Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russian: Борис Николаевич Ельцин​) (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.

Boris Yeltsin came to power with a wave of high expectations. On 12 June 1991 he was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with 57% of the vote, becoming the first popularly elected president. However, Yeltsin never recovered his popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Yeltsin, vowing to transform Russia's socialist command economy into a free market economy, endorsed price liberalization and privatization programs. Due to the method of privatization, a good deal of the national wealth fell into the hands of a small group of people. In August 1991, Yeltsin won international plaudits for casting himself as a democrat and defying the August coup attempt of 1991 by the members of Soviet government opposed to perestroika. The Yeltsin era was marked by widespread corruption, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems. He either acted as his own prime minister or appointed men of his choice, regardless of parliament. His confrontations with parliament climaxed in the October 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, when Yeltsin called in soldiers to retake Russian White House, after his opponents had taken over the building. Later in 1993, Yeltsin imposed a new constitution with strong presidential powers, which was approved by referendum in December. He left office widely unpopular with the Russian population as an ineffectual and ailing autocrat. Just hours before the first day of 2000, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of Vladimir Putin.

Boris Yeltsin was born in the village of Butka, in Talitsky District of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. His father, Nikolay Yeltsin, was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation in 1934 and sentenced to hard labour in a gulag for three years. Following his release he remained unemployed for a period of time and then worked in construction. His mother, Klavdiya Vasilyevna Yeltsina, worked as a seamstress. Boris Yeltsin studied at Pushkin High School in Berezniki in Perm Krai. Yeltsin received his higher education at the Ural State Technical University in Sverdlovsk, majoring in construction, and graduated in 1955.

From 1955 to 1957 he worked as a foreman with the building trust Uraltyazhtrubstroy and from 1957 to 1963 he worked in Sverdlovsk, and was promoted from construction site superintendent to chief of the Construction Directorate with the Yuzhgorstroy Trust. In 1963 he became chief engineer, and in 1965 head of the Sverdlovsk House-Building Combine, responsible for sewerage and technical plumbing. He joined the ranks of the CPSU nomenklatura in 1968 when he was appointed head of construction with the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee. In 1975 he became secretary of the regional committee in charge of the region's industrial development. In 1976 the Politburo of the CPSU promoted him to the post of the first secretary of the CPSU Committee of Sverdlovsk Oblast (effectively he became the head of one of the most important industrial regions in the USSR), he remained in this position until 1985. Yeltsin was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to July 1990, and a nomenklatura member since 1968.

In 1977 as party boss in Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin—on orders from Moscow—ordered the destruction of the Ipatiev House where the last Russian tsar had been killed by Bolshevik troops. The Ipatiev House was demolished in one night, 27 July 1977. Also during Yeltsin's stay in Sverdlovsk, a CPSU palace was built which was named "White Tooth" by the residents. During this time, Yeltsin developed connections with key people in the Soviet power structure.

He was appointed to the Politburo, and was also "Mayor" of Moscow (First Secretary of the CPSU Moscow City Committee) from 24 December 1985 to 1987. He was promoted to these high rank positions by Mikhail Gorbachev and Yegor Ligachev, who presumed that Yeltsin would be their man. Yeltsin was also given a country house (dacha) previously occupied by Gorbachev. During this period Yeltsin portrayed himself as a reformer and populist (for example, he took a trolleybus to work), firing and reshuffling his staff several times. His initiatives became popular among Moscow residents.

In 1987, after a confrontation with hardliner Yegor Ligachev and Mikhail Gorbachev about Gorbachev's wife, Raisa, meddling in affairs of the state, Yeltsin was sacked from his high ranking party positions. On 21 October 1987 at the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Yeltsin, without prior approval from Gorbachev, lashed out at the Politburo. He expressed his discontent with both the slow pace of reform in society and the servility shown to the General Secretary, then asked to resign from the Politburo, adding that the City Committee would decide whether he should resign from the post of first secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. In his reply, Gorbachev accused Yeltsin of "political immaturity" and "absolute irresponsibility", and at the plenary meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee proposed relieving Yeltsin of his post of first secretary. Nobody backed Yeltsin. Criticism of Yeltsin continued on 11 November 1987 at the meeting of the Moscow City Party Committee. After Yeltsin admitted that his speech had been a mistake, he was fired from the post of first secretary of the Moscow City Committee. He was demoted to the position of first deputy commissioner for the State Committee for Construction. In March 1989, Yeltsin was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies as the delegate from Moscow district and gained a seat on the Supreme Soviet of Russia. On 29 May 1990, he was elected chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR (RSFSR), the post he held until 10 July 1991. 

