In its obituary for Boris Yeltsin, the NYT told readers that "Mr. Yeltsin�s actions ensured that there would be no turning back to the centralized Soviet command economy, which had strangled growth and reduced a country of talented and cultured people and rich in natural resources to a beggar among nations."
According to the Penn World tables, Russia's per capita GDP was 22 percent lower when Yeltsin left office in 1999 than when he took office in 1991. The country also saw a sharp decline in life expectancy and other measures of well-being.
Since Yeltsin left office, the economy has grown rapidly, more than regaining the ground lost in the Yeltsin years. This growth was associated with a reversal of some key Yeltsin policies, most importantly Yeltsin's policy of maintaining a fixed exchange rate against the dollar.
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