December 31, 1999    
This Date's Issues:• 3716 • 3717  3618

Johnson's Russia List
#3717
31 December 1999
davidjohnson@erols.com


[Note from David Johnson:
1. AP: Boris Yeltsin Resigns.
2. Reuters: FULL TEXT-Yeltsin's resignation statement.
3. Reuters: Points of new Russian presidential election law.
4. AFP: Gorbachev says Yeltsin should have quit sooner.
5. Reuters: Facts about Russia's nuclear briefcase.
6. AFP: Mark Rice-Oxley, Boris Yeltsin: Democratic Tsar Of Post-Soviet 
Russia.
7. Reuters: Peter Graff, Yeltsin, a giant, leaves clouded legacy.
8. Bloomberg: Russian Politicians, Analysts on Yeltsin's Resignation.
9. AP: Clinton Pays Tribute To Yeltsin.
10. Reuters: President out, lights still on as Y2K hits Russia.]


******


#1
Boris Yeltsin Resigns
December 31, 1999
By BARRY RENFREW


MOSCOW (AP) - Asking forgiveness for his mistakes, Boris Yeltsin stunned 
Russia today by announcing his resignation and saying elections will be held 
in 90 days for a new president to lead the nation into the new century.


Yeltsin said he was stepping down immediately because he wanted Prime 
Minister Vladimir Putin to succeed him. Putin, the country's most popular 
politician, immediately took control of the government and will serve as 
acting president until the elections.


Looking pale and grim in a speech on national television, the 68-year-old 
Yeltsin said it was time for him to go. He asked Russians to forgive him for 
his mistakes and failing to realize their dreams after the fall of the Soviet 
Union.


``Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I resign,'' said Yeltsin, 
speaking in front of a gaily decorated New Year's tree and a blue, red and 
white Russian flag with a golden Russian eagle


``I am stepping down ahead of term. I understand that I must do it and Russia 
must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new 
intelligent, strong, energetic people, and we who have been in power for many 
years must go,'' Yeltsin said.


It was yet another unexpected move by Yeltsin, who has presided over Russia 
through eight tumultuous, often chaotic years. His attempts to build a market 
economy were deeply flawed by corruption and incompetence, and he became 
widely disliked by most Russians. Many Russians can be expected to welcome 
the departure of Yeltsin, who had repeatedly said he would serve out his term 
until mid-2000.


The constitution requires elections be held within 90 days of the president's 
resignation, and the ITAR-Tass news agency said the elections would be held 
around March 27. Holding control of the government - and its state media - 
Putin would hold a huge advantage in the race to succeed Yeltsin.


In Washington, President Clinton's national security adviser Sandy Berger was 
consulting with Russian officials ``to confirm and to understand'' the 
situation, said Berger's spokesman Jim Fallin.


The resignation appeared timed to capitalize on the success of pro-Kremlin, 
centrist parties in recent parliamentary elections. Parties backing Putin 
scored unexpectedly well.


Yeltsin, who has been hit by corruption allegations in recent months, 
reportedly had been looking for assurances for the safety of himself and his 
family when he steps down. Putin as president would be able to give Yeltsin 
the immunity he reportedly wants.


Plagued for years by heart and other health problems, Yeltsin was often ill 
and out of sight during his second term. He spent many weeks sidelined at his 
country residence outside Moscow and was largely seen as a caretaker 
president.


But Yeltsin continued to dominate Russian politics. He easily defeated a 
Communist-led effort in May to impeach him and had dismissed four prime 
ministers in the last two years.


Although Yeltsin has been unpopular for years, he won a second term in 1996, 
defeating Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.


The Kremlin has been under constant political attack during the past year 
with widespread allegations of corruption, insider dealing and other 
irregularities. Members of the president's family, particularly his daughter 
Tatyana Dyachenko, have been linked to the allegations.


Prosecutors in Switzerland and Russia have been investigating the 
allegations, but no charges have been filed.


Looking emotional in his speech, Yeltsin appealed several times for 
forgiveness for failing to solve Russia's problems and for the errors of his 
administration. It was a highly unusual admission from a leader who rarely 
admitted mistakes and always insisted that his policies were correct.


``I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I 
would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes,'' he said. 
And later: ``I beg your forgiveness for having failed to jump in one leap 
from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past to the clear, rich and civilized 
future.''


Yeltsin said he saw no point in staying in power for the last six months of 
his term because Putin was well-suited to take over. Yeltsin said he was 
confident that Russia would not return to its authoritarian past and would 
develop as a modern democratic nation.


``I shouldn't be in the way of the natural course of history. To cling to 
power for another six months when the country has a strong person worthy of 
becoming president - why should I stand in his way? Why should I wait? It's 
not in my character,'' Yeltsin said.


``I am leaving. I've done what I could,'' he added.


Putin immediately canceled a trip to St. Petersburg today and was consulting 
with other government leaders at the Kremlin.


Putin, a former KGB officer who only became prime minister in August, is 
widely seen as the most popular politician in Russia. His strong handling of 
the war in Chechnya and no-nonsense manner has appealed to many Russians, who 
want strong leadership to tackle their country's enormous economic, political 
and social problems.


Russia has experienced years of economic decline and millions live in 
poverty. Efforts to build a market economy have had little effect on most 
people's lives and millions and pensioners and workers go months without 
being paid.


Putin, who had already declared that he would run for president, has 
indicated that he would continue Yeltsin's democratic and market policies. He 
has talked of mixing moderate reform with the need for strong government to 
crush widespread lawlessness and corruption.


