The August 1991 hardline attempt to overthrow the reformist Gorbachev was an attempt to keep the Soviet Union from disintegrating, the organizers said. But it backfired and precipitated the end of the U.S.S.R., which collapsed four months later. Yeltsin is shown here from another view, reading a statement from atop an armoured personnel carrier. (Associated Press)

His finest hour came on Aug. 19, 1991, when he clambered onto the tanks surrounding Russia's parliament buildings and transformed them into his own personal soapbox, in the end thwarting a coup by hardliners attempting to turn the Soviet Union away from its flirtation with democracy.

At the time, Boris Yeltsin was the newly elected president of Russia, which was still only a satellite in the Soviet constellation. But his defiance of the hardliners made him democracy's hero around the world and catapulted him into the top job, where he ended up presiding over the demise of the Soviet Union and enduring his own personal demons in the process.

A timeline of his life and career:

1931, Feb. 1. Born to a peasant family in the Ural Mountains and baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. A few years later, Yeltsin's father is arrested during the Stalin-era purges but is subsequently released.

1955. Graduates from Ural Polytechnic Institute as a construction engineer and marries a year later.

1969. Becomes the Communist party official in charge of construction in Sverdlovsk region, one of Soviet Union's most important industrial areas. He had only joined the party in 1961, at the relatively late age of 30.

1985, April. Brought to Moscow by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who puts Yeltsin in charge of construction for the entire Soviet Union.

1985, Dec. 24. Named party chief for Moscow, where he takes on the existing machine and cuts back on privileges for party workers.

1987, November. Fired as Moscow party chief after a speech in which he slams the party leadership; is hospitalized with heart problems, an infirmity that will dog him for the rest of his life.

1988, February. Dropped from Politburo. Gorbachev says that Yeltsin will never be allowed back in politics.

1989, March 26. Makes a stunning political comeback, winning election to the Soviet parliament with almost 90 per cent of the vote in his Moscow precinct. His campaign focused on corruption within the political elites.

1989, September. First visit to the U.S. is less than a success. Newspapers report that he is drinking heavily. His aides blame jet lag and sleeping pills for his looking so unsteady in public appearances.

1990, March 4. Elected to the Russian Federation's new parliament from his hometown of Sverdlovsk. Two months later, on May 29, chosen chair of the Russian parliament, effectively president of Russia, in what is widely viewed as a huge political rebuff to his one-time mentor, Gorbachev.

1990, July 12. Stuns the political world by quitting the Communist party and striding out of a party congress in a moment of high drama. The departure sets the scene for a confrontation with Gorbachev, then still president of the Soviet Union.

1991, June 12. Wins the Russian election, making him Russia's first popularly elected president. In a speech shortly after the vote, he vows to make the individual, not the state, "the measure of all things."

1991, August 18-21. In an attempted coup by hardliners, Soviet President Gorbachev is put under house arrest while vacationing in the Crimea but Yeltsin is somehow not detained. In his moment of glory, Yeltsin climbs on top of a tank in front of the Russian parliament building and urges his fellow citizens to defend democracy. The coup collapses and Yeltsin comes out of the event as the country's most powerful leader.

1991, Dec. 8. Yeltsin meets secretly with republic leaders from Ukraine and Belarus, behind Gorbachev's back, and they emerge with a plan to dissolve the Soviet Union and form a new Commonwealth of Independent States.

1991, Dec. 25. Gorbachev resigns and turns the Soviet nuclear arsenal over to Yeltsin, who quickly moves into Gorbachev's Kremlin office. One week later, Yeltsin begins to dismantle 75 years of Communist economics by lifting price controls on many goods.

1993, January. At a summit with then U.S. president George H. Bush, pledges a two-thirds cut in Russian nuclear arms, the START II treaty.

1993, March. A conservative Russian parliament, upset with the quick pace of reform, passes a resolution authorizing it to suspend and remove the president.

1993, April 25. Wins a nationwide referendum on his reforms, with 59 per cent approving, but Russian lawmakers continue to battle his policies.

1993, September. Disbands the Soviet-era parliament and announces new parliamentary elections for December. Parliamentarians defy his order and swear in then vice-president Alexander Rutskoi as the country's president. Troops are mobilized and the crisis is temporarily defused, but within a few weeks, Yeltsin has to declare a state of emergency in Moscow after parliamentary supporters overwhelm riot police and seize government buildings. Dozens are killed in the melee.

1993, Oct. 4. Orders troops to surround parliament building, and a full-scale tank and artillery assault is commenced. By some reports, as many as 140 people die in street fighting.

1993, Dec. 12. A new constitution is approved, giving the president sweeping powers and guaranteeing private property and individual rights. But Yeltsin's reformers fail to win a majority in the parliament and the old schisms are still apparent.

1994, June. Russia enters a formal partnership with NATO, its long-time adversary.

1994, Dec. 11. Sends troops into Chechnya, the Caucasus republic that declared independence in 1991. It is the beginning of a disastrous military campaign that will cost the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers and citizens over the ensuing years.

1995, October. Hospitalized for nearly a month with heart problems, two days after returning from a U.S. summit with then president Bill Clinton. Aides cite exhaustion.

1996, July. Wins re-election but is hospitalized for heart problems and takes nearly a month off. Aides admit much later that Yeltsin suffered a heart attack.

1996, October. Fires national security chief Alexander Lebed, one of the government's more popular ministers.

1996, November. Undergoes successful quintuple bypass surgery performed by an American surgeon. While he is recovering from the surgery and a bout of pneumonia, Communists in parliament try to impeach him. He orders the last of the Russian troops out of Chechnya.

1997, March. Returns to office, determined to restore order in an apparently chaotic government, and orders a sweeping shakeup. He appoints Anatoly Chubais as his first deputy prime minister and defends him through a series of controversies. Five senior aides or ministers are fired over the ensuing seven months.

1998, March. Fires the entire cabinet, including Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who is the first of four prime ministers Yeltsin will sack over the next year and a half.

1998, August. The Russian economy collapses and the ruble goes into a tailspin that lasts more than a year, appearing to sink Yeltsin's remaining popularity with it. The Duma rejects Yeltsin's prime minister nomination twice and Yeltsin fires back with a KGB official, Yevegeny Primakov, who lasts eight months in the job before Yeltsin fires him.

1999, Aug. 9. Fires his fourth prime minister and names Vladimir Putin, a 15-year veteran of the KGB, as acting prime minister and his successor as president.

1999, Dec. 31. Makes a dramatic, emotional address to the nation, in which he apologizes for his mistakes, asks his audience for forgiveness and unexpectedly resigns immediately, after eight years in office. Putin succeeds him as president and goes on to win the presidential elections in March 2000.

2007, April 23. Yeltsin dies of heart failure at age 76.

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