President of Russia
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The president of Russia, officially the president of the Russian Federation, is the executive head of state of Russia. The president is the chair of the Federal State Council and the supreme commander
Владимир Путин
Vladimir Putin takes the presidential oath in 2012.
Chain of office
President Vladimir Putin delivering the 2012 Address to the Federal Assembly
Boris Yeltsin
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Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1990. He lat
President of Russia
…office in Russia. The modern incarnation of the office emerged from the president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In 1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the RSFSR, becoming the first non-Communist Party member to be elected into a major Soviet political role. He played a crucial…
Official portrait, 1992
Yeltsin (second from left) with his childhood friends in the 1940s
In 1976, Yeltsin was interviewed by Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party, who decided that he was an appropriate choice to become First Secretary of the party's Sverdlovsk obkom.
Mikhail Gorbachev took office as the General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985; he soon promoted Yeltsin to a job in Moscow.