Boris Yeltsin is dead at age 76

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.

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.

Quick to fire Cabinet
He fired the entire government four times in 1998 and 1999. The economy sank into a deep recession in 1998, but he easily faced down an impeachment attempt by the Communist-dominated lower chamber of parliament in 1999.

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.

He was hospitalized with heart disease in 1995 and was deeply unpopular ahead of presidential elections in June 1996. He rallied by manipulating the media and enlisting the aid of the so-called oligarchs who had enriched themselves on the spoils of the Soviet economy.

Yeltsin won, but the campaign took a heavy physical toll, and doctors later said he had suffered another heart attack. He underwent quintuple bypass surgery in November 1996. He also had back problems, and seemed increasingly shaky — both physically and mentally — in his final years in office.

On Dec. 31, 1999, he stunned everyone by announcing his resignation more than three months before his second term expired. He named Putin — his last prime minister and a former KGB agent — as acting president to give him an incumbent’s advantage.

He is survived by his wife, Naina, two daughters and several grandchildren. Funeral plans were not announced.

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