******


#2
FULL TEXT-Yeltsin's resignation statement

MOSCOW, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Following is the full text of Boris Yeltsin's 
televised statement announcing his resignation as Russian president on 
Friday, translated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and Reuters (Eds: 
about 750 words): 


Dear friends, my dear ones, today I am wishing you New Year greetings for the 
last time. But that is not all. Today I am addressing you for the last time 
as Russian president. I have made a decision. I have contemplated this long 
and hard. Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I am retiring. 


Many times I have heard it said: Yeltsin will try to hold on to power by any 
means, he won't hand it over to anyone. That is all lies. That is not the 
case. I have always said that I would not take a single step away from the 
constitution, that the Duma elections should take place within the 
constitutional timescale. This has happened. And likewise, I would have liked 
the presidential elections to have taken place on schedule in June 2000. 


That was very important for Russia - we were creating a vital precedent of a 
civilised, voluntary handover of power, power from one president of Russia to 
another, newly elected one. And yet, I have taken a different decision. I 
pauses am standing down. I am standing down earlier than scheduled. I have 
realized that I have to do this. 


Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, new faces, new 
intelligent, strong and energetic people. As for those of us who have been in 
power for many years, we must go. 


Seeing with what hope and belief people voted during the Duma elections for a 
new generation of politicians, I understood that I had done the main job of 
my life. Russia will never return to the past. Russia will now always be 
moving forward. I must not stand in its way, in the way of the natural 
progress of history. 


Why hold on to power for another six months, when the country has a strong 
person, fit to be president, with whom practically all Russians link their 
hopes for the future today? Why should I stand in his way? Why wait for 
another six months? No, this is not me, this is not in my character. 


Today, on this incredibly important day for me, I want to say more personal 
words than I usually do. I want to ask you for forgiveness, because many of 
our hopes have not come true, because what we thought would be easy turned 
out to be painfully difficult. I ask to forgive me for not fulfilling some 
hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump from the 
grey, stagnating, totalitarian past into a bright, rich and civilised future 
in one go. 


I myself believed in this. But it could not be done in one fell swoop. In 
some respects I was too naive. Some of the problems were too complex. We 
struggled on through mistakes and failures. At this complex time many people 
experienced upheavals in their lives. But I want you to know that I never 
said this would be easy. Today it is important for me to tell you the 
following. I also experienced the pain which each of you experienced. 


I experienced it in my heart, with sleepless nights, agonising over what 
needed to be done to ensure that people lived more easily and better, if only 
a little. I did not have any objective more important than that. 


I am leaving. I have done everything I could. I am not leaving because of my 
health, but because of all the problems taken together. A new generation is 
taking my place, the generation of those who can do more and do it better. 


In accordance with the constitution, as I go into retirement, I have signed a 
decree entrusting the duties of the president of Russia to Prime Minister 
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. 


For the next three months, again in accordance with the constitution, he will 
be head of state. Presidential elections will be held in three months' time. 
I have always had confidence in the amazing wisdom of Russian citizens. 
Therefore, I have no doubt what choice you will make at the end of March 
2000. 


In saying farewell, I wish to say to each of you the following. Be happy. You 
deserve happiness. You deserve happiness and peace. Happy new year, happy new 
century, my dear people. 


******


#3
Points of new Russian presidential election law

MOSCOW, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Under Russia's constitution, following President 
Boris Yeltsin's shock resignation on Friday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 
becomes acting president for three months, during which time an election must 
be held. 


One of Yeltsin's last acts in office was to sign a new law governing 
presidential elections, passed earlier this month by parliament. Following is 
a list of points of that new law: 


To be registered, candidates must be nominated by a group of no fewer than 
100 people, as well as an electoral bloc registered with the elections 
commission no earlier than one year before the vote. 


A candidate must declare if he or she has been convicted of a crime or has 
citizenship of a foreign state. 


Candidates must declare the size and source of all income they or their 
spouses received during the previous two years, as well as all property they 
own. 


Candidates must collect 1,000,000 signatures. The election commission will 
verify at least 300,000 and if more than 15 percent are not genuine, the 
candidate is disqualified. 


Strict limits are set on campaigning in the media, which can begin on 
television only 30 days before the election, and in print only 40 days before 
the vote. 


The election is declared valid if more than 50 percent of registered voters 
take part. 


A candidate must win more than 50 percent of votes to be declared the winner 
in the first round. 


If no candidate wins in the first round, the two leading candidates contest a 
runoff, held three weeks after the first round. (Under the previous electoral 
law, the second round was held within 15 days.) 


In a second round there is no requirement for 50 percent of voters to take 
part. 


******


#4
Gorbachev says Yeltsin should have quit sooner


PARIS, Dec 31 (AFP) - 
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reacted Friday to the resignation of 
his Russian successor and rival Boris Yeltsin, saying the ailing Kremlin 
chief should had quit sooner.


"It would have been better if he had done it a year-and-a-half or two years 
ago, or in 1996," Gorbachev told AFP by phone from a restaurant in Paris.


Yeltsin won a second presidential mandate in 1996 elections.


Gorbachev said that Yeltsin had not stepped down to facilitate reforms, but 
to "take advantage of the victorious wave" following legislative polls that 
gave strong backing to his hand-picked successor, Prime Minister Vladimir 
Putin.


He also predicted that Putin had a good chance of winning an early 
presidential poll scheduled for March.


"It is entirely possible, but I do not think it will be easy," Gorbachev said.


