Should Boris Yeltsin be remembered as the father of Russian democracy?

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The man was the was the first president of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Should Boris Yeltsin be remembered as the father of Russian democracy? He ascended to the presidency on a wave of high expectations and was on 12 June 1991 elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic with 57% of the vote, becoming the first popularly elected president in Russian history. But after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s, Yeltsin never recovered his popularity . The Yeltsin 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 he left office, Yeltsin was a deeply unpopular figure in Russia, with an approval rating as low as two percent by some estimates. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Yeltsin, vowing 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, Yeltsin won international plaudits for casting himself as a democrat and defying the August coup attempt of 1991 by hard-line Communists. But he left office widely despised as a desperate, ailing autocrat among the Russian population. As president, Yeltsin's conception of the presidency was highly autocratic. Yeltsin either acted as his own prime minister (until June 1992) or appointed men of his choice, regardless of parliament. His confrontations with the parliament climaxed in the October 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, when Yeltsin called up tanks to shell the Russian White House, blasting out his opponents in parliament. Later in 1993, Yeltsin imposed a new constitution with strong presidential powers, which was approved by referendum in December. Following the 1998 Russian financial crisis, Yeltsin was at the end of his political career. Just hours before the first day of 2000, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of Vladimir Putin. [Background source: www.wikipedia.org]