Boris Yeltsin Independent Presidential elections were held in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) on 12 June 1991.

[4] Yelstin made an active effort to push for the creation of an office of president and for a popular election to be held to fill it.

[6] Following the referendum, there was a period of more than a week in which a stalemate had caused the Congress of People's Deputies to go without deciding whether or not to vote on whether the Russian Federation should have a directly elected president.

[19] Originally, the election law stipulated that, once sworn in, the president would be required to renounce their membership of any political parties.

[4] Work on drafting a law to outline the presidency itself began on 24 April, with approximately two months until the inaugural holder was set to occupy the office.

[19] Under the initial draft the president was the chief executive in the RSFSR, but did not have the right to dismiss the Supreme Soviet or the Congress of People's Deputies or suspend their activities.

[19] On 25 May, the newly founded conservatives group in the Congress of People's Deputies blocked legislation championed by Yeltsin that would have explicitly allowed the president to remove local executives from office if the RSFSR Constitutional Court found them guilty of violating Russian Federation laws.

[12] The Supreme Soviet committee that had been tasked with redrafting the Russian Constitution deadlocked over the powers of the presidency.

[30] Ultimately, Yeltsin succeeded in capturing a majority of the votes cast in the first round, negating the need for a runoff to be held.

Rather than heightening rhetoric and rallying voters, Yeltsin took a far more relaxed approach, taking very few shots at his challengers and offering very little specifics in regards to policy.

[30] In contrast, his opponents, trailing Yeltsin's gargantuan lead and having very little time left to decrease their deficit, took many shots at him and at each other.

[26] Zhirinovsky unsuccessfully attempted to contest the results of the election, accusing Yeltsin of using the resources of his office to assist his own campaign effort.

[26] Despite officially remaining neutral and endorsing no candidate, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sought to prevent a victory by frontrunner Boris Yeltsin.

[32] On 30 April, Colonel General Nikolai Shlyaga, chief of the Main Political Administration, told representatives of that body that the army should be working to influence the outcome of the RSFSR presidential election.

[32] Shlyaga called for the establishment of election committees and urged that servicemen be briefed on the relative merits of the presidential candidates.

[32] In early June, the Defense Ministry issued a directive to commanders in the city of Arkhangelsk forbidding "spy-democrats" from campaigning for the RSFSR presidency among military units.

[33] On the eve of the election, in what was seen as a politically motivated move, the chief Soviet prosecutor announced that he was looking into currency violations by Yeltsin.

[6] The 11 June edition of Sovetskaya Rossiya featured a front-page article written by Nikolai Trubin, the Procurator General of the Soviet Union, which denounced Yeltsin for illegal offers to sell millions of rubles for dollars at several times the official rate.

[34][35] This was a deal that was never implemented but for which then-RSFSR Deputy Prime Minister Gennadii Fil'shin had resigned the previous February.

[34][35] Actions to sway the election against Yeltsin were not perpetrated solely by officials in Soviet Union government.

It was soon reported that Kravchenk might possibly try to violate his agreement with the Russian government and block regular broadcasts by RTR during the campaigning period, depriving Yeltsin's government of their own state media outlet to utilize as a campaign tool;[40] however, the station was allowed to launch its regular broadcasts on 13 May.

Some ballots were distributed which had mistakenly been printed without a seal containing the signature of an electoral commission member on their reverse sides.

On May 16, an explosion occurred in the room being used to store the signatures being gathered for Yeltsin's candidacy at the Democratic Russia headquarters in Moscow.

[43] Sovetskaya Rossiya placed blame on the Libertarian (Radical) Party of the Soviet Union for perpetrating the attack, however, they denied involvement.

[44] A stand at the building of Orenburg's socio-political information centre containing Ryzhkov campaign material was destroyed.

[46] A boycott of the election in Bashkortostan was encouraged by the newly founded group A Movement for a Sovereign Bashkortistan.

On the day of the election, an analysis by The Times indicated that even the opinion polls that were the most pessimistic of Yeltsin's support still showed him garnering between 36% and 52% of the vote.