999, July 10, 1991 – August 9, 1996, August 9, 1996 – November 5, 1996More

• Children Tatyana Dyachenko

Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich• Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich, 1931–2007,

• Soviet and Russian politician, president of Russia (1991–99).

• Born in Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk)

• Educated at the Urals Polytechnic Institute,

• Yeltsin began his career as a construction worker (1953–68).

• He joined the Communist party in 1961, becoming first secretary of the Sverdlovsk region in 1976 and a member of the central committee in 1981.

• In 1985 he was chosen by Mikhail Gorbachev as Moscow party boss, and in 1986 he was inducted into the party's ruling Politburo. In Oct., 1987, however, he was ousted from his Moscow post after clashing with conservatives and criticizing Gorbachev's reforms as inadequate. Attracting a large following as a populist advocate of radical reform, Yeltsin won (1989) election to the USSR's Supreme Soviet (parliament) as an opposition member.

Recruited by Gorbachev• In 1985, Gorbachev brought Yeltsin to

Moscow, where he shook up the city’s party hierarchy. The strapping, silver-haired Yeltsin cut a popular figure, using buses instead of a limousine, standing in long lines in stores and loudly demanding why managers stashed away food instead of selling it to ordinary customers.

• For many Russians, he had the unpolished charm of a “muzhik” — a tough peasant with common sense and a fondness for vodka.

Yelsin Recruited by Gorbachev

Putting Gorbachev under House Arrest

• A bitter rivalry grew between him and the more cautious Gorbachev. When Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev at a party meeting in 1987, the Soviet leader fired him, and he reportedly was hospitalized with heart problems.

• He stormed back to power in 1989, winning a parliament seat in the first real election in 70 years. The following year, Yeltsin quit the party.

• Yeltsin won Russia’s first popular presidential election in a landslide in June 1991. Russia still was part of the Soviet Union, but the central government had started ceding power to the 15 republics.

• Kremlin hard-liners trying to stop that process launched the failed coup in August, putting Gorbachev under house arrest, but Yeltsin led protests by the democratic opposition in Moscow and the putsch fell apart.

Russia's first democratically elected

Yelsin Russia's first democratically elected President

resident

• In 1990, Yeltsin was elected to the Russian Republic's Supreme Soviet, was elected Russian president by that body, and resigned from the Communist party.

• He retained (1991) the presidency in a popular election—in which he became Russia's first democratically elected president—and assumed the role of Gorbachev's chief liberal opponent. His successful opposition to the August Coup (1991) against Gorbachev shifted power to the reformers and republics, and Yeltsin helped found (Dec. 8, 1991) the Commonwealth of Independent States, ending attempts to preserve the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin moved to End State Control of the Economy

• As president of an independent Russia, Yeltsin moved to end state control of the economy and privatize most enterprises.

• However, economic difficulties and political opposition, particularly from the Supreme Soviet, slowed his program and forced compromises.

• In Sept., 1993, Yeltsin suspended parliament and called for new elections. When parliament's supporters resorted to arms, they were crushed by the army.

• Although Yeltsin won approval of his proposed constitution, which guaranteed private property, a free press, and human rights, in the Dec., 1993, voting, many of his opponents won seats in the new legislature.

Good With One Hand Bad With the Other

• In foreign affairs Yeltsin greatly improved relations with the West and signed (1993) the START II nuclear disarmament treaty with the United States.

• In 1994, Yeltsin sent forces into Chechnya in order to suppress a separatist rebellion, forcing Russia into a difficult and unpopular struggle

Yeltsin sent forces into Chechnya

• In 1994, Yeltsin sent forces into Chechnya in order to suppress a separatist rebellion, forcing Russia into a difficult and unpopular struggle

The Many Faces of Yelsin

• With heart problems and facing possible defeat by a Communist challenger in 1996, Yeltsin marshaled his energy to win re-election. The challenge transformed the shaky convalescent into the spry, dancing candidate.

