Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Viktor Chernomyrdin

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin is a former communist official who became the prime minister of Russia on Dec 14, 1992. His official title is chairman of the government.  


Chernomyrdin was born in western Russia in 1938. He received his degree by correspondence, majoring in engineering economics while working as a machinist. He was active in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Orsk and in 1978 the Central Committee made him its industrial adviser, rewarding him for his activism while recognizing his work in the natural gas and oil industries. In 1982, Chernomyrdin was appointed deputy gas minister, and was promoted to the full ministerial post three years later. During his tenure, he oversaw the creation of a state-owned corporation designed to reform the gas industry in keeping with the policies of perestroika (restructuring) being implemented by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.  


When the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991, Chernomyrdin joined the administration of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, serving first as acting energy minister and then as deputy prime minister responsible for the energy sector. In December 1992, Yeltsin appointed Chernomyrdin as prime minister in an effort to placate hard-liners in the Congress of People's Deputies who opposed the drastic, free-market reform plans supported by Yeltsin and acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. Chernomyrdin was viewed as a bureaucratically oriented moderate, but in January 1993 he made his first major policy speech before the Congress and endorsed Gaidar's proposed reform policies.  


In 1995 Chernomyrdin inaugurated a center-right political party, called "Our Home Russia," to consolidate moderate conservative parties in the contentious State Duma in preparation for upcoming December 1995 legislative elections. He has been viewed as a possible successor to Yeltsin, whose declining health and increasing seclusion have cast doubt on his physical and political longevity.  


[Source: Facts on File World News Digest]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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