Gorbachev, 68, was in Paris to greet the new millennium with his children and 
grandchildren, fulfilling a promise he made to his wife Raisa before she died 
in September of cancer.


Putin must present himself as he really is, the former Soviet leader said, 
adding: "I believe he understands the importance of relations with the West" 
and "the importance of finding a solution to the Chechen conflict."


Gorbachev survived a botched coup in August 1991, but the initiative passed 
to Yeltsin, whose implacable resistance to the plotters had immensely 
enhanced his stature.


Gorbachev seriously under-estimated his unpopularity in Russia, and stood in 
the 1996 election, scoring a derisory 0.5 percent of the poll as Yeltsin made 
sure that he received the least possible media exposure.


******


#5
Facts about Russia's nuclear briefcase
By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - After announcing his resignation Friday, Russian
President Boris Yeltsin handed over to his acting successor one of the most
important symbols of power in Russia: the briefcase with codes to launch
nuclear missiles. 


Presidential spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin was quoted by Interfax news agency
as saying Yeltsin handed over the ``nuclear briefcase'' to Acting President
Vladimir Putin shortly before finally leaving his Kremlin office at 1100
GMT (6:00 a.m. EST). 


Yeltsin received the briefcase from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who
resigned on Christmas Day in 1991. Yeltsin parted from it only once during
his term in office -- in 1996, when he underwent heart surgery and turned
over his powers briefly to then Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. 


``The nuclear button is an effective mechanism to control Russian nuclear
forces and also a symbol of the presidency,'' former Yeltsin press
secretary Sergei Yastrzhembsky said when asked to describe the device. 


The briefcase is carried behind Yeltsin by an officer dressed in a
distinctive black navy uniform which makes it easy for the president to
single him out in a crowd. But all information about it has been classified
until lately. 


A senior parliament member, Alexei Arbatov, has described the nuclear
button as the first link in a chain of commands ending in onboard cruise
computers of nuclear missiles. 


``The nuclear button...transmits presidential sanction for the use of
nuclear weapons to command centers where general staff officers are on duty
around the clock,'' said Arbatov, an expert on national security with close
ties to the Kremlin. 


``On receiving a coded signal, officers...using appropriate codes,
determine that it was the president who sent it, rather than someone else.'' 


When the authenticity of the presidential message is confirmed, duty
officers open safes containing their own codes and send them to missile
launch pads and nuclear submarines. 


``Then the codes are installed (in onboard cruise computers), launch keys
are turned and the missiles blast off,'' he said. 


Russia, which inherited the nuclear forces of the former Soviet Union, has
some 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads, enough to destroy life on earth
several times over, as well as stocks of medium- and short-range weapons. 


Yeltsin himself reminded the world of this just weeks ago on a visit to
China, when he confronted Western criticism of Russia's military action in
Chechnya by saying President Clinton had forgotten Russia was a nuclear
power. 


According to NTV commercial television, some 30 people are involved in
handling the nuclear button network, run jointly by the Defense Ministry
and the secret services. 


Arbatov has said the defense minister has a similar nuclear button but the
president did not need to coordinate his orders with the military chief. 


``The first order (from the president) does not need a confirmation by the
second,'' Arbatov said. He did not make clear whether the defense minister
would need the president's authorization to use his nuclear button. 


******


#6
AFP
December 31, 1999 
Boris Yeltsin: Democratic Tsar Of Post-Soviet Russia 
By Mark Rice-Oxley 


Boris Yeltsin led Russia through nine years of turbulent transition as its 
first post-Soviet president, a democratic tsar who shunted his courtiers 
around as often as he rotated his pragmatic political beliefs.


A bear of a man who succumbed to physical frailty in recent years, Yeltsin 
was an instinctive political opportunist, a feisty opponent not afraid to use 
armed force to cow his enemies into submission, be they Communist putschists, 
seething nationalists, or separatist Chechens.


But despite sounding the death knell of the Soviet Union and subjecting 
Russia to its most sweeping changes since 1917, Yeltsin failed to push 
through lasting economic reforms and ultimately presided over a deeply 
polarized society of the few haves and many have-nots.


And his democratic credentials were further undermined by the brutal 1994-96 
Russian crackdown in Chechnya which cost some 80,000 mainly civilian lives, 
while the latest military drive has so far cost an estimated 6,000 dead.


A wily political survivor and past master in the art of divide and rule, 
Yeltsin's moment of glory came in August 1991, when he rallied Russian 
democrats to defy a junta of Soviet generals and other eminencies grises who 
tried to oust Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in a coup.


With his arch-rival Gorbachev imprisoned in a Crimean dacha, Yeltsin seized 
his opportunity, facing down the hardliners who wanted to reverse Gorbachev's 
reforms. Fisting the air defiantly atop a tank under the August sun, Yeltsin 
became Russia's new hero overnight.


But having agreed with his Ukrainian and Belarussian counterparts to bury the 
Soviet Union, Yeltsin embarked on an ambitious if not brutal round of market 
reforms which split society between an elite of well-connected entrepreneurs 
and millions of poor.


Organised crime flourished in the void of inadequate legislation, a 
proliferation of shadow economic structures and a demoralised and 
cash-strapped police force and army.


Yeltsin himself became tired and withdrawn, prone to heavy drinking bouts and 
weakened by chronic heart problems, increasingly unpredictable in his 
domestic policies and on his sorties abroad.


