Yegor Ligachev

(b. near Novosibirsk, 29 Sept. 1920) Russian; Secretary of Central Committee of CPSU 1983 – 90, Deputy to USSR Supreme Soviet 1966 – 89, People's Deputy of the USSR 1989 – 91 A graduate engineer, Ligachev trained at the Higher Party School and from 1949 worked in the Comsomol and then the party apparatus, mostly in Siberia, where he was First Secretary of the Tomsk Regional Committee 1965 – 83. He was a full member of the Central Committee from 1976, but only gained prominence when Andropov brought him to Moscow as head of the party's Organizational Work department and Secretary of the Central Committee in 1983. Initially a close colleague of Gorbachev, he gained full Politibureau membership when Gorbachev became General Secretary in April 1985 and became "second secretary", supervising ideology and party organization. A teetotaller and puritan, he promoted the anti-alcohol campaign of 1985 – 6, which badly misfired. He became increasingly critical of the pace and extent of reform under Gorbachev, especially of the "excesses" of glasnost in the rewriting of history. Hence from September 1988 his responsibilities were narrowed to agricultural reform. He continued to resist Westernization and "hasty" change and in August 1990 retired from all his posts after the 26th Congress.

Yegor Kuz'mich Ligachev (born 1920) was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union beginning in 1966. During the 1980s he became a leading advocate of a more conservative approach to perestroika but was ousted from command in 1990.

At the stormy and controversial 28th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in July 1990, Yegor Ligachev, a member of Mikhail Gorbachev's Politburo since 1985 and secretary of the Central Committee with responsibilities in agriculture, stood up to denounce the general course of the U.S.S.R. since 1985. He no doubt expressed the frustrations of many long-time party loyalists when he stated: "Thoughtless radicalism, improvisation, and swinging from side to side have yielded us little good during the past five years of perestroika." At the Congress, Ligachev presented himself as the spokesperson for traditional Marxist-Leninist, socialist values developed since 1917, in distinction to the new centrist course led by Gorbachev or the more radical reforms demanded by party liberals. Although the party's conservative wing appeared to have the majority of delegates to the party congress and Ligachev was the hero of the moment, he paid a heavy price for fleeting glory. At the end of the congress, Ligachev, who was defeated in an attempt to become deputy general secretary, was not reelected to the Politburo.

Yegor Ligachev was a long-time party official who had the archetypal party career. Except for short periods, his entire adult life was spent as a party official, first at the local and regional levels and later in Moscow. During the 1980s, Ligachev worked in several areas, including party personnel, ideology, and agriculture, and he was especially known internationally for the anti-alcohol campaign and advocacy of a more conservative approach to perestroika (restructuring).

Until the 1990 party congress, Ligachev publicly professed support for perestroika, amidst rumors that he was Gorbachev's most consistent opponent on the Politburo and had blocked specific policies. However, at the 28th Party Congress, when he openly attacked those who supported perestroika, he was roundly rebuffed by the congress. The counter attack was led by Eduard Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, and Gorbachev.

Yegor Ligachev was born November 29, 1920. Little is known about his early life or his family. He was Russian by nationality. He studied from 1938 to 1943 at the Ordzhonikidze Institute for Aircraft Construction in Moscow, from which he held a technical engineering degree. (He later studied at the Higher Party School, in 1951.) Ligachev joined the Communist Party in 1944, at age 24. In 1957, he became Party Chief of Akademgorodok. After World War II, he worked in various positions in the Novosibirsk region, including first secretary of the Komsomol, chief of the party's Department of Culture, deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of the Novosibirsk Soviet (deputy mayor), eventually serving as secretary of the Novosibirsk Obkom (provincial committee) from 1959 to 1961.

In 1961, he began working for the Central Committee of the CPSU in the party's Russian Bureau, created by Khrushchev and terminated by Brezhnev. In 1965, Ligachev was made first secretary of the Tomsk Obkom, a position he held until 1983. In 1983, he became chief of the Department for Party Organizational Work of the CPSU and was appointed a secretary of the Central Committee with responsibilities for cadres. In 1985, under Gorbachev, he became secretary for ideology, cadres, and world communist affairs, and in this period, was considered one of Gorbachev's principal allies. In September 1988, after the reorganization of the Secretariat of the CPSU, Ligachev became the head of its commission on agriculture, an important but vulnerable position in the party hierarchy. Despite numerous proposals, relatively little substantive change occurred to improve agriculture. Even in 1990, a year with an outstanding grain crop, the inability to harvest the crop in a timely way meant the U.S.S.R. had to import grain.

