Seven of the eight leaders of the Soviet Union were military men — all but the last. Gorbachev was trained as a lawyer and worked as a bureaucrat of some kind.

Seven of the eight leaders of the Soviet Union were military men — all but the last. Gorbachev was trained as a lawyer and worked as a bureaucrat of some kind. Yeltsin, a civil engineer, followed Gorbachev in 1991 as the first President of Russia. Putin followed Yeltsin in 1999.