By the time he quit office aged 68, Russia was still struggling to come to 
terms with the miserable legacy of decades of Soviet mismanagement.


Yeltsin's own oscillation between market reform and go-slow compromise 
signally failed to bring about the economic 'perestroika' urgently needed to 
make a modern economy of the still-Sovietised Russian behemoth.


But in his favour, Yeltsin did manage to prevent his country from 
degenerating into nightmarish disintegration, the scenario often simply 
referred to as 'Yugoslavia with nuclear missiles.'


Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born in the Urals village of Butko, near 
Yekaterinburg on February 1, 1931 to a peasant family.


A tear-away and prankster when young -- he lost two fingers trying to 
dismantle a grenade when barely a teenager -- the self-confessed rebel 
settled down to a hard-work, hard-play lifestyle in his college years.


He married Naya Girina in 1956 and after graduating from engineering college 
worked his way up from construction engineer and foreman to a political 
career within the Communist Party hierarchy in the Yekaterinburg region.


Called to Moscow by Gorbachev in 1985, Yeltsin shot to national and 
international prominence two years later when he openly defied the general 
secretary over the speed of reform and was ousted from the Communist Party 
politburo.


He used the grass-roots popular support which his dissent had earned to sweep 
into the fledgling Russian parliament in 1990, becoming the body's speaker.


A year later he won election as the Russian Federation's first president, the 
former paratrooper Alexander Rutskoi as his running mate.


After facing down the Communist putschists together in August 1991, Yeltsin 
drifted from his erstwhile allies in the parliament who bitterly opposed the 
young economists he installed in government and the radical "shock therapy" 
reforms they pushed through.


Deputies in the Soviet-era legislature protested that the privatisation 
programme launched by reformist champion Anatoly Chubais sold off state 
property on the cheap, enriching the few at the expense of the majority.


After a long-running power struggle, Yeltsin finally resorted to tanks to 
blast his opponents out of the parliament building in October 1993, threw 
Rutskoi in jail and introduced a new constitution which made the president 
all powerful.


But at the same time Yeltsin starting becoming withdrawn and increasingly 
prone to bouts of depression -- and allegedly drinking.


Ultranationalists led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky scored a surprise victory in 
December 1993 parliamentary elections, handing the baton of opposition on to 
Gennady Zyuganov's resurrected Communist Party in December 1995 polls.


The opposition had ample ammunition. To many ordinary people, the benefits of 
economic liberalisation were far from clear. Suddenly, they had been exposed 
to hyperinflation and unaffordable imported goods.


State workers and pensioners went unpaid for months, the homeless on the 
streets were only outnumbered by the many hawkers forced to sell their 
miserable wares for a pittance to make ends meet.


Many enterprises meanwhile, already weakened by the collapse of Soviet-era 
inter-republican ties, were crippled by rocketing prices, plunging state 
orders and a lack of investment.


Yeltsin took the hint and softened shock therapy, using the stolid figure of 
Viktor Chernomyrdin as prime minister to broker compromise time and again 
with parliament on economic reforms.


But having thrown the liberals out of the Kremlin, Yeltsin fell in with a 
clique of hawks advocating 'short, victorious war' to put down a separatist 
bid by Chechnya, the tiny Caucasus mountain republic in 1994.


The 21-month conflict backfired spectacularly on the Kremlin, swiftly turning 
into a humiliating military fiasco.


Yeltsin however was not beaten yet. In possibly the most important of many 
political comebacks he overcame fierce opposition and failing health to 
secure re-election in July 1996, despite suffering a heart attack between the 
two rounds of the vote.


He immediately signed up for heart bypass surgery in November 1996, which 
restored something of his old brio without ever turning the clock back to the 
formidable dynamo who buried the Soviet Union.


As Russia's economic woes deepened, Yeltsin repeatedly shuffled his 
government, replacing Chernomyrdin in March 1998, with Sergei Kiriyenko, a 
young economic manager, who only five months later gave way to the stolid 
Yevgeny Primakov, a stolid former KGB chief.


Primakov's popularity grew, fueling Yeltsin's infamous jealousy of potential 
successors and leading to his replacement by another senior intelligence 
officer, Sergei Stepashin.


He lasted barely three months, paying the price for failing to spike a 
political coalition of anti-Yeltsin forces.


Vladimir Putin, the steely FSB intelligence chief, took on the mantle as 
Yeltsin's designated successor, his authority rising as Russian troops 
advanced through rebel Chechnya in the latest effort to quell the rebellious 
republic.


The breakthrough by pro-Putin parties in legislative polls on December 19 
left Putin's potential presidential rivals in disarray and left him in an 
apparently unassailable position in the race to replace Yeltsin in the 
Kremlin. 


******


#7
NEWSMAKER-Yeltsin, a giant, leaves clouded legacy
By Peter Graff

MOSCOW, (Reuters) - At the end of the 20th century, a burly, white-haired 
former construction boss burst into history, ending a thousand years of 
autocracy to become the first elected leader of the largest country on earth. 


That achievement alone ensures that Boris Yeltsin will be remembered as one 
of the giants of our age. 


But the Russian president, who unexpectedly announced his resignation on 
Friday just hours before a new century dawned, leaves a legacy clouded by 
contradictions. 


Ultimately, history's verdict on Yeltsin must await the as yet uncertain 
outcome of his self-declared mission: to transform a totalitarian 
dictatorship into a 21st-century democracy. 


In his farewell address to the nation he led for a decade, Yeltsin said he 
would leave that task to his hand-picked successor, Prime Minister Vladimir 
Putin. 


