MOSCOW - Boris Yeltsin, who died Monday at the age of 76, oversaw the transformation of Russia out of all recognition under his presidency.
Born into a peasant family in February 1931 in the region of Sverdlovsk, in the Urals, Yeltsin was trained as an engineer and embarked on a political career in 1968, becoming head of the local communist party.
Here are key dates in that career:

1985
Dec 24: Promoted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin is named first secretary of the Moscow Communist party.

1986
February: Yeltsin is appointed candidate member of the Politburo and joins the presidium of the supreme soviet (parliament) of the Soviet Union.

1987
November 11: Yeltsin is dismissed from his post as Moscow first secretary after criticising Gorbachev.

1988
February 17: Yeltsin is dismissed as candidate member of the Politburo and loses ministerial rank the following May.

1989
March 26: Yeltsin returns to the political trail, winning a seat in the Soviet parliament with 89.4 percent of the vote and becoming effective head of the "democratic opposition."

1990
June 12: Yeltsin is elected speaker of parliament.
July 12: Yeltsin resigns from the Communist party during its 28th Congress.

1991
June 12: Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Federation with 57.4 percent of the popular vote.
August: After an attempted hardline coup against Gorbachev, Yeltsin heads the popular resistance from parliament headquarters.
November 6: Yeltsin decrees the dissolution of the Communist party on Russian territory.
December 8: Yeltsin and the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus proclaim the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

1992
January: Following the resignation of Gorbachev, Yeltsin launches an ambitious programme of market reforms, removing price controls and privatising key sectors of the economy.

1993
September 21: Yeltsin dissolves the Russian parliament unconstitutionally, triggering a rebellion by opposition deputies.
October 3-4: Yeltsin orders tanks to shell the parliament building where the deputies have taken refuge.
December 12: A referendum approves a new Russian constitution. Elections are held for a new parliament.

1994
December 11: Yeltsin orders Russian troops into the separatist southern republic of Chechnya, triggering an eighteen-month conflict that will leave tens of thousands of dead.

1995
July, October: Yeltsin suffers two heart attacks, requiring lengthy absences from the Kremlin.

1996
June 27: Days before the second round of presidential elections, Yeltsin suffers another heart attack. Kremlin spokesmen say only that he has "lost his voice."
July 3: Yeltsin is reelected president with 53.8 percent of the vote.
November 5: Yeltsin undergoes a quintuple heart bypass operation lasting seven hours.

1997
May 27: Yeltsin travels to Paris to sign a treaty with NATO countries in which Russia reluctantly accepts the Atlantic alliance's enlargement to the east.
October 9: Yeltsin announces that he will not seek another mandate.

1998
July 17: A visibly flagging Yeltsin attends ceremonies marking the reburial of Nicholas II, the last Russian tsar, and his family in Saint Petersburg.
August: Russia plunges into financial crisis following a massive de facto devaluation of the ruble. Yeltsin plumbs new depths of unpopularity as living standards plummet further and new allegations of corruption at official levels surface.

1999
August 9: Yeltsin appoints the head of the security services, Vladimir Putin, as prime minister, saying he sees Putin as his preferred successor.
September 23: Russian warplanes bomb the Chechen capital Grozny for the first time since the end of the first Chechen conflict in 1996, triggering a new war.
December 31: Yeltsin resigns ahead of the end of his presidential term.

04/23/2007 14:47 GMT