Boris Yeltsin

Born in the Urals in 1931, Yeltsin worked construction before climbing the Communist Party ladder to First Secretary in Sverdlovsk. He backed Gorbachev's perestroika, then broke left, calling the reforms too timid - in 1987 he became the first person to resign from the Politburo, cementing his anti-establishment credentials. By 1991 he was Russia's first popularly elected head of state and a key architect of the Soviet Union's formal dissolution that December. As president of the new Russian Federation, he launched economic shock therapy: privatization, price liberalization, the ruble set loose. The result was volatility, inflation, and a handful of oligarchs seizing much of the national wealth. In 1993 he dissolved parliament unconstitutionally, survived an impeachment and armed uprising, then ruled by decree under a new constitution that magnified presidential power. Two brutal Chechen wars followed. He resigned at the end of 1999, handing power to Vladimir Putin, and died in 2007 - once wildly popular, ultimately widely despised, his legacy split between the freedoms he introduced and the wreckage he left behind.