Mintimer Shaimiev, Rudolf Nuriev, Rinat Akchurin - all these are the names of respected representatives of the Tatar people. However, Mintimer Sharipovich occupies a special place in this series, having established himself as the most powerful politician of a federal scale in Russia. He still headed the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic during the Soviet Union and later did not lose power in the republic from his hands until 2010, after which, in his declining years, he retired honorably.
RTS Engineer
The biography of Mintimer Sharipovich Shaimiev dates back to 1937, when he was born in an ordinary peasant family, in the village of Anyakovo, Aktanyshsky district. The unusual surname is due to the fact that his grandfather, Shaimuhamet, was nicknamed Shaimi.
As you can easily guess, the childhood of the politician fell on the difficult war and the first peaceful years. The ambitious and purposeful Mintimir was not going to sit in Anyakovo all his life and carefully studied at school to enter the city university. In 1954, Mintimer Shaimiev became a student at Kazan Agricultural University.
Having earned his diploma honestly through years of diligent study, in 1959 he began his career at the Muslumovskaya repair and technical station as an engineer. He soon moved up the ranks and became the chief engineer of the RTS. The young specialist made a good impression on the district leadership with his energy and efficiency, after which Mintimer Shaimiev was sent to manage the Selkhoztehnika association in Menzelinsk.
Coming into politics
A native of Anyakovo was not going to spend his whole life in a modest position in charge of agricultural machinery. The ambitious Mintimer joined the CPSU, and in 1969 switched to hardware work. He begins as a simple instructor in the agricultural department of the Tatar regional party committee, and soon becomes deputy head of the department.
In 1969, the future national leader became one of the youngest ministers in the USSR, heading the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Tatar Republic. In this position, Mintimer Shaimiev settled for a long time without special promotion prospects, which was dictated by the unwritten rules of the hardware games of those years. The most talented administrator could not make too abrupt a jerk up and wedge himself into a close group of elderly party leaders who established a strict order of priority for each other's change.
Mintimer Sharipovich directed agriculture in his native republic until 1983, after which he was appointed first deputy head of the government of the Tatar ASSR. Two years later, he becomes the full chairman of the Council of Ministers of the republic.
Power battle
After the start of perestroika, young ambitious politicians in the regions got a chance to compete for power. Mintimer Shaimiev did not stand aside, in 1989 in a tough hardware battle he defeated all competitors and became the first secretary of the Tatar regional committee of the CPSU, which in fact meant the leadership of the whole republic. In 1990, he was elected chairman of the Supreme Council of Tatarstan, which meant the concentration of all power in his hands.
The beginning of the nineties was the time of the parade of sovereignty in national entities. The USSR was cracking at the seams, the Union republics were separated one after another from the Union, nationalist aspirations became popular in society. Being the head of the republic, Mintimer Sharipovich could not ignore these moods, despite the fact that he himself was not a supporter of the complete independence of Tatarstan from the center. Few people remember, but Shaimiev supported the State Emergency Committee, whose goal was to preserve the USSR as a whole.
New time
In June 1991, Mintimer Shaimiev was elected president of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the absence of other competitors for this post. After the collapse of the USSR, he became one of the most active fighters for the expansion of the rights of national entities and greater independence from the federal center.
Not wanting to separate from the Russian Federation, the head of Tatarstan nevertheless demanded real autonomy of his republic, called for a decrease in control by Moscow and the ability to independently manage its budget and manage the economy. This was true, since until recently, the orders of the central government regulated the smallest issues in the economic life of Tatarstan, any initiative should have received the highest approval.
The result of President Mintimer Shaimiev’s activities was the declaration of Tatarstan’s state sovereignty, according to which the republic acquired the status of a subject of international law and could theoretically set sail.
Sovereignty
Shaimiev was one of the most influential leaders of the national republics of the Russian Federation, so the sovereignty declared by Tatarstan became a real time bomb for the state integrity of the Federation. Boris Yeltsin had no choice but to make concessions, and an agreement was concluded between Tatarstan and the Russian Federation in 1994, which stipulated all the contentious issues of relations between the region and the center.
This compromise turned out to be saving, and many leaders of the national republics did the same, which allowed them to reduce the degree of tension in the country and stop the process of state collapse.
Mintimer Shaimiev, in fact, was not eager to separate from Russia, so he was pleased with the result. The Republic gained a significant degree of economic independence, got the opportunity to build its own economic policy.
Regional politician of federal scale
Under Mintimer Shaimiev, things were going well in the republic, the economy was developing quite dynamically, and the standard of living of ordinary people exceeded that in neighboring Volga regions, suffocating from poverty in the nineties.
It is not surprising that the first president of Tatarstan enjoyed great authority and was constantly re-elected to his post. Local residents even looked through their fingers at the fact that representatives of the Shaimiev family gained more and more control over the economic sphere in the republic.
However, the ambitious leader became cramped within the framework of a separate national entity, and in the late nineties he entered the federal arena. Together with another regional heavyweight, Yuri Luzhkov, in 1999 he became one of the founders of the all-Russian party Fatherland-All Russia.
The newly created bloc initially gained immense popularity and had every chance of becoming a leading faction in parliament. However, a fierce, undercover political battle at the federal level ended with Luzhkov, Shaimiev and the other founding fathers of the OVR actually capitulating to formidable rivals and agreed to unite with another newborn creature - the Unity bloc. Thus, the United Russia party of power was born.
The surrender was honorable, Mintimer Shaimiev became co-chairman of the Supreme Council of the party and remained in this status for many years.
