The task of leadership in the conditions of collapse of the Soviet Union has been a conspicuously difficult one. The legacy from the Communist period of a decaying economy, vast ecological disaster areas, uncertainty about the legitimacy of political institutions and the character of Russia's statehood meant that the problems facing the leadership in both the executive and legislative branches of government were grave indeed. They were compounded by a sense of loss of superpower status, together with concern for the fate of twenty-five million Russians, formerly Soviet citizens, who now found themselves in the Near Abroad–the former union republics of the USSR.

Yet, as President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin had a number of advantages both over his de facto predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev, and as compared with the leaders of almost all the other Soviet successor states. Yeltsin's victory in elections in three successive years–in the Moscow constituency of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in 1989, from his native Sverdlovsk (now restored to its old name, Ekaterinburg) in the election to the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia in 1990, and in the Presidential election of June 1991–gave him a greater democratic legitimacy than any other politician in the country.