On 12 June 1991, Yeltsin won 57% of the popular vote in the democratic presidential elections for the Russian republic, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov who got just 16% of the vote. In his election campaign, Yeltsin criticized the "dictatorship of the center", but did not suggest the introduction of a market economy. Instead, he said that he would put his head on the railtrack in the event of increased prices. Yeltsin took office on 10 July.

On 18 August 1991, a coup against Gorbachev was launched by the government members opposed to perestroika. Gorbachev was held in Crimea while Yeltsin raced to the White House of Russia (residence of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR) in Moscow to defy the coup. The White House was surrounded by the military but the troops defected in the face of mass popular demonstrations. Yeltsin responded to the coup by making a memorable speech from the turret of a tank. Although restored to his position, Gorbachev's powers were now fatally compromised. Neither union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands as support had swung over to Yeltsin. Through the fall of 1991, the Russian government took over the union government, ministry by ministry. On 6 November 1991, Yeltsin issued a decree banning the Communist Party throughout the RSFSR.

In early December 1991, Ukraine voted for independence from the Soviet Union. A week later, on 8 December, Yeltsin met Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and the leader of Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, where the three presidents announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that they would establish a voluntary Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. On 24 December, the Russian Federation took the Soviet Union's seat in the United Nations. The next day, President Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, thereby ending the world's largest and most influential socialist state.

Just days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin resolved to embark on a program of radical economic reform. In late 1991 Yeltsin turned to the advice of Western economists, and Western institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the U.S. Treasury Department, who had developed a standard policy recipe for transition economies in the late 1980s. This policy recipe came to be known as the "Washington Consensus" or "shock therapy", a combination of measures intended to liberalize prices and stabilize the state's budget. The approach was favored by Yeltsin's deputy, Yegor Gaidar, a 35-year-old Russian economist inclined toward radical reform. On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of 'macroeconomic stabilization,' a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50 percent, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, while incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out a lot of personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.

Throughout 1992, Yeltsin wrestled with the Supreme Soviet of Russia and the Congress of People's Deputies for control over government, government policy, government banking and property. In the course of 1992, the speaker of the Russian Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, came out in opposition to the reforms, despite claiming to support Yeltsin's overall goals. In December 1992, the 7th Congress of People's Deputies succeeded in turning down the Yeltsin-backed candidacy of Yegor Gaidar for the position of Russian prime minister. Eventually, on 14 December, Viktor Chernomyrdin, seen as a compromise figure, was confirmed in the office. The conflict escalated on 20 March 1993 when Yeltsin, in a televised address to the nation, announced that he was going to assume certain "special powers" in order to implement his program of reforms. In response, the hastily-called 9th Congress of People's Deputies attempted to remove Yeltsin from presidency through impeachment on 26 March 1993. Yeltsin's opponents gathered more than 600 votes for impeachment, but fell 72 votes short of the required two-thirds majority. On 21 September 1993 Yeltsin announced in a televised address his decision to disband the Supreme Soviet and Congress of People's Deputies by decree. In his address Yeltsin declared his intent to rule by decree until the election of the new parliament and a referendum on a new constitution, triggering the constitutional crisis of October 1993. On the night after Yeltsin's televised address, the Supreme Soviet declared Yeltsin removed from presidency, by virtue of his breaching the constitution, and Vice-President Alexander Rutskoy was sworn in as the acting president. By early October, Yeltsin had secured the support of Russia's army and ministry of interior forces. In a massive show of force, Yeltsin called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, Russia's parliament building.

As Supreme Soviet was dissolved, in December 1993 elections to the newly established parliament, the State Duma, were held. Candidates associated with Yeltsin's economic policies were overwhelmed by a huge anti-Yeltsin vote, the bulk of which was divided between the Communist Party and ultra-nationalists. The referendum, however, held at the same time, approved the new constitution, which significantly expanded the powers of the president, giving Yeltsin a right to appoint the members of the government, to dismiss the prime minister and, in some cases, to dissolve the Duma.

