Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born on February 1, 1931.

After graduating from Urals Polytechnical Institute in 1955, he worked as a construction worker in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg).

In 1961, he joined the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union (CPSU).

In 1981, he was elected a member of the central committee of the CPSU.

In 1985, he was appointed first secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU and in 1986, an alternate member of the party's top decision making body the politburo of the central committee.

July 1989, he was elected a co-chairman of the interregional parliamentary group.

May 1990, he became president of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. July 12, 1990, at the 28th Congress of the CPSU, he announced his withdrawal from the party.

June 12, 1991, he was elected president of the Russian Federation. June 1996, he won a second term as president.

August 18, 1991, hard-liners attempted a coup against Gorbachev. Yeltsin famously defied the coup while standing on a tank.

December 8, 1991: Yeltsin, and leaders of Belarus and Ukraine, declared Soviet Union extinct.

October 3, 1993, Yeltsin declared state of emergency in Moscow after supporters of hard-line parliament overwhelm riot police, seized government buildings.

February 18, 1999, Parliamentary panel finalized impeachment charges against Yeltsin.

May 12, 1999, One day before impeachment hearings in parliament, Yeltsin fired Yevgeny Primakov, and named Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin as a replacement.

August 9, 1999, Yeltsin fired Stepashin and named Vladimir Putin, the head of the Federal Security Service, the acting prime minister. The president also said Putin was his preferred successor.

December 31, 1999, he resigned as president and transferred power to Putin.

The former Russian president had been suffering from heart diseases. In November 1996, he underwent a successful quintuple heart bypass operation in the Central Clinical Hospital.

Source: China Daily/agencies