• But Yeltsin was an inconsistent reformer who never took much interest in the mundane tasks of government and he blamed subordinates for Russia’s many problems.

• He damaged his democratic credentials by using force to solve political disputes, although he said it was necessary to hold the country together.

Chechnya

• In December 1994, Yeltsin launched a war against separatists in the southern republic of Chechnya. Tens of thousands of people were killed, and a humiliated Russian army withdrew at the end of 1996 — only to return there in 1999.

Yeltsin survived an impeachment attempt

• In 1996 Yeltsin again ran for the presidency against a number of other candidates and won the first round, garnering 35% of the vote to Communist Gennady Zyuganov's 32%;

• Yeltsin won the runoff election. In the late 1990s, however, a series of economic crises, frequent cabinet reshufflings, and his own deteriorating health and alcoholism cast doubt on his ability to rule; charges of corruption in his family and among members of his inner circle also became prominent. In May, 1999,

• Yeltsin survived an impeachment attempt spearheaded by the Communist opposition

February 1999: Parliamentary panel finalizes impeachment charges against Yeltsin.

Russian GDP

Boris Yeltsin• A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he

can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame. Boris Yeltsin

•We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it. Boris Yeltsin

•Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/boris_yeltsin.html#YyUS3250fbJxzQzz.99

Summary of Yelsin’s Presidency• As president, Yeltsin guaranteed free speech, private property and

multiparty elections, and opened the borders to trade and travel.• He quickly launched economic reforms that freed prices, created a

private sector and allowed foreign investment, but inflation skyrocketed and production plummeted. Millions were impoverished when wages and pensions went unpaid for months. He later said he regretted believing “that we could overcome everything in one spurt.”

• Tensions with the Soviet-era parliament climaxed in fall 1993 when Yeltsin disbanded it. An armed standoff and street riots followed, and he turned tanks against the parliament building. Scores of people were killed.

• Yeltsin later pushed through a constitution that guaranteed a strong presidency, but he also dumped key reformers from his Cabinet, alienating democratic forces.

Warm Relations with Western leaders.

• In foreign policy, he assured independence for Russia’s Soviet-era satellites, oversaw troop and arms reductions, and developed warm relations with Western leaders.

• But he also struggled to preserve a role for the former superpower to offset U.S. global clout, and in 1999, he sent Russian troops to Kosovo — ahead of NATO peacekeepers — to show that Moscow would not be elbowed out of European affairs.

second invasion of Chechnya

• A second invasion of Chechnya (1999), prompted by a Chechen invasion of Dagestan and related terrorist bombings in Russia, proved popular with many Russians, and pro government parties did well in the 1999 parliamentary elections. On Dec. 31, 1999, the long-ailing Yeltsin suddenly announced his resignation; Prime Minister Vladimir Putin succeeded him as acting president.

Yelsin Dies at 76

• MOSCOW — Former President Boris Yeltsin, who hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union by scrambling atop a tank to rally opposition against a hard-line coup and later pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, died Monday at age 76.

• He died of heart failure at the Central Clinical Hospital, news agencies quoted Sergei Mironov, head of the presidential administration’s medical center, as saying.

• Thanks to Boris Yeltsin’s will and direct initiative, a new constitution was adopted which proclaimed human rights as the supreme value,” said President Vladimir Putin, who was Yeltsin’s handpicked successor. He said his former mentor “gave people a chance to freely express their thoughts, freely elect authorities.”

Parting Thougths• The first freely elected leader of Russia, Yeltsin was initially

admired abroad for his defiance of the monolithic Communist system. But many Russians will remember him mostly for presiding over the steep decline of their nation.

• Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, summed up Yeltsin’s complex legacy Monday by referring to him as one “on whose shoulders are both great deeds for the country and serious errors.”

• The Kremlin said the funeral would be Wednesday, a day of national mourning, and that Yeltsin would be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, where many of Russia’s most prominent figures are interred.

Movie Russian political elite hires American consultants to help with President Yeltsin's re-election campaign when his approval rating is down to single digits.

The End