However, Yeltsin's controversial “shock therapy” strategy, launched in January 1992 to effect the marketization of Russia, put intolerable strains on the economy and society and opened him to bitter criticism. The price liberalization resulted in a rapid impoverishment of the majority of the population. People were subjected to dubious privatization schemes, their lifelong savings made worthless by inflation, and millions suffered from the nonpayment of wages and pensions.

Yeltsin’s second presidential term (1996-1999), marked by prolonged spells of passivity and ill health on his part, appears to have been in many respects a period of wasted opportunities for Russia. A heart attack suffered between the first and second rounds of the presidential election in the summer of 1996 required that he undergo heart bypass surgery, which was performed in November 1996. Preparation for the surgery and recuperation from it left him unable to make all but the most pressing decisions for well over half a year.

He resumed a more normal schedule only in the spring of 1997, but even then Yeltsin was unable to exercise the duties of his office with any consistency or impose a common policy line on the huge presidential administration. On 31 December 1999, Boris Yeltsin announced his voluntary resignation and transferred the reigns of power into the hands of his prime-minister, Vladimir Putin. In his resignation speech he asked the Russian people to forgive him for the failures of his reforms.

Most of the jokes of that time mainly revolved around his ill health, inarticulateness and his love of drinking.