Ligachev enjoyed the privileges of the central elite for a long time. In 1966, he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee. He was promoted to full membership at the 1976 party congress. From 1985 to 1990, he served on the Politburo of the CPSU. In the late 1980s, Ligachev was perceived abroad as functioning as the de facto "second secretary" of the CPSU, pressuring Gorbachev from the right, as opposed to Boris Yeltsin, who was pressuring Gorbachev from the left. Ligachev's conception of perestroika was limited. It would keep the basic framework of the CPSU and the economy intact. His reforms would be closer to Khrushchev than Gorbachev in their goals. He was opposed to leasing land to the peasants or other forms of privatization in agriculture and opposed to the wide-scale introduction of a market economy. He supported democratization in principle, but opposed strikes by workers and the comprehensive de-Stalinization of the Gorbachev era. He was also critical of the course of Soviet foreign policy pursued by Gorbachev and Shevardnadze.

Ligachev's downfall began when Gorbachev as general secretary successfully promoted the election of Vladimir Ivashko of the Ukraine to the new post of deputy general secretary. In 1988, Ligachev was demoted to the position of Agricultural Secretary. Ivashko, a Gorbachev ally in the process of perestroika, easily defeated Ligachev. The deputy was to oversee day-to-day management of the CPSU, while Gorbachev, remaining as general secretary, concentrated on the presidency. Ligachev's political career came to an end in 1990 when he was removed from the Politburo.

Further Reading

Because of the pivotal, often controversial role Ligachev played in the Gorbachev administration, it is possible to read about him from several different perspectives. To observe Ligachev from the viewpoint of the opposition, Boris Yeltsin's Against the Grain (1990) is a good place to start. Essays in Seweryn Bialer's Inside Gorbachev's Russia (1989) also provide insights on the man and his views, as does Jonathan Harris' study Ligachev on Glasnost and Perestroika (No. 5 of the Carl Beck Papers, University of Pittsburgh). Harris carefully documents Ligachev's speeches and activities through 1988, and one can perceive the pattern of Ligachev's persistent opposition to Gorbachev, while publicly maintaining allegiance to the policies of perestroika. Ligachev's central role in the "Yeltsin Affair" is treated by Bialer also in U.S. News and World Report (March 28, 1988). New Perspectives Quarterly (Summer 1988) contains an interesting interview with Ligachev in which he affirms that he and Gorbachev "are on the same wave length." Yegor Ligachev's final attempts to oppose Gorbachev are published in his unabridged book The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev: Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin (1993) Introduction by Stephen F. Cohen. In the book, Ligachev recaptures the history between himself and Gorbachev throughout their years in politics.

(b. 1920), a secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (December 1983 to mid-1990), and member of the Politburo (April 1985 to mid-1990).

Yegor Ligachev criticized Gorbachev's reforms and Yeltsin's leadership style. PACH/CORBIS-BETTMANN. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION..

Yegor Ligachev was a leading orthodox critic of many aspects of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's program of reforms. From 1985 until late 1988 he served as the party's informal second secretary responsible for the supervision of official ideology and personnel management. During this period, he clashed with Secretary Alexander Yakovlev over cultural and ideological policies and openly assailed the cultural liberalization fostered by glasnost and the growing public criticism of the USSR's past.

While Ligachev publicly endorsed perestroika in general terms, he opposed Gorbachev's efforts to limit party officials' responsibilities and to expand the legislative authority of the soviets. He was widely identified with the orthodox critique of perestroika provided by Nina Andreyeva in early 1988. At the Nineteenth Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in mid-1988, Ligachev refused to publicly endorse Gorbachev's reform of the Secretariat and its subordinate apparat. In September 1988 he lost his position as second secretary and was named director of the newly created agricultural commission of the Central Committee.

Ligachev was deeply disturbed by the collapse of Communist power in Eastern Europe and the flaccid response to those events on the part of the Gorbachev regime. Nor did he support the general secretary's decision to end the CPSU's monopoly of power in February 1990. In the spring of 1990 he moderated his critique of the regime in an apparent effort to win election as deputy general secretary at the Twenty-eighth Party Congress, but he lost the election by a wide margin. Following the reform of the Secretariat and Politburo at the congress he retired from both bodies. He did not fully condemn the attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, but he vigorously denied charges of direct involvement in these events.

