Uralvagonrazvod – Newspaper Kommersant No. 8 (7453) dated 01/18/2023

The first governor of the Sverdlovsk region, Eduard Rossel, delivered a public lecture to Ural students. For three hours, he talked about the state of the region after the collapse of the USSR, about how Anatoly Chubais, the ideologist of privatization, refused to save Uralvagonzavod, and also explained why California and Alaska should return to Russia, and the future belongs to communism. The speech of the 85-year-old politician was observed by the correspondent of “Kommersant-Ural” Vasily Alekseev.

On Tuesday, January 17, Eduard Rossel spoke to the students of the Ural Institute of Management of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) in honor of the Day of the Sverdlovsk Region. Before the lecture, he got acquainted with the exhibition of archival documents “The Middle Urals at the Turn of the Era”, which marked all his achievements during the period when he served as governor (1995-2009). Among them are the opening of a new route to Koltsovo Airport, nicknamed the Rosselban, the construction of the Church on Blood at the site of the murder of the family of Nicholas II, the organization of the Ural Expo Arms arms exhibition in Nizhny Tagil.

At the lecture, Mr. Rossel spoke about many events in the first person. He recalled that he headed the Sverdlovsk region when the collapse of the Soviet Union was taking place, and the country was transitioning from a planned economy to a market economy – the State Planning Commission was liquidated and the Gossnab was transformed. According to him, the liquidation of the State Planning Commission led to the fact that the state stopped buying products from enterprises dependent on it. “For us, it was a blow to the heart, because we are a defense area. If you watch the news, today we are fighting with the weapons of the Sverdlovsk region,” he stressed.

Mr. Rossel told the students how, because of Anatoly Chubais, the country could lose one of the largest tank manufacturers in the world – Uralvagonzavod (UVZ). In the 1990s, Mr. Chubais headed the state property management committee and was the ideologist of privatization. “I come to Chubais, I say, we have Uralvagonzavod – 60 thousand workers. There are no military orders, the plant is standing still. What to do? And he says: We don’t need Uralvagonzavod. We will buy tanks in Israel, and wagons in China,” Mr. Rossel said. According to him, he never met Mr. Chubais again in his life. Speaking about the politician who left Russia extremely impartially, Mr. Rossel explained that UVZ then saved a large contract with the Ministry of Defense. According to him, due to privatization, the region almost lost Uralmashzavod as well. “Judge for yourself: a secret area, Gossnab was liquidated, there is no food, 1.5 million unemployed – and at this time voucher privatization. You can’t think of it on purpose, it’s a delicate spy work,” Eduard Rossel again accused Anatoly Chubais and his then colleagues in the government.

Among his own merits, Mr. Rossel named, in particular, the receipt by the Sverdlovsk region of the right to foreign economic activity. According to him, in the 1990s, this helped the region avoid famine. The lecturer moved from the past to the present and the future, answering questions from the audience. In particular, Mr. Rossel suggested moving the country’s capital to Novosibirsk for security reasons: “Ukraine would join NATO, and the bases would be on the border with the Rostov region. The rocket flies to Moscow for five minutes, to St. Petersburg – a minute, to Kaliningrad – a minute. The capital of Russia needs to be changed, but to Yekaterinburg – God forbid. Novosibirsk is better, but in the end, it is up to air defense specialists to decide.” Eduard Rossel also briefly reproached Nikita Khrushchev and Eduard Shevardnadze for the distribution of state lands and supported the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who returned Crimea and other territories “to their homeland.” “He is leading his own line – and well done,” the ex-governor of the president praised. According to Mr. Rossel, some other territories are also expected to return to their homeland. “We need to get Alaska back. Russian people live there, who speak Russian. Yes, and California. California is Russian land. Baranov, a representative of Russia, was there, he asked the emperor for only one ship, so that California would be Russian land. But the emperor did not give it, and then they cut out all the Russian people who lived there with knives, ”the former governor of the Sverdlovsk region presented his vision of the history of Russian America. At the end of the meeting with students, he noted that the future belongs to communism. “There is no pure capitalism in any country. The working class is gradually taking power into its hands and there will be more and more. Nothing needed to be destroyed. It was necessary to gradually transfer the property, retaining the entire ideology. All political and economic ideology had to be preserved. This is our future. We will leave this life, new generations will come, they will remember this case,” Mr. Rossel promised.