Boris Yeltsin, who has died at the age of 76, secured his place in history by precipitating the end of the Soviet Union and becoming Russia’s first elected president. But by the end of his reign, he had fumbled the founding of the democratic, free-market economy that had been his dream.

Always a flamboyant leader, he was a member of the highest communist council – the Politburo of the Communist party of the Soviet Union – when he began to lead the opposition to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. He then positioned himself to become Russia’s first president, committed to democracy, constitutionalism and a market economy.