1931 - . Soviet `reform' communist
politician, president of the Russian Republic
from 1990. He was Moscow party chief 1985-87,
when he was dismissed after criticizing the
slow pace of political and economic reform.
He was re-elected in Mar 1989 with a 89%
share of the vote, defeating an `official
Communist Party' candidate, and was elected
to the Supreme Soviet in May 1989. He
supported the Baltic states in their calls
for greater independence and has demanded
increasingly more radical economic reform. In
Apr 1991 the Russian Republic congress voted
him emergency powers.

Yeltsin began his career in the construction
industry. He joined the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1961 and became
district party leader in Sverdlovsk 1976.
Brought to Moscow by Mikhail Gorbachev and
Nikolai Ryzhkov in 1985, he was appointed
secretary for construction and then, in Dec
1985, Moscow party chief.

A blunt-talking, hands-on reformer, Yeltsin
was demoted to the post of first deputy chair
of the State Construction Committee in Nov
1987. This was seen as a blow to Gorbachev's
perestroika initiative and a victory for the
conservatives grouped around Yegor Ligachev.
In 1990 he renounced his CPSU membership and
was elected president of the Russian
Republic, the largest republic of the USSR.

Having criticized the slow pace of economic
reform effected by the Gorbachev-Ryzhkov team
and advocated greater autonomy (economic and
political sovereignty) for the constituent
republics within a federal USSR, Yeltsin
prompted the Russian parliament in June 1990
to pass a decree giving the republic's laws
precedence over those passed by the Soviet
parliament.