1931, February: Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin is born in Butka, in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, to a family of prosperous peasants. During the 1930s, their farm was collectivised and Yeltsin's father was imprisoned for three years for allegedly "sabotaging" state property, a common charge under Stalin's regime.

1955: Yeltsin graduates from the engineering school of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg and begins a 13-year career as a foreman in the Urals. His background in construction underpins his later political career. In 1961, Yeltsin joins the Communist Party.

1976: Working his way up through the party's local construction department, Yeltsin he becomes the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Oblast committee. In that role he met another provincial politician, Mikhail Gorbachev, who held the equivalent rank in Stavropol.

1985: Gorbachev becomes the new General Secretary of the Communist party and invites Yeltsin to Moscow to join his reform effort, where he is made construction secretary for the party's central committee. The following year Yeltsin takes over the running of Moscow and is given a non-voting seat on the Politburo, the highest decision-making body in the USSR.

1987: Yeltsin becomes popular in Moscow as an effective administrator with an ear for social problems who is keen to reform the USSR's stagnating economy. But after publicly criticising Gorbachev for taking "half measures", he is fired from the central committee and Politburo and told his political career is over. He suffers heart problems for the first time.

1989: Being attacked by the Soviet leadership makes Yeltsin a natural opposition figure and he wins handsomely in elections for the USSR's revamped Congress of People's Deputies. He is then elected to Russia's parliament as a candidate for Sverdlovsk. The following year he becomes chairman of the parliament and resigns from the Communist party.

1991, June: Yeltsin becomes Russia's first directly elected president, defeating five other candidates and winning 60 per cent of the vote, to sit alongside Gorbachev as the USSR unravels.

1991, August: Gorbachev is trapped in his country residence as Communist hardliners mount a coup in Moscow. Yeltsin leads the resistance, mounting a tank to prevent the seizure of the Russian parliament, the White House. The coup fails.

1991, December: Gorbachev resigns as President of the USSR, which is dissolved, leaving Yeltsin as undisputed leader of Russia. The Government relinquishes control of retail prices, slashes the budget and allows state-owned enterprises to be privatised. Despite Yeltsin's promises, the economy shrinks, wages plummet, pensions disappear and unemployment rises.

1993, September: Yeltsin dissolves a stubborn parliament that was objecting to his reform plan, breaking the constitution in the process. This time he calls in the tanks to drive MPs out of the building, sparking the most serious political riots in Moscow since the Russian Revolution. Nearly 200 people are killed in ten days of fighting.

1994: Riled by Chechnya's claims for independence and the posturing of Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former air force general who had declared himself president, Yeltsin orders a military campaign to restore order to the province, beginning a disastrous and unpopular war in which tens of thousands of Russians and Chechens die.

1996: With elections looming, Yeltsin's approval ratings sink to single figures. He is ill with heart disease and drinking too much. The Communist presidential candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, promises a return to life as it was under the USSR and appears on course for victory. Yeltsin sues for peace in Chechnya and an alleged campaign by the liberal Russian media propels him to a highly unlikely comeback.

1996, November: Yeltsin undergoes quadruple heart by-pass surgery and is dogged for the rest of his premiership by calls for him to step down for health reasons. He starts to spend more and more time outside Moscow, remaining at his country residence for weeks at a time.

1998, July: After experiencing a 40 per cent fall in GDP since 1989, Russia enters economic crisis. Interest rates climb, the currency is devalued. The World Bank delivers an emergency aid package of $17 billion. Rumours circulate that Yeltsin is dead.

1999, May: Further weakened by illness, and increasingly erratic Yeltsin fires his popular prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, and replaces him with Sergey Stepashin, his interior minister. He fires the Cabinet three months later and appoints Vladimir Putin, the head of the KGB, to be his Prime Minister.

1999, December: On the eve of the millenium, six months before his second term was due to expire, Yeltsin surprises the world by resigning. Putin, who has begun the second Chechen war, takes over and coasts to victory in presidential elections in March.

2000-2007: In retirement Yeltsin keeps a low profile, writing his memoirs and preserving his health. On the publication of The Presidential Marathon, in 2000, he said: "I have something to be proud about as president. The most important thing is that we preserved Russia as a country and a state and the Russian people as a nation." Dies April, 23, 2007 of heart failure.

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