Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Nikolai Ryzhkov

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


A reformist economic policy specialist, Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was the Soviet Union's chairperson of the Council of Ministers from 1986 to 1990, when he was ousted because of the nation's economic troubles.  


Ryzhkov was born in Donetz on Sep 28, 1929 and graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute with a degree in engineering in 1959. He was chief engineer of the Ural Factory of Heavy Machine Building during 1965-70 and went on to run the production section of the Uralmash Factory during 1970-75. Ryzhkov had joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1959 and his experience in heavy industry won him the office of first deputy minister of heavy and transport machine building in 1975. In 1981, he joined the party Central Committee and took charge of its policy on heavy industry. He also was the first chairperson of Gosplan, the Soviet state planning committee, beginning in 1979.  


When Mikhail Gorbachev became party general secretary in 1985, Ryzhkov was named to the Politburo and soon afterward was chosen for the government position of head of the Council of Ministers. As this position was responsible for running the government bureaucracy and the state-run economy, Ryzhkov became one of the chief architects of Gorbachev's economic restructuring policy, known as perestroika. Though like Gorbachev he remained one of the highest-ranking members of the Communist Party, Ryzhkov pushed a reform plan that sought to move the country to a market economy within five years. However, with the nation on the edge of economic and political collapse, he was forced to resign, along with the entire Council of Ministers, after a formal vote on a no-confidence motion by the parliament of the Russian Federation in September 1990. Ryzhkov also lost his position on the Politburo but remained a member of the party until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  


[Sources: International Who's Who; Washington Post]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
Copyright © 1998 LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.