Bibliography

Harris, Jonathan. (1989). "Ligachev on Glasnost and Perestroika." In Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 706. Pittsburgh, PA: University Center for Russian and East European Studies.

Ligachev, Egor. (1993). Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin. New York: Pantheon Books.

—JONATHAN HARRIS

Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev Его́р Кузьми́ч Лигачёв
Member of the Soviet Politburo
In office 1985 – 1990
Born	November 29, 1920 (1920-11-29) (age 88) Dubinkino, Russian SFSR
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1944-1990) Communist Party of the Russian Federation (1993- )

Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev^[1] (Russian: Его́р Кузьми́ч Лигачёв, born November 29, 1920) is a Russian politician, who was a high-ranking official in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Originally a protege of Mikhail Gorbachev, Ligachev became a challenger to his leadership.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Political career 2.1 In the USSR 2.2 Russian Federation 3 Significance 4 Notes and references 5 Sources

Early life

Ligachev was born on November 29, 1920 in Dubinkino. Between 1938 and 1943 he attended the Ordzhonikidze Institute for Aviation in Moscow and attained a technical engineering degree. Ligachev joined the Communist Party at the age of 24 in 1944, later studying at the Higher Party School in 1951.

Political career

Ligachev's career began in Siberia, where he was born, and took him to some of the highest functions of the Party. Ligachev was often regarded as Gorbachev's second man, holding important posts such as Secretary for Ideology. However, Ligachev lost his posts in 1990, a year before the end of the Soviet Union, resigning from his political career at the 28th Party Congress. Ligachev was critical of Yeltsin and Gorbachev to an extent, although he is often held as most remarkable for being Gorbachev's primary critic.

Ligachev's career has been called a "model Party career".^[2]

In the USSR

Ligachev was First Secretary of the Novosibirsk Komsomol, before becoming Deputy Chairman of the Novosibirsk Soviet, and then Secretary of the Novosibirsk Obkom between 1959 and 1961.

Ligachev's first major post was attained in 1961, when he began working in the CPSU Central Committee. In 1965, he became First Secretary of the Party in Tomsk, Siberia. He was to hold this position until 1983, when he was discovered by Yuri Andropov and made head of the Party Organization Department and a Secretary of the Central Committee.

In 1966, Ligachev was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee, and ten years later in 1976 he was promoted to a full member. When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, Ligachev was promoted to become a Secretary of higher status, and was generally viewed as one of Gorbachev’s primary allies: he had helped organize a pro-Gorbachev faction in hope of having Gorbachev succeed Andropov in 1984, although this attempt failed (instead, Konstantin Chernenko was chosen as a stop-gap candidate). Ligachev was made head of the Secretariat.

However, Ligachev rapidly became an opponent of Gorbachev, as he opposed Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost. These policies distanced himself from Gorbachev, and by 1988 he was recognized as the leader of the more conservative, anti-Gorbachev faction of Soviet politicians. Ligachev served in the Politburo between 1985 and 1990. Ligachev, having made some speeches criticising Gorbachev, was demoted from his more prestigious position as Secretary for Ideology to Secretary for Agriculture in 1988.

Perhaps the highlight of Ligachev's career was the 28th Congress of the CPSU in 1990. Ligachev criticized Gorbachev for circumventing the Party via Soviet Presidency, and he argued Glasnost had gone too far and had made the Soviet Union. During the Party Congress, Ligachev challenged Gorbachev for the office of General Secretary, standing as the "Leninist" candidate. This was the first election to be contested since the time of Stalin.^{[citation needed]} Having been defeated, Ligachev left the Politburo and went into temporary retirement.

Russian Federation

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ligachev became a notable communist politician in the Russian Federation. Ligachev was elected three times to the Russian State Duma as a member for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, a position he currently holds, and became the Duma’s oldest member.

