Nikolai Ryzhkov

(b. Donetsk region, Ukraine, 1929) Russian; Soviet premier 1985 – 90 From the 1950s to the mid-1970s Ryzhkov worked for Uralmash, the vast engineering complex at Sverdlovsk. He rose from being a skilled worker to general manager of Uralmash as a whole in the period 1971 to 1975. He joined the Communist Party in 1956. In 1975 he embarked on a governmental career when he moved to Moscow as First Deputy Minister for Heavy and Transport Machine-Building. In 1979 under Brezhnev he was first deputy chairman of the state's five-year plan (Gosplan). In 1982 Andropov made him a secretary of the Party's Central Committee and head of its economic department. In April 1985, after Gorbachev had become General Secretary of the CPSU, Ryzhkov was made full member of the Politburo. In September 1985 he became chairman of the Council of Ministers, replacing the elderly Brezhnevite, Tikhonov. In this capacity he gained widespread respect for his integrity and industry, despite the failure of Gorbachev's economic reforms with which he was associated. In economic affairs he stood for cautious reform. In 1989 he became a member of the newly created Congress of People's Deputies, and the next year entered the Presidential Council of the USSR which Gorbachev had just formed. In June 1991 he was defeated by Boris 2Yeltsin in the Russian Presidential elections.

(b. 1929), USSR prime minister under Gorbachev and a leading figure in economic reform.

Born in Donetsk Oblast, Nikolai Ryzhkov joined the Party in 1956 and graduated from the Ural Polytechnical Institute in Sverdlovsk in 1959. He spent his early career as an engineer at the Ordzhonikidze Heavy Machine-Building Institute and was named director in 1970. Following his successes in the Urals, Ryzhkov became involved in all-union economic matters.

Ryzhkov served as a deputy in the USSR Council of the Union (1974 - 1979) and a deputy in the USSR Council of Nationalities (1974 - 1984). Ryzhkov was first deputy chair of the USSR Ministry of Heavy and Transport Machine-Building (1975 - 1979) and later first deputy chair of the USSR State Planning Commission (Gosplan) (1979 - 1982). He became a full member of the CPSU Central Committee in 1981, chairing the Diplomatic Department (1982 - 1985) and later the USSR Council of Ministers (September 1985 - December 1990), making him the de facto Soviet prime minister. Ryzhkov was the chief administrator of the Soviet economy in the last half of the 1980s. He became a full Politburo member in April 1985 and chaired the Central Committee Commission that assisted victims of the 1988 Armenian earthquake. As the economy stalled, protests grew, and the Kremlin debated the Five-Hundred-Day Plan, Ryzhkov suffered a heart attack on December 25, 1990. He subsequently resigned, and Gorbachev replaced him with Valentin Pavlov.

Ryzhkov unsuccessfully ran against Boris Yeltsin for the Russian presidency in June 1991. He then assumed a variety of corporate positions, including chairman of the board of Tveruniversal Bank (1994 - 1995), chairman of the board of Prokhorovskoye Pole, and head of the Moscow Intellectual Business Club. He won a seat in the Russian State Duma in 1995 and 1999 as head of "Power to the People," a bloc aligned with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Bibliography

Goldman, Marshall. (1992). What went Wrong with Perestroika. New York: Norton.

—ANN E. ROBERTSON

Nikolai Ryzhkov Николай Рыжков
10th Premier of the Soviet Union
In office 27 September 1985 – 14 January 1991
Preceded by	Nikolai Tikhonov
Succeeded by	Valentin Pavlov
Born	28 September 1929 (1929-09-28) (age 80) Donetsk Oblast, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian

Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov (Russian: Николай Иванович Рыжков, Nikolaj Ivanovič Ryžkov; born September 28, 1929) was a Soviet official and, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, a Russian politician. He served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (or Premier of the Soviet Union) from September 27, 1985 to January 14, 1991 during the era of glasnost and perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev.

A technocrat, Ryzhkov rose through the ranks first as a welder at the Sverdlovsk Uralmash Plant and then as chief engineer and, in 1970-1975, manager of the Uralmash Production Amalgamation, one of the largest Soviet companies.

He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956 and became first deputy minister of heavy and transport machine building in 1975. He became first deputy chairman of the Soviet planning agency, Gosplan, in 1979. In 1981 he was elected to the Central Committee of the CPSU. On November 22, 1982, after Leonid Brezhnev's death and Yuri Andropov's rise to power, Central Committee Secretary Kirilenko was forced to retire and his place was taken by Ryzhkov, who was also put in charge of the Central Committee's Economics Department. After Mikhail Gorbachev's elevation to the post of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Ryzhkov was made a member of the ruling Politburo on April 23, 1985. 5 months later, on September 27, 1985, the octogenarian Soviet premier Nikolai Tikhonov was sent into retirement and Ryzhkov took his place.

2000

Ryzhkov supported Gorbachev's attempt to revive and restructure the Soviet economy through decentralising planning (see central planning) and introducing new technology. However, he resisted Gorbachev's later attempts to introduce market mechanisms into the Soviet economy. When the Politburo was restructured at the XVIIIth Congress of the Communist Party in July 1990, all government officials except Gorbachev were excluded from it and Ryzhkov lost his Politburo seat by default. In December 1990 he was hospitalized with a heart condition (rumored to have been invented to cushion the blow) and, while he was recovering, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union adopted a new law replacing the Council of Ministers with a new Cabinet of Ministers. The law was passed on December 26, 1990, but the new structure was not put in place until January 14, 1991 when Valentin Pavlov took over as prime minister.

After recovering in early 1991, Ryzhkov was the Communist candidate in the first election of the President of the Russian Federation (not to be confused with the President of the Soviet Union) on June 12, 1991. He won less than 17% of the vote to Boris Yeltsin's 57% and retired from politics, spending the next few years working in banking and investment industries. In December 1995 he was elected to the new Russian Duma from the Power to the People block and in 1996 became a leader of the left wing Peoples' Power faction in the Duma. In the late 1990s he participated in the Communist-led alliance of leftists and nationalists known as People's Patriotic Union of Russia.

Sources

• Biography (in Russian)

Political offices
Preceded by Nikolai Tikhonov	Premier of the Soviet Union 27 September 1985–14 January 1991	Succeeded by Valentin Pavlov

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