"We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it you don't notice." Yeltsin, Boris Nikolayevich, president of Russia, elected shortly before the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991. Yeltsin, who was elected to a second term 1996, is a central figure in the transition away from communism in the former USSR and has dominated Russian politics in the last decade. Early Life In 1930, Ignaty Yeltsin, a well-off peasant of Butka village was declared "kulak". His mi ....