When Yeltsin came to power he was larger than life, physically huge, with a 
meaty, bear-like countenance and an explosive bass voice that the Washington 
Post said could ``shatter dishes.'' 


But by the end of his reign, his own ill health and widespread public 
disillusionment had left him isolated, unpopular and often seemingly 
disoriented or confused. 


He was dogged by accusations that he had allowed his moment in history to be 
hijacked by crafty insiders -- friends, family, toadies and hangers-on who 
used their access to the Kremlin to siphon off Russia's bounty for personal 
gain. 


Yeltsin's own decline seemed to mirror the erosion across Russia of the lofty 
ideals that swept him into power. 


POVERTY AND CORRUPTION 


Russia's ecstatic embrace of new freedoms was followed by shocking poverty 
and corruption. Yeltsin's initial personal bravery in opposing those seeking 
to wield power through force was later tarnished by bloodshed he ordered 
himself. 


The jubilant adoration of the nation gave way inexorably to resentment and 
distrust. Critics accused Yeltsin of holding on to power for its own sake, 
ignoring the plight of his people. 


``Power is his ideology, his friend, his concubine, his mistress, his 
passion,'' his one-time press secretary Vyacheslav Kostikov once said. 


In his last years in office, when he sacked four prime ministers in 17 
months, his rule seemed to his compatriots arbitrary, even perverse. His 
popularity rating approached zero. 


But in naming Putin he has chosen a successor who enjoys the popularity that 
nobody within Russia has enjoyed since the younger Yeltsin himself. History 
may judge that Yeltsin's critics had simply expected more than was possible, 
both of the man and the troubled country he led. 


Even in the headiest days of the 1980s, when he emerged at the head of the 
triumphant reform campaign, the provincial-born Yeltsin was always an 
outsider among Moscow's elite. 


Russia's nascent democracy movement was mainly made up of urbane 
intellectuals and dissidents from Moscow and Leningrad, pressing Soviet 
leader Mikhail Gorbachev to speed up reforms in speeches to congresses and 
newspaper articles. 


Yeltsin was no intellectual. But as the rarefied atmosphere of debate 
solidified into mass protests in the streets, Yeltsin's visceral charisma 
made him the man of the moment. 


``The intellectuals needed Yeltsin,'' said Andrei Piontkovsky, a Moscow 
journalist. ``Without him their grand ideas would have gotten little further 
than kitchen table chat.'' 


In 1991, Yeltsin climbed onto a tank and raised his fist in defiance of 
Soviet hard-line coup plotters who were holding Gorbachev. A month before 
Yeltsin resigned, President Bill Clinton called that act of defiance ``one of 
the most important moments in my life as a citizen of the world.'' 


SCARRED BY DISGRACE 


Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born into a poor peasant family in the Urals 
on Feb. 1, 1931. His father was a peasant-turned-laborer who spent three 
years in Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Gulag for grumbling at work. 


The family lived in one room in a wooden hut and Yeltsin recalled being 
beaten by his father. 


He went away to secondary school in the nearest big city, Sverdlovsk, where 
he later graduated as a civil engineer from the Urals Polytechnical Institute 
and met his wife Naina. 


Yeltsin rose to become a successful ``hard hat'' construction manager, joined 
the Communist Party in his early 30s and was then moved to full-time party 
work in Sverdlovsk. 


In 1976 he made the big jump to Communist Party boss in Sverdlovsk, an 
important Soviet industrial region. Nine years later, shortly after Mikhail 
Gorbachev became Soviet leader, he was summoned to Moscow to become the 
city's party chief. 


But in the 1980s, as Yeltsin began calling for reforms, the party bureaucracy 
saw him as a maverick. In frustration, in 1987 he offered to quit. Instead, 
he was unceremoniously sacked. That disgrace would become a defining moment 
of his life. 


Yeltsin suffered a breakdown and was taken to hospital with chest pains and 
headaches. As if that were not enough, he was summoned from his bed for a 
four-hour dressing down at a party meeting. 


``His lips were purple -- he was all blue, and he had difficulty holding up 
his head,'' recalled Mikhail Poltoranin, who attended the meeting and later 
became a top aide. 


``All that was left where my heart had been was a burnt-out cinder,'' Yeltsin 
wrote in his autobiography. 


SWEPT TO POWER 


But to the shock of party stalwarts, millions of Russians deeply dissatisfied 
with the slow pace of reforms rallied behind Yeltsin, and soon he was at the 
helm of the first mass protest movement Russia had seen since the days of 
Vladimir Lenin. 


In 1989 he won an overwhelming victory in Moscow in the election to the new 
Soviet Congress of People's Deputies. A year later he became speaker of the 
parliament of Russia, then still the largest of the Soviet Union's 15 member 
republics. 


His first trip to the United States, in 1989, was a vintage performance. 
American journalists -- for the first but not the last time -- wrote that he 
looked drunk. 


``Boris N. Yeltsin, Soviet politician of the people, imbiber nonpareil, 
radical legislator and member of the Supreme Soviet...came swaying and 
galumphing and bassooning and mugging and hugging and doom-warning through 
the greater Baltimore- Washington corridor yesterday,'' the Washington Post 
wrote. 


``He clasped his hands over his head like a boxing champion. He tilted. He 
rocked. He swerved. He careened.'' 


In June 1991 he was elected as president of Russia -- still within the Soviet 
Union -- in a landslide, the first time any such vote had ever been held in 
the country. 