Ligachev remains an active politician in the Communist Party and has been a member of its Central Committee since co-founding the party in 1993.^[3] However, he lost his seat in the Duma in 2003, when he polled 23.5% of the vote against United Russia candidate Vladimir Zhidkikh's 53.0%.^[4]

Ligachev released his memoirs in 1996, titled Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev. The Memoirs reveal Gorbachev's role in the USSR's dissolution, from a personal, up-close perspective. Serge Schmemann of the NY Times wrote that the author was driven "to seek explanations for what went wrong, to understand his own role" and while the reviewer wished for more intrigue (in the form of detailed accounts of events other than the dissolution of the USSR), he believed the book was an interesting and detailed account of that period from the perspective of an "honest Bolshevik".^[5][6]

Significance

Yegor Ligachev became one of Gorbachev’s primary critics, accused of leading a conservative faction.^[7][8] Although publicly endorsing perestroika, Ligachev was opposed to Gorbachev’s attempts to expand soviet authority and limit the responsibilities of party officials. Ligachev did not support the decision to end the CPSU’s monopoly of political power in 1990, nor did he support Gorbachev’s response to the gradual withdrawal of Soviet authority in Eastern Europe, saying, for example, that "We should not overlook the impending danger of the accelerated reunification of Germany".^[9]

However, in 1988, Ligachev denied that he was leading a conservative faction, saying that the Party leadership were united behind Gorbachev.^[7] He also rejected suggestions after the fall of the Soviet Union that he had been opposed to Gorbachev in his memoirs and in speeches.^[10] Ligachev clearly demonstrated conservative ideas in his opposition of Yeltsin's political ideas, on the other hand, opposing the principles of glasnost.^[11] He later repudiated his opposition to Gorbachev's policies, saying it was "only too late [he] discerned a social democrat in Gorbachev".^[10]

Ligachev denied time and again that he was opposed to Gorbachev in sources including his memoirs.^[7][10][12]

Ligachev's economically hard-line views were upheld in speeches he made to the CPSU's Congress in 1990. The following deplored privatization of the economy:

“	Public ownership unites, but private ownership disunites people's interests and indisputably causes social stratification of society.... For what purpose was perestroika started? For the purpose of most fully using the potential of socialism. Then does the sale of enterprises into private hands really promote the revealing of the possibilities inherent in the socialist system? No, it does not.... Lately people have begun saying, "Perestroika will develop, with the party or without it". I think otherwise. With the party, and only with the vanguard party, can we move forward on the way of socialist renewal. Without the party of Communists, perestroika is a lost cause....	”
—Yegor Ligachev[9]

However, in this speech he also rejected the idea he was a conservative, saying he was a realist.^[9] Ligachev also stated earlier that "the slackening of state discipline" was "among the reasons for the troubled state of the economy".^[13] Furthermore, together with KGB head Viktor Chebrikov, Ligachev took several opportunities before he was demoted to Secretary for Agriculture in 1988 to warn against rapid reform.^[14]

Although not mentioned in his memoirs to any notable extent, Ligachev played a notable role in dismissing Yeltsin, arguing with him for long periods of time in 1987. Ligachev opposed Yeltsin's idea that Party officials enjoyed greater privilege.^[14] He became well known after the phrase "Boris, you are not right!", that was quoted widely in 1990s.

Ligachev was considered "Second Secretary" of the Central Committee (and thus the Soviet Union) for most of his time in the Politburo.^[8]

Notes and references

1. ^ surname more accurately romanized as Ligachyov
2. ^ History and the Headlines: Retrieved 22 November, 2007.
3. ^ Example: CPRF Novosibirsk Website Article (Russian)
4. ^ Psephos: Russia 2003
5. ^ "From Comrade to Critic in Five Years": New York Times, February 21, 1993. Retrieved November 22, 2007.
6. ^ etext.org Retrieved November 22, 2007.
7. ^ ^{a b c} "Ligachev Says Kremlin Is United on Changes": New York Times, June 5, 1988. Retrieved 20 November, 2007.
8. ^ ^{a b} "The real Yeltsin legacy": The Guardian, April 26, 2007. Retrieved 20 November, 2007.
9. ^ ^{a b c} "Evolution in Europe; Excerpts From Speeches at the Communist Party Congress": New York Times, July 4, 1990. Retrieved 22 November, 2007.
10. ^ ^{a b c} "March 11, 1985": Time, March 31, 2003. Retrieved 22 November, 2007.
11. ^ "Excerpts From Remarks by Yeltsin and Ligachev": New York Times, July 2, 1988. Retrieved 20 November, 2007.
12. ^ See also his memoirs (Sources).
13. ^ "Excerpts From Speech By Ligachev to Party": New York Times, February 7, 1990. Retrieved 22 November, 2007.
14. ^ ^{a b} rulers.org: Retrieved 22 November, 2007.

Sources

• Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev. Pantheon Books: 1993 (ISBN 0-679-41392-8)
• Ligachev on Glasnost and Perestroika. Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 706: 1989.

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