Murtaza Rakhimov will rest over Belaya – Newspaper Kommersant No. 5 (7450) of 01/13/2023

On Friday, the funeral of the first president of Bashkiria, Murtaza Rakhimov, who died on January 11, will be held in Ufa. According to unofficial data, the cause of death of the 88-year-old politician was thrombosis caused by covid. The head of the republic, Radiy Khabirov, ordered to perpetuate the memory of Mr. Rakhimov. Corresponding proposals should be sent to him by members of the regional government, parliament, as well as the authorities of Ufa and the Kugarchinsky district, where the future president was born.

Murtaza Rakhimov, who led Bashkiria from 1990 to 2010 (the first three years as chairman of the Supreme Council of the republic, and then as its first president), will be buried on January 13 at the Muslim cemetery in Ufa, located on the slope of the Belaya River. This decision was made at a meeting of the state commission for organizing the funeral, formed on the morning of January 12 under the chairmanship of the head of Bashkiria, Radiy Khabirov. The farewell ceremony will take place at the Bashkortostan State Concert Hall and will be broadcast live on three local TV channels. In connection with the funeral ceremony, the Ufa mayor’s office warned of blocking a number of streets in the city center. The republican government, the State Assembly (parliament), the administrations of Ufa and the Kugarchinsky district were instructed to make proposals to perpetuate the memory of the former president.

Mr. Rakhimov died January 11 in Ufa after a long illness. According to unofficial data, death occurred as a result of thrombosis resulting from a coronavirus infection. On February 7, he was supposed to turn 89 years old. Radiy Khabirov in his Telegram channel called Murtaza Rakhimov “the great son of the Bashkir people, who devoted himself entirely to serving the republic and Russia.”

Recall that since 2003, Mr. Khabirov headed the administration of Murtaza Rakhimov, but in 2008 he was forced to leave Bashkiria as a result of a conflict with the president of the republic. The official was dismissed, expelled from United Russia, and even a criminal case was opened against him, which was later closed.

After the appointment of Radiy Khabirov to the post of acting head of Bashkiria in the fall of 2018, he met with Mr. Rakhimov and made it clear that the conflict between them had been settled. True, Kommersant’s interlocutors, close to the entourage of the current head of the region, believe that they failed to fully restore relations.

Murtaza Rakhimov’s resignation “of his own free will” in July 2010 came at a time when Mr. Khabirov worked in the presidential administration as deputy head of the internal policy department. A month before the president’s departure, in June 2010, the III World Kurultai of the Bashkirs was held in Ufa, at which a lot of harsh criticism of the federal government was voiced. In the resolution adopted at the end of the forum, the delegates, in particular, suggested that the authorities of the republic “take the initiative on the need to return to the practice of contractual relations between the federal center and the constituent entities of the Russian Federation”, and also call on the then President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev “to return in domestic politics to the main path of federal development Russia”.

In addition, the decision of Murtaza Rakhimov to leave could have been influenced by the attention of the security forces to his only son Ural, suspected of embezzlement and legalization of shares in enterprises of the Bashkir fuel and energy complex, although the corresponding criminal case was initiated only in 2014. According to investigators, Mr. Rakhimov Jr. stole the shares using his father’s official position, and then sold his stakes in AFK Sistema. The owner of this company, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, was also charged in the framework of the criminal case, but then the investigation abandoned its claims. Shortly before the resignation of his father, Ural Rakhimov left Russia and went to Austria.

After the resignation of Murtaza Rakhimov rarely appeared in public. He headed the board of the Ural charity fund, which accumulated funds received from the sale of enterprises of the Bashkir fuel and energy complex (including Bashneft).

In particular, the fund financed the construction of the Ufa Cathedral Mosque (which has not yet been completed). In 2015, AFK Sistema sued the company Ural-Invest, owned by Ural, for more than 70 billion rubles, after which project funding from the fund was noticeably reduced.

State Duma deputy Pavel Kachkaev, who led the administration of Ufa in 2003-2011, calls Murtaza Rakhimov a “consistent leader.” “I won’t say that it was easy to work with him, but the work was effective. He set the task, but gave the opportunity to make independent decisions. It was possible to convince him by giving sufficient arguments,” says Mr. Kachkaev. “Many people believe that Rakhimov dealt only with rural problems, but this is not so. He paid a lot of attention to Ufa, he never skimped on sufficient funding for city projects.”

Political scientist Sergei Lavrentiev is sure that Murtaza Rakhimov “will remain in history as a man who was able to preserve the potential of the republic.” “He entered politics at a turning point, when one system collapsed, but another did not emerge. He, as a person with experience in large-scale production, took responsibility for the fate of the republic. Yes, perhaps he was not a good speaker and somewhere he was afraid of journalists, but he knew how to speak the same language with the working people, ”the expert notes.

Bulat Bashirov, Ufa