Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born into a peasant family in the village of Butka in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) Region on February 1, 1931. Mother, Klavdia Vasilyevna, 84, lives in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg). Father, Nikolai Ignatyevich, was a Jack of all trades: ploughman, stove-setter, carpenter. He died at the age of 72. There were two other children in the family apart from Boris, a son and daughter. The President's sister, Valentina Nikolayevna, an engineer, lives in the town of Berezniki. His brother, Mikhail Nikolayevich, is an assemblyman with a construction agency in Yekaterinburg.

In 1955 Boris Yeltsin graduated from the construction department of the Ural Polytechnic as a civil engineer. He mastered 12 construction professions and worked as foreman, senior foreman, chief engineer, chief of the construction department of the "Yuzhgorstroi" trust and chief of the Sverdlovsk house-building plant.

In 1968 he started to work at the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU of which he became first secretary in 1976. A member of the CPSU Central Committee since 1981. Since April 1985, chief of the CPSU Central Committees construction department. Between 1985 and 1986 -- secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. From 1986 to February 1988 -- alternate member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. For two years, from 1985 to 1987, headed the Moscow city committee of the CPSU. At the end of 1987, after a speech at the October plenum of the CPSU Central Committee (October 21, 1987) in which he criticized the country's leaders, Yeltsin was removed from his post as the first secretary of the Moscow party committee and stripped of his alternate membership in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee.

From 1987 to 1989 Yeltsin was the first vice-chairman of the USSR State Committee for Construction and a minister of the USSR.

In the spring of 1989 (on March 25) Yeltsin was elected people's deputy of the USSR in the 1st national territorial constituency of Moscow, with more than five million people voting for him (88.44% of the votes). At the 1st congress of people's deputies of the USSR, Yeltsin was elected to the Supreme Soviet. While working in the USSR parliament, Yeltsin headed the committee for construction and architecture.

In March 1990, Yeltsin became a people's deputy of the Russian Federation and on May 29, 1990, in a contested election at the 1st congress of people's deputies of the Russian Federation, he was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation.

On July 12 1990, he withdrew from the CPSU at the party's 28th congress. A year later (on June 12, 1991), during direct and open general elections, Yeltsin was elected the first President of Russia (with 57% of the votes cast in his favour). Since November 6, 1991, Yeltsin has been the chairman of the government and since May 1992 the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Boris Yeltsin has written two books, "My Confession" and "Until the Very End."

Yeltsin's wife Naina Iosifovna (nee Girina) graduated from the Ural Polytechnic also as a civil engineer. For almost 30 years she worked at the "Vodokanalproject" institute in Sverdlovsk. The Yeltsin's have two daughters: Yelena (born in 1957, graduated from the Ural Polytechnic) and Tatyana (born in 1959, graduated from Moscow State University's department of computer mathematics and cybernetics, a programmer). The Yeltsin's also have three grandchildren: Katya, Masha and Boris.

In his spare time, Boris Yeltsin likes to play tennis, while during his younger years he excelled at volleyball.