YELTSIN RESIGNS: THE OVERVIEW; Yeltsin Resigns, Naming Putin as Acting President To Run in March Election

Boris N. Yeltsin shocked his nation and the world today, announcing his resignation as president six months before the end of his term and handing over power to his favored successor, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Yeltsin, 68, concluded his political career on the same note of surprise and high drama that accompanied his entire path from early convert to perestroika to erratic master of a free but floundering Russia.

The man who became the first senior party boss to quit the Communist Party, who faced down Communist plotters from atop an armored personnel carrier and signed the breakup of the Soviet Union, chose a historic New Year's Eve to make his grand exit, and to try to assert control over a succession battle that could determine Russia's course for years to come.

By appointing Mr. Putin acting president today at a private Kremlin ceremony with a personal blessing by Aleksy II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Mr. Yeltsin seemed determined to try to put a lock on Mr. Putin's succession to the presidency in an election that will be held three months from now, on March 26, in accordance with the Russian Constitution. Mr. Putin will also remain prime minister.

''I am resigning ahead of time,'' Mr. Yeltsin told a bewildered nation in a noontime special broadcast filmed against the backdrop of a traditional Russian New Year's tree. ''I have realized that I have to do so. Russia must enter the next millennium with new politicians, with new personalities and with new smart, strong and energetic people.''

Mr. Putin, 47, is the latest and most popular of a string of prime ministers Mr. Yeltsin had appointed in hopes of finding a malleable and viable successor. Since his appointment in August, Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. official, has become Russia's most popular politician because of his tough-minded conduct of the war in Chechnya. He is now more than ever considered a strong favorite for the March elections.

There was speculation in Moscow that one factor in Mr. Yeltsin's timing was to push Mr. Putin forward before the war in Chechnya could begin to sour and his ratings to fall. One of Mr. Putin's first decrees as acting president was to grant Mr. Yeltsin immunity from criminal or administrative investigations, including protection of his papers, residence and other possessions from search and seizure. The decree, however, granted legal protection only to Mr. Yeltsin, and not to his relatives or aides.

Mr. Putin also reappointed Mr. Yeltsin's chief of staff, Aleksandr Voloshin. Political experts have long speculated that Mr. Yeltsin's family -- most notably his daughter and political confidante, Tatyana Dyachenko, 39 -- has been maneuvering in recent months to keep the presidency in friendly hands, in part to ensure their protection against further investigations into reported cases of high-level corruption and financial malfeasance.

The decree further guaranteed continued benefits, housing, salary and staff for Mr. Yeltsin and members of his family.

In a traditional presidential New Year's message televised tonight at midnight, Mr. Putin assured Russians that the handover of power would take place without a hitch, and without any abrupt changes in Russia's foreign or domestic policies.

''I am drawing your attention to the fact that there will be no power vacuum, even for a moment,'' he said in the midnight broadcast. ''There has been no vacuum, nor will there be one. I want to warn that any attempt to exceed the limits of the law, and Russia's Constitution, will be decisively crushed.

''Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, the right to private property -- all these basic principles of a civilized society will be reliably protected by the state.''

The president's unexpected decision, made on the eve of what is traditionally Russia's most festive holiday, was seen by some experts as a brilliant if manipulative stroke by a politician who once again showed that he has few peers on Russia's turbulent political scene. Several politicians, interviewed during the day on television, said they understood that the president had made the decision himself, perhaps as late as Thursday night, when he inexplicably failed to make an appearance at a New Year's Kremlin reception.

''It was a very strong move by the president,'' said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of Parliament. ''He did it at the most appropriate time, when popular support for Putin is at a high. Early elections will hamper all of the opposition. This will increase Putin's chance of being elected many times over.''

Although Mr. Yeltsin has been in and out of the hospital since 1996, when he underwent heart surgery after his re-election to a second term, his resignation today was widely attributed to political rather than health reasons. There was no suggestion from any quarter that he was forced out of office against his will.

''It is a brilliant decision, extremely precise and profound, and apart from anything else, very brave,'' said Anatoly B. Chubais, a top Kremlin adviser and the architect of Russia's privatization program. ''I think that this decision was very difficult for Boris Nikolayevich as a person.''

For the last decade, Mr. Yeltsin has dominated the Russian political stage like an erratic, lumbering bear, emerging from periodic bouts of poor health, purported drinking and lethargy with surprise moves calculated to confound his opponents and dazzle his political allies.

A master of drama and of the political moment, Mr. Yeltsin was among the first senior Soviet leaders to turn against Communist rule and to quit the Communist Party. Expelled from the Soviet leadership by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Mr. Yeltsin fought back to become the first elected leader of Russia and to preside over the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His resistance to an attempted Communist coup from atop an armored vehicle became one of the icons of the fall of Communism.

