Boris

What can I say. I was a Russian hero. I was born in 1931 to a poor rural farming family and we all lived in a small wooden hut. My Father was put in a Gulag for 3 years in the 1930's for crimes against the state. To cut a long story short I was born into a family that was hardly done by. I came to power on a wave of high expectations. On 12 June 1991 was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic with 57% of the vote, becoming the first popularly elected president in Russian history. But I never recovered my popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s. My era was a traumatic period in Russian history; a period marked by widespread corruption, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems. By the time I left office, I was a deeply unpopular figure in Russia, with an approval rating as low as two percent by some estimates. However I completely relaxed censorship and freed up the Media which was able to say what it liked without government interference. This had never happened before in the History of Russia. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, I vowed to transform Russia's Communist planned economy into a capitalist market economy, endorsed a programme of "shock therapy," cutting Soviet-era price controls and introducing drastic cuts in state spending. The reforms immediately devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare entitlement programs. 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 wiped out a lot of personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty. In August 1991, I won international acclaim for casting myself as a democrat and defying the August coup attempt of 1991 by hard-line Communists. My confrontations with the parliament climaxed in the October 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, when I called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, blasting out my opponents in parliament. Later in 1993, I imposed a new constitution with strong presidential powers, which was approved by referendum in December. In 1996 I called a Presidental election. I was worried as my approval ratings were falling and my associates told me to cancell the elections and just run as a dictator for the rest of the time. I flatly REFUSED to do this and sacked all my media and campaign people and enlisted new people to run the campaign for me. I got some people to bankroll my re-election campaign and got the general media involved - they liked me because I had removed all controls of censorship from them - and then we really got things going when I used american style election gimmicks. They had never been used before in any way in Russia - I got on stage with a rock band - was seen on a playground swing saying " lets go higher" dancing in the streets with ordinary people - we told the people things like " we are the future - stick with us" The opposition communist party were appealing the "good old days" in Russia - the old USSR - when we were a "superpower" and they asked the people to vote for them to bring back the old days. We hinted there would be "civil war" if this happened and talked up all sorts of problems and the media made me out be a god. The oppositon communist party saw their lead whittle away. I won. Unfortunately I had to repay favours to people who helped me win. Following the 1998 Russian financial crisis, I was at the end of my political career. Just hours before the first day of 2000, I made a surprise announcement of my resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of Vladimir Putin. Mostly Hated by the Russian people - for going at reform too fast. Loved by the rest of the ( Western ) world. I Dragged the USSR out of the Communist Era into the Modern Capitalist (market economy) World. I did it too fast. And I did not realise that SOME capitalist powers were bad. Russia was not ready for it to go so fast. WOW. We went at it like a "Bull at a gate" to quote an Australian saying, However history will be kind to me because of what I did. I was the guy who stood on top of the tank and took control of the former inward looking USSR and turned it into a modern outward looking country I set up Independent free speech media in Russia - and allowed criticism of the Kremlin for the first time in Russian History. I became very friendly with (then US Presdent) Bill Clinton who saw me 15 times while I was in office. I resigned in 1999 and President Putin took over my job - he is still President today. I was the first democratically elected Russian President ever. I died in April 2007 at the age of 76.