In December 1994, Yeltsin ordered the military invasion of Chechnya in an attempt to restore Moscow's control over the republic. Nearly two years later Yeltsin withdrew federal forces from the devastated Chechnya under a 1996 peace agreement brokered by Alexander Lebed, then Yeltsin's security chief. Chechnya was the ultimate downfall for Boris Yeltsin: he chose military intervention which led to 15,000 deaths, most being civilians.

In February 1996, Yeltsin announced that he would seek a second term in the spring 1996 Russian presidential election. The announcement followed weeks of speculation that Yeltsin was at the end of his political career because of his health problems and growing unpopularity in Russia. Panic struck the Yeltsin team when opinion polls suggested that the ailing president could not win; some members of his entourage urged him to cancel presidential elections and effectively rule as dictator from then on. Instead, Yeltsin changed his campaign team, assigning a key role to his daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, and appointing Chubais as campaign manager. In the spring of 1996, Chubais and Yeltsin recruited a team of a handful of financial and media oligarchs to bankroll the Yeltsin campaign and guaranteed favorable media coverage of the president on national television and in leading newspapers. In return, Chubais allowed well-connected Russian business leaders to acquire majority stakes in some of Russia's most valuable state-owned assets. Yeltsin campaigned energetically, dispelling concerns about his health, and maintained a high media profile. To boost his popularity, Yeltsin promised to abandon some his more unpopular economic reforms, boost welfare spending, end the war in Chechnya, and pay wage and pension arrears. After the first round on 16 June Yeltsin appointed a highly popular candidate Alexander Lebed, who came in third in the first round, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, sacked at the latter's behest defence minister Pavel Grachev and on 20 June sacked a number of his siloviki, one of them being his chief of presidential security Alexander Korzhakov, viewed by many as Yeltsin's éminence grise. In the run-off on 3 July, with a turnout of 68.9%, Yeltsin won 53.8% of the vote and Zyuganov 40.3%, with the rest (5.9%) voting "against all".

During Yeltsin's presidency, Russia received US$ 40 billion in funds from the IMF and other international lending organizations. However, his opponents allege that most of these funds were stolen by people from Yeltsin's circle and placed in foreign banks. In 1998, a political and economic crisis emerged when Yeltsin's government defaulted on its debts, causing financial markets to panic and the ruble to collapse in the 1998 financial crisis. During the 1999 Kosovo war, Yeltsin strongly opposed the NATO military campaign against Yugoslavia, and warned of possible Russian intervention if NATO deployed ground troops to Kosovo. On 15 May 1999, Yeltsin survived another attempt of impeachment, this time by the democratic and communist opposition in the State Duma. On 9 August 1999 Yeltsin fired his prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, and for the fourth time, fired his entire cabinet. In Stepashin's place he appointed Vladimir Putin, relatively unknown at that time, and announced his wish to see Putin as his successor. On 31 December 1999, in a surprise announcement aired at 12:00 noon on Russian television and taped in the morning of the same day, Yeltsin said he had resigned and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had taken over as acting president, with elections due to take place on 26 March 2000.

Yeltsin maintained a low profile after his resignation, making almost no public statements or appearances. However, on 13 September 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis and nearly-concurrent terrorist attacks in Moscow, Putin launched an initiative to replace the election of regional governors with a system whereby they would be directly appointed by the president and approved by regional legislatures. Yeltsin, together with Mikhail Gorbachev, publicly criticized Putin's plan as a step away from democracy in Russia and a return to the centrally-run political apparatus of the Soviet era.

On 1 February 2006, Yeltsin celebrated his 75th birthday. He used this occasion as an opportunity to criticize a "monopolistic" U.S. foreign policy, and to state that Vladimir Putin was the right choice for Russia. He also disputed accusations of corruption.

Boris Yeltsin died of congestive heart failure on 23 April 2007 at the age of 76. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery on 25 April 2007, following a period during which his body had lain in state in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Yeltsin was the first Russian statesman in 113 years to be buried in a church ceremony, after Emperor Alexander III. He was also the first leader in Russian and Soviet history to die quietly in retirement having overseen a peaceful transfer to his successor, Lenin not having appointed a successor upon his death and Khrushchev being ousted in a coup. Yeltsin is survived by his wife, Naina Iosifovna Yeltsina, whom he married in 1956, and their two daughters Yelena and Tatyana, born in 1957 and 1959 respectively.