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Nikolai Ryzhkov as Senator in the Federation Council: One of the most important decision-makers in the late Soviet Union
Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov / TAR-TASS / IMAGO
The Russian politician Nikolai Ryzhkov was one of the key reformers of the late Soviet Union.
Now the former head of government has died at the age of 94.
This was announced by the Chairwoman of the Russian Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko, in Moscow on Wednesday.
Ryzhkov only resigned from his position as senator in the Federation Council in October after 20 years.
Ryzhkov, who was born on September 28, 1929, ended his term in the upper house of parliament “early,” as the daily newspaper “Vedomosti” reported at the time.
Ryzhkov was a member of the Politburo under former Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
In the 1980s he was the last chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.
Although he was considered a technocrat and a convinced communist, from 1985 he was significantly involved in Gorbachev's reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (transformation).
The politician wrote the book “My Boss Gorbachev: The True Story of a Downfall,” which was also published in German in 2013.
Vedomosti praised Ryzhkov, who was born in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, as one of the most important decision-makers in the past few years of the Soviet Union, which collapsed a good 30 years ago.
Among other things, after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986, he led the crisis team to eliminate the consequences of the nuclear disaster.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ryzhkov was defeated as the communist candidate in the 1991 presidential election by Boris Yeltsin.
He initially represented the Belgorod border region on the Ukraine as a member of the State Duma in the 1990s.
From 1996 he was chairman of the left-wing Patriotic Russian People's Party.
After a variety of other functions, Ryzhkov became a member of the upper house of parliament in 2003.
mrc/dpa