Two months later he faced down tanks in the Moscow streets, and in December 
he signed a treaty with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus abolishing the 
Soviet Union altogether. Yeltsin, triumphant, became president of a sovereign 
Russia. 


REFORM BUT NO PROSPERITY 


But the euphoria was short lived. Ruling and rebuilding Russia were more 
difficult than overthrowing the Soviet regime. 


Yeltsin placed young reformers in charge of a program of ``shock therapy'' 
reforms designed to switch the country from a command system to a market 
system as quickly as possible. 


But the initial impact of the reforms -- staggering inflation and 
unemployment accompanied by a catastrophic collapse in output -- caused 
widespread misery. Health care crumbled and the average life expectancy of 
Russian males plummeted to no more than 58 years. 


Privatization gave ordinary Russians ownership of their apartments and 
houses. But it also placed massive state enterprises in the hands of small 
groups of insiders who became staggeringly rich while their companies 
withered. 


In hindsight, there are those who argue that reforms were carried out too 
quickly, and others who say they were not fast or deep enough. Whatever the 
case, they proved hugely unpopular. 


Yeltsin was eventually forced to ditch reformist acting prime minister Yegor 
Gaidar and replace him with conservative gas boss Viktor Chernomyrdin. During 
the next several years, reformers would oscillate in and out of government, 
but would never again have free rein to complete their experiment. 


For the first two years of his rule, Yeltsin battled with a hostile 
Soviet-era legislature. Eventually, in 1993, he blasted them out of the 
parliament building with tanks and pushed through a new constitution giving 
himself far wider powers. 


But future elected parliaments would remain hostile, dominated by 
nationalists and communists, who despised Yeltsin for breaking up the Soviet 
Union and retreating from empire. 


In 1994, Yeltsin ordered the first of two wars in rebel Chechnya. Tens of 
thousands would be killed and Russia would be forced to withdraw its troops 
in defeat two years later. 


The war isolated Yeltsin still further. Liberals saw him as controlled by a 
circle of hawks. Nationalists excoriated his military failure. He later 
admitted the war ``may have been one of my mistakes,'' one of the few times 
he acknowledged error. 


He began his campaign for a second term in 1996 an unpopular underdog. But, 
always at his best in a crisis, he fought a vigorous campaign and beat his 
Communist challenger decisively. 


FAILING HEALTH 


The strain of the campaign caused several heart attacks and forced Yeltsin to 
have a life-saving bypass operation. Ill health gradually came to dominate 
his second term. 


Increasingly, day-to-day control of the country fell to his prime ministers 
and their cabinets. Yeltsin wielded his authority as a club, emerging 
periodically from the shadows to sack officials, often with little or no 
explanation. 


His public appearances and trips abroad grew increasingly rare. He often 
appeared disoriented, and on several occasions his spokesmen had to 
``interpret'' remarks that made little sense. 


In August 1998, the Russian economy crumbled under a mountain of debts, 
worsened by record low prices for its oil exports. The rouble lost 
three-quarters of its value and Russia defaulted on billions of dollars in 
debt. 


Liberals in power at the time were disgraced. Yeltsin was forced to accept 
communists in senior positions for the first time since the Soviet Union's 
fall. And again his health failed him: pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer 
sidelined him for months. 


Aides finally abandoned the illusion that Yeltsin was in day-to-day control 
of the country and said that his one last goal was to ensure a peaceful and 
constitutional transfer of power to a successor. 


Amid intensifying allegations of corruption in the Kremlin entourage, 
Yeltsin's aides have worked openly to ensure that his successor will not be 
somebody hostile who might seek revenge. 


LAST SUCCESS 


At that final task, Yeltsin appears to have succeeded beyond expectations. In 
August 1999, he named Vladimir Putin, an obscure security official and former 
KGB spy, as his fifth premier in 17 months, and the man he wanted to succeed 
him. 


Putin's decisive style has made a new war in Chechnya by far the most popular 
undertaking of the Yeltsin years, and Putin by far the country's most popular 
politician. 


After years of unease with their weakened position on the world stage, 
Russians of all political stripes have rallied behind a foreign policy as 
openly hostile to the West, and especially the United States, as during the 
Cold War. 


At the end of the Yeltsin era and the close of the 20th century, Russia is 
poor, crime-ridden, economically weak and diplomatically isolated. But Boris 
Yeltsin, feisty as ever, still an outsider, father of modern Russia for 
better or worse, has at last succeeded in uniting his people. 


In 1990 he told a reporter from The Times: ``A man must live like a great 
bright flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But 
that is better than a mean little flame.'' 


Yeltsin and his wife Naina have two daughters, five grandchildren and one 
great-grandchild, born this year (1999). 


*******


#8
Russian Politicians, Analysts on Yeltsin's Resignation: Comment

Moscow, Dec. 31 (Bloomberg)<
/A> -- Following are comments from Russian political leaders, citizens and 
analysts on President Boris Yeltsin's resignation. Prime Minister Vladimir 
Putin assumed presidential powers and presidential elections will be held in 
March. Yeltsin's term should have ended in June, 2000. 


Roland Nash, analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow: 


Why is it good for markets? 


``If you remove uncertainty markets go up. It removes a huge chunk of 
uncertainty over the next six months. We know that elections will take place 
at end of March and we have very strong favorite to win the presidency. 


