Former USSR Prime Minister surrendered his senatorial mandate ahead of schedule

At the end of September, the powers of the oldest member of the Federation Council, 94-year-old Nikolai Ryzhkov, were terminated early. He represented the government of the Belgorod region in the upper house since 2003. From the beginning of perestroika in 1985 until 1991, he was chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Ryzhkov remained the last living head of the USSR government.

Nikolai Ryzhkov was born on September 28, 1929 in the village of Dyleevka, Donetsk region (now DPR) in the family of a hereditary miner.

After graduating from the Kramatorsk Mechanical Engineering College in 1950, he worked at the Ural Heavy Engineering Plant named after. S. Ordzhonikidze (in 1971 renamed to PA Uralmash). In 1959 he graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute named after. S. M. Kirov with a degree in mechanical engineer. By 1970, Ryzhkov had grown from a shift foreman to the director of Uralmash, which specialized in the production of armored vehicles and equipment for the ferrous metallurgy. He headed the plant until 1975. He owns six inventions in the field of metallurgy and welding.

From 1956 until 1991, Ryzhkov was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since 1975, he became the first deputy minister of heavy and transport engineering of the USSR, Vladimir Zhigalin. In 1979, he moved to the position of first deputy chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan), which was responsible for planning the development of the national economy and monitoring the implementation of these plans.

In 1982, Ryzhkov went to work in the Central Committee (Central Committee) of the CPSU, first as secretary, and then as head of the economic department. From April 23, 1985 to July 13, 1990, he was a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. At the same time, in 1988, he defended his dissertation at the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee on the topic “Managing the quality of industrial products in new economic conditions.” Received an academic degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences.

At the beginning of perestroika, on September 27, 1985, Ryzhkov became chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, replacing Nikolai Tikhonov in this post. Ryzhkov supported the course of the last General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev, to create “market socialism” while maintaining planned economic management. However, in 1992, in an interview with the New Look newspaper, Ryzhkov claimed that in 1988 he introduced the concepts of competition and monopolism into the domestic economy. During the deteriorating economic situation in the country, Ryzhkov’s work was repeatedly criticized. After a massive heart attack on January 14, 1991, Ryzhkov was dismissed and received a lifetime personal pension.

In 1986, he headed the headquarters for eliminating the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and in 1988, he coordinated the same work after the earthquake in the city of Spitak in Armenia.

He was given the nickname “crying Bolshevik,” the authorship of which is attributed to People’s Deputy of the USSR Anatoly Sobchak. Among the versions according to which Ryzhkov began to be called so is the inability to conduct a public discussion or trembling in his voice when discussing topical issues in the Supreme Council of the USSR.

Nikolai Ryzhkov headed the government at a time when the scale of economic and managerial challenges and gaps was growing, and understanding of the situation was delayed due to the inertia of the perception of the Soviet economic model as crisis-free, says political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov. In his opinion, Ryzhkov “coped with it as best he could.” “He sometimes created expectations around himself and was the second most popular figure after Gorbachev (for example, after the earthquake in Armenia), sometimes perceived as a symbol of weakness and helplessness. As a result, he did not go down in history either as a hero or as an allergen,” the expert concluded.

In 1991 he ran for president of the RSFSR from the CPSU party. Candidates were then nominated in pairs, according to the American model, for president and vice president. Paired with Ryzhkov was the aspiring politician, General Boris Gromov, who led the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The Ryzhkov-Gromov pair received 16.85% of the votes and lost to the non-party Boris Yeltsin, who ran together with Alexander Rutsky and received 57.3% of the votes. The post of Vice President of Russia was abolished in 1993.

In 1995 and 1999 Ryzhkov was elected as a deputy of the State Duma of the II and III convocations from the Belgorod electoral district. During his first parliamentary term, he was a member of the Committee on CIS Affairs and Relations with Compatriots, then on the Committee on Conversion and High Technologies. From 1996 to 1998 – Chairman of the Executive Committee of the People’s Patriotic Union of Russia (NPSU), after which, until 2000, co-chairman of the NPSR. During his second term, he was a member of the Committee on Energy, Transport and Communications, but was not a member of factions or parliamentary groups.

The former chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR represented the government of the Belgorod region in the Federation Council since 2003. He was reappointed to the position of senator in 2012, 2017, 2021. Ryzhkov headed the Federation Council Commission on Natural Monopolies from 2006 to 2011, and was also a member of the Committee on Federal Structure, Regional Policy, Local Government and Northern Affairs. After the start of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine in 2022, Ryzhkov was included in the sanctions lists of Ukraine, the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland and other countries.

On September 25, 2023, Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko prematurely terminated the powers of Senator Ryzhkov. He was the oldest member of the upper house of parliament. Ryzhkov is now 94 years old.

Ryzhkov was the last member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee to hold an active position in modern Russia. Of the other living members of the Politburo, only 94-year-old Vadim Medvedev, one of the authors of perestroika in the USSR, remains. His latest jobs are the Russian non-governmental NGO Gorbachev Foundation and the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.