He shares major credit for the fact that Russians today have opportunities to speak out, to travel abroad, to publish and to practice their religion, in ways that were outlawed under the Communists.

But as critics have often noted, Mr. Yeltsin proved better at grand gestures and political intrigues than in governing the country. His rule has been marked by rising poverty, corruption and a slow erosion of the meaning of such concepts as democracy and a free market economy.

Under his watch, Russia's economy has seen the rise of a group of well-connected businessmen -- known here as the ''oligarchs'' -- who have grown fabulously rich through the sell-off of state-owned oil fields, factories and other property. And although the Russian media are now free, they are heavily controlled by business interests -- including some closely linked to the Kremlin -- that have used their television stations and newspapers to doctor the news and promote their political clans.

In a personal aside, which he himself noted was uncharacteristic, Mr. Yeltsin apologized today for his failures. ''I want to apologize for our unfulfilled dreams,'' he said. ''What we thought was easy has proved painfully difficult. I would like to apologize for having failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one go.

''I myself believed in this,'' he went on. ''We haven't managed to make this leap, and I was naive in thinking we would.''

Mr. Yeltsin rose to power through a bitter struggle with Mr. Gorbachev, pitting his personal popularity and his status as the first democratically elected leader of Russia against Mr. Gorbachev's leadership of a crumbling Soviet empire. The struggle culminated eight years ago, when Mr. Yeltsin joined the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus formally to dissolve the Soviet Union. Mr. Gorbachev stepped down three weeks later, and Mr. Yeltsin entered the Kremlin.

He also walked onto the world stage, where he has lobbied, harangued and bullied Western leaders as they learned to cope with Russia's new and turbulent democracy.

Mr. Yeltsin's blustering, sometimes peculiar political style has often led his opponents to count him out. But each time, he has proved them wrong -- in the late 1980's when he rallied liberal democratic forces after being dismissed from the top ranks of the Gorbachev-ruled Communist Party; in the 1996 elections when he won with a come-from-behind victory over the Communist leader Gennadi A. Zyuganov; in a failed impeachment drive last May, and now, in a four-month campaign run from the Kremlin to put a Yeltsin stamp of approval on Russia's next president.

Just last summer, Mr. Yeltsin's chances of controlling his succession looked weak. Beset by a wave of international scandals -- including reports that members of his family had accepted kickbacks from a Swiss construction company -- the Kremlin was losing the initiative to a powerful new political alliance, which united behind former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov and Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov of Moscow.

Days after Islamic rebels from the breakaway region of Chechnya staged an armed invasion of a neighboring Russian region, Mr. Yeltsin seized the movement to pick his sixth prime minister and heir apparent, Mr. Putin, who was then a member of the Kremlin administration and head of Russia's domestic intelligence service.

That move, followed by a full-scale war against the Chechen rebels now moving into its fourth month, dramatically altered Russia's political landscape. In August, Mr. Putin was a political nonentity, with no party, no popular support and the backing of a deeply distrusted president.

Four months later, as his popularity ratings top 50 percent, Mr. Putin is Russia's latest rising star, hailed at home as the architect of an uncompromising war that many Russians have welcomed as a belated, if brutal attempt to restore the battered authority of the Russian state.

Mr. Putin, who came to politics in the mid-1980's through the St. Petersburg branch of Russia's liberal democratic movement, showed in parliamentary elections on Dec. 19 that his personal popularity could be translated into political pull.

The surprisingly strong showing of two pro-government parties, both brand-new creations concocted by Kremlin strategists and blessed by Mr. Putin, broke the eight-year-long stalemate in Parliament, dominated until now by a Communist-led anti-Yeltsin opposition.

The parliamentary elections confirmed the Kremlin's expectations in Mr. Putin, and according to political experts, provided Mr. Yeltsin with the assurances he needed to let go of power.

But Mr. Putin's rise, carefully curried by Kremlin image-makers, is also traced to a shift in the national mood, as voters, tired of the uncertainties and corruption associated with Mr. Yeltsin's tenure, cast about for a strong leader, an image that the dour-faced Mr. Putin seems to fit.

By abruptly moving up the elections three months ahead of their June date, Mr. Yeltsin has succeeded in throwing Mr. Putin's opponents off balance, several politicians said in televised interviews today.

''I think that today there are no other equal contenders for this post,'' said Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, a former prime minister and onetime favorite successor, who, like many other political leaders, has already signed onto the Putin bandwagon.

''Yeltsin, by his step, signaled that we have to consolidate and the society city will consolidate behind Putin,'' Mr. Chernomyrdin said.