``The immediate reaction is good, now we have elections, and we have a strong 
favorite to win. We can now begin to think about what life will be like under 
Putin. People still have a poor understanding of who Putin is and what he 
wants to do. You can argue that he's the best of a bad bunch. There's a lot 
of other candidates out there and all of them have obvious weaknesses. 


``The timing of the thing is one of the main reasons,'' it's good for the 
market. ``It gives less time for Chechnya to go wrong, for oil prices to fall 
and for something to go wrong in the economy. He's going to be acting 
president with an awful lot of power up to the presidential elections -- 
he'll be the one in control. 


``It's good timing for him. Putin is very popular, It's very symbolic, it is 
the end of the era at the end of this millennium.'' 


Former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin: 


``There are three months before the elections and I don't see that Vladimir 
Putin has any serious opponents,'' Stepashin said, reported Russian news 
agency Interfax. ``Boris Yeltsin decided to boost his successor's chances in 
elections.'' 


Tamara Fomicheva, 61, porter: 


``It's specially made to put Putin into power. It's no good, nor bad. It 
doesn't matter.'' 


Nikolai Vorozhtsov, 65, pensioner 


``Nothing changes. It's not clear with Putin. Who is he? We don't know 
anything about him. What he will do? Can he do anything?'' 


Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov: 


``Boris Yeltsin made the right decision, but late. Probably the decision on 
the resignation is well-grounded and primarily linked with his health 
condition, but it was late,'' he said, according to Russian news agency 
Interfax. 


``Every person should work effectively. If health does not allow that, he 
needed to find moral strength,'' to leave. ``It is even more true when it is 
not just about a person's fate, but the fate of a country. Yeltsin made right 
decision.'' 


Russia's Communist Party Leader Gennady Zyuganov: 


``Yeltsin's resignation is the result of 10-year struggle of communists and 
patriots. Public impeachment of Yeltsin. . .has taken place. 


Zyuganov said the resignation is the main result of the Dec. 19 parliamentary 
elections. The election confirmed ``the political superiority of the 
Communist party and Russian patriotic forces. 


He said it is necessary to unite ``all healthy forces, to prevent the 
assertion of a next variation of an regime that is anti- society.'' 


``We cannot allow the. . .abruptness of presidential elections'' and some 
confusion among a part of the people, tp allow returning of Yeltsin's power. 


He said a new election campaign has started. 


``Our struggle for revival of Russia, social justice, deserved life of all 
the honest people is continuing.'' 


Anatoly Chubais, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister: 


Yeltsin's decision was a decision of a ``genius. It's amazingly precise, deep 
and courageous decision. Yeltsin is a person of a historical significance. 


``Many people will be ashamed for opposition they expressed towards Yeltsin 
and they should be. 


``It was a very difficult decision. This decision is absolutely unprecedented 
by the scale of the impact on Russia and the whole world. A tremendous 
potential of the power was given from the hands of Yeltsin so that it must 
change our country into a prosperous one.'' 


Vladimir Yakovlev, governor of St. Petersburg: 


``This is courageous step and wise decision. President Yelstin was making 
unusual decisions during the whole of the presidential term. 


``Vladimir Putin has taken a big load on himself.'' 


******


#9
Clinton Pays Tribute To Yeltsin
December 31, 1999

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton, responding to the dramatic resignation 
of Boris Yeltsin, today paid tribute to the Russian leader for dismantling a 
communist system and putting a democratic structure in place. 


Clinton, in a statement, said his succession by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin 
is evidence of Yeltsin's constitutional achievements. In a 20-minute phone 
call with Yeltsin, he pledged to work with Putin. 


Secretary of State Madeleine Albright praised Putin as ``a can-do person,'' 
and Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said the former intelligence 
chief ``seems to have expanded his capability rapidly.'' 


Albright, on an inspection tour of the State Department's Y2K operations 
center, said Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had assured her ``there is no shift 
in their foreign policy.'' 


But she also said she had ``a certain sense of sadness'' that Yeltsin was 
leaving office. ``He had a terrific run,'' Albright said. 


Both Clinton and Albright stressed U.S. opposition to the Russian military 
offensive in the rebellious republic of Chechnya. ``But President Yeltsin and 
my starting point has always been how Russia and the United States could work 
together to advance common interests,'' Clinton said in the statement, while 
extending his and Hillary Rodham Clinton's warmest wishes to Yeltsin and his 
family. 


White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Clinton told Yeltsin later on the 
telephone that the resignation was ``a sad moment' for him, but that he was 
proud of the work they had done together. 


And Lockhart said Yeltsin assured the president that Russia remains committed 
to its constitution, democracy and arms control, and also ``made a strong 
case'' for Putin's ability to govern. 


Toward the end of their conversation, Yeltsin told Clinton, ``I am very glad 
that I am your friend and I will continue to be your friend,'' according to 
Lockhart. It was the first conversation between the two presidents since 
their meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, on Nov. 18. 


Clinton cited as ``genuine progress'' the dismantling of thousands of U.S. 
and Russian long-range nuclear weapons and Russian peacekeeping troops in the 
Balkans. 


``In this spirit, I look forward to working with Acting President Putin as 
the Russian people begin this process of making the transition from one 
democratically elected president to the other,'' the statement concluded. 


To American policy-makers, Putin is somewhat of a gray figure, without a 
defined political background, his career having been mostly in domestic 
intelligence work. The fact that he is Yeltsin's hand-picked successor 
enhances his standing with the Clinton administration, though. 


Putin had been expected to seek the presidency in elections in mid-2000. Now 
that Yeltsin has installed him as acting president, the election will be 
moved up and held in three months. 


