FORMER PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA
1931–

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931, and raised in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) Oblast in the Ural Mountains. Trained as an engineer, Yeltsin rose through local construction and Communist Party posts to become first secretary of his region.

Yeltsin joined the team of young, reform-minded communists under Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), moving to Moscow in 1985 as first secretary of the Moscow Party Committee and a candidate member of the Politburo. When he clashed with Gorbachev over the pace of reform, Gorbachev fired him in October 1987. But rather than sending him back to Siberia, Gorbachev allowed him to remain in Moscow as first deputy chair of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Construction Committee.

Yeltsin and Gorbachev became bitter rivals for power. Yeltsin depicted himself as a populist who, unlike Gorbachev, wanted to place sovereignty with the people, not the Party. He was elected...