Yeltsin was born in a small village near the Ural Mountains on February 1, 1931. As a boy, he lost two fingers from his left hand after he and his friends played with grenades they had stolen from an army store. Yeltsin worked as a builder, then joined the Communist Party in 1961. He was the leader of the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) during the 1970s. One of the things he did was demolish the building where Nicholas II and his family were shot.