The popularity of the Russian drive on Chechnya is likely to enhance his 
chances. Putin, among other senior Russian officials, has rejected U.S. 
appeals that the military drive be muted and that political talks be held 
with rebel leaders. 


Yeltsin's rule was generously boosted by Clinton, with direct assistance and 
indirectly through the World Bank. But as Russia lagged in installing a 
modern taxation system and in protecting foreign investments, the United 
States began to hold back. 


Whether Clinton will pursue this tougher line or ease up as a goodwill 
gesture could be an early indication of how the administration will deal with 
a government headed by Putin. 


On Tuesday, the Russian government made its last payment for the year, $62.9 
million, to the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank agreed to 
release $100 million in loans intended to help reform Russia's coal industry. 


But Russia had been hoping to get a $640 million installment of a $4.5 
billion loan from the IMF before the end of the year. The IMF has delayed the 
loan indefinitely, saying Russia had failed to adopt necessary economic 
reforms. 


The White House called Yeltsin's resignation as president dramatic, but not a 
complete surprise. 


Clinton was notified before dawn by Sandy Berger, his assistant for national 
security affairs. 


At the State Department, an official said Ivanov told Albright after she 
telephoned him that Russian foreign policy would remain on a steady course. 


At the Pentagon, all questions on the impact of Yeltsin's resignation were 
being referred to the White House and State Department. Susan Hansen, a 
spokeswoman, said U.S.-Russian military cooperation was not expected to be 
affected, citing the latest example as the U.S. and Russian teams of nuclear 
experts sitting side by side in Colorado Springs today to ensure that the 
year doesn't end with an accidental nuclear launch because of the Y2K bug. 


After Yeltsin's resignation was confirmed in contacts with Russian officials, 
a White House spokesman, James Fallin, said ``we consider this a dramatic 
step.'' 


``While there is an element of surprise it was not a complete one,'' Fallin 
said. 


The White House official cited numerous speculative reports in the Russian 
press for several months about the 68-year-old Yeltsin's health problems. 
Yeltsin appeared pale as he told the Russian people in a nationally televised 
speech about his decision. 


******


#10
President out, lights still on as Y2K hits Russia
By Denis Dyomkin

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Jan 1 (Reuters) - The president quit, but the lights 
stayed on as Russia's Far East spun into the third millennium on Saturday. 


The telephone and electricity grids in Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast 
defied Y2K doomsayers and remained in operation without disruption past 
midnight. 


"All our critical systems are working normally," said a city government duty 
officer. 


In Moscow, more than 9,000 km (nearly 6,000 miles) to the west, it was still 
Friday, the last day of the previous millennium. Russians were still reeling 
from the shock resignation of President Boris Yeltsin, who had led their 
country since the fall of Soviet rule. 


As the hours ticked by, there was no sign of significant trouble from the 
much ballyhooed Y2K computer glitch, which skittish experts had warned could 
lead to anything from power outages to nuclear Armageddon. 


As the New Year crossed through the easternmost of Russia's 11 time zones, 
the Emergencies Ministry reported no Y2K-related problems. 


The first Russian nuclear power plant to pass through the New Year, in 
Chukotka opposite Alaska, operated without a hitch. 


The Pacific Fleet said its ships were still afloat. 


Russian and U.S. military officials working side by side in the American 
state of Colorado said there were no disruptions at a command centre they had 
set up to monitor nuclear missiles. 


And the head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces said the only missiles he 
expected to be launched into the sky were the fireworks he would shoot off in 
his yard with his children. 


PUTIN SAYS ALL STAFF IN PLACE 


The Y2K problem was one of the first issues to be faced by Acting President 
Vladimir Putin, who took over as Russia's leader three hours before the first 
stretches of Russian territory entered the 21st century. 


In his fourth hour in office, Putin told his advisory Security Council that 
all staff responsible for the Y2K problem were in place. 


Russia's creaky Soviet-era infrastructure and late start tackling Y2K issues 
made it one of the countries considered most at risk from the computer 
problem, threatened by possible failure of some older software to recognise 
the change in date. 


The United States, citing possible Y2K disruptions, paid for trips home for 
the New Year for most of the staff at its embassies in ex-Soviet Russia, 
Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, the only countries where such steps were taken. 


Particular worries have focused on Russia's huge arsenal of nuclear warheads 
and ageing power plants, although experts have played down the threat of an 
atomic disaster. 


But Interfax news agency quoted Vladimir Yakovlev, head of Russia's strategic 
nuclear forces, as saying he saw no threat of an accidental nuclear launch. 


"I am sure I will receive only holiday wishes on the New Year's night and not 
reports from any of the command points," he said. 


"On the night to January 1, I will be in my yard setting off fireworks with 
my kids. These are the only rockets that will be launched into the sky," he 
said. 


BORING NEW YEAR FOR COSMONAUTS 


At Mission Control for Russia's Space Programme, officials called it the most 
boring New Year in more than a decade. 


Cosmonauts abandoned the Mir Space Station in 1999 and for the first time 
since 1988 there was no crowd of guests at Mission Control hovering over the 
radio hookup to wish a happy new year to a flight crew on board. 


Rosenergoatom, the company that runs eight of Russia's nine civilian nuclear 
power plants said the first one to meet the New Year, at Bilibinsk in 
Chukotka, had met the test and was operating normally. 


Itar-Tass news agency said civil aviation was also operating normally at 
airports in Kamchatka in the far east. 


******