An interesting museum Boris Yeltsin was opened in Yekaterinburg City, an emerging business district on the shore of the City Pond, in 2015. It is devoted to B. N. Yeltsin, the first President of Russia. For all those who are interested in the modern history of Russia, the museum is a mandatory place to visit.
The museum consists not of stands with exhibits but of interactive halls where every visitor can feel oneself the participant of the events the museum is devoted to. The first halls are devoted to the young years of Yeltsin, which he spent in Yekaterinburg, as well as his career at Sverdlovsk regional party committee.
The main halls are devoted to that period in the life of Yeltsin when he was the President of Russia. The first hall is a typical Soviet flat with a TV set broadcasting the ballet «Swan Lake.» Behind the door of this «flat» is a space with large plasma panels. On them you can see the events of August 19, 1991 when the members of GKChP (State Committee on the State of Emergency) made an attempt to seize power in the country. As is known, it was Yeltsin who mobilized people to put up resistance.
In the next hall the visitors can see the empty shelves of the shops as they were in the last years of the reign of Gorbachev, as well as the exposition devoted to the Belavezha Accords, breakup of the USSR and the first years of the so-called Gaidar`s reforms, which led to the mass impoverishment of people. It was the most difficult years after the disintegration of the USSR.
Then you can see the events of the putsch of 1993 when the Parliament headed by R. Khasbulatov refused to subject to Yeltsin, which resulted in the military confrontation on the streets of Moscow. Each successive hall is devoted to a separate year of the reign of Yeltsin: the elections of 1996, Chechen wars, a satirical TV show «Kukly» (Puppets), the default of 1998 and finally the memorable speech of Yelt-sin on December 31, 1999 when he announced about the handing over the reins of power to V. V. Putin.
