Ivan Rybkin is a well-known domestic political and statesman, has a doctorate in political sciences. From 1994 to 1996, he served as chairman of the State Duma of the first convocation, and later for several years was secretary of the Security Council.
Biography Politician
Ivan Rybkin was born in 1946. He grew up in a peasant family. He was born in the village of Semigork in the Voronezh region. Received higher education at the Agricultural Institute in Volgograd. He graduated in 1968 with honors, becoming the owner of the specialty "mechanical engineer". In 1974 he graduated from graduate school of the same university. He got a degree of candidate of technical sciences.
In the future, Ivan Rybkin continued to improve his education. For this, he entered a university organized by the CPSU. He received a diploma from the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU. Two years later he graduated from the diplomatic academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Labor career
Ivan Petrovich Rybkin began working in 1968 on the collective farm "Testament of Ilyich" as a senior engineer. It was located in the Novoanninsky district of the Volgograd region. After he served in the army.
In 1987, he received the post of first secretary of the Soviet District Committee in Volgograd. In 1991, when fundamental changes began in the country, Ivan Rybkin was the head of the department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the RSFSR.
Political activity
When the August coup failed, the dissolution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union took place. After that, Rybkin took part in the creation of the Agrarian Party of Russia. Initially, it was a left-wing political movement, until 2009, when its registration was temporarily suspended. Now the organization claims to be a centrist party.
Her first constituent congress was held in February 1993. People's Deputy Mikhail Lapshin was elected Chairman. In December of that year, she took part in the elections to the State Duma of the first convocation. The Agrarian Party of Russia received almost 8% of the vote. That was her best result ever. In total, she had 37 seats in the federal parliament - 21 on party lists and 16 on single-mandate constituencies.
Ivan Rybkin himself, despite being involved in the "landowners, " was among the initiators of the restoration congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and even entered the presidium.
Participation in the Communist Party
In February 1993, the hero of our article already participates in the Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of the RSFSR, which as a result, it was decided to transform into the Communist Party. He is elected a member of the Central Executive Committee. As a result, Ivan Rybkin becomes deputy chairman of the CEC, remaining in this position until April 1994. At the same time, he is a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Becomes a member of parliament. To the post of chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, he is proposed by the "farmers" faction. As their leader Mikhail Lapshin later recalled, the party had the opportunity to nominate its candidate for speaker; he personally then recommended Rybkin.
The hero of our article himself likes to say that when he received the certificate of the State Duma chairman in the president’s office, he told Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin that he would never allow the White House to repeat itself.
Further activities
After the elections to the State Duma of the second convocation, Ivan Petrovich Rybkin, Gennady Seleznev, representing the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, replaced the speaker. The hero of our article himself became an ordinary single-mandate member; his center-left bloc did not go through party lists.
At the polls was the first number in the block of Ivan Rybkin. With him in the federal part of the list were also ex-head of the presidential administration of Russia Yuri Petrov and Arctic and Antarctic explorer Artur Chilingarov. During the election race in the Bloc, they stated that they support the existing power in the person of President Boris Yeltsin, while adhering to the center-left views. The block was created during the conference of the association "Regions of Russia".
Initially, it included significant political forces, but over time the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, the industrial party, the movement "My Fatherland", which was led by Boris Gryzlov, separated.
In the election, the Rybkin Bloc gained 1.1% of the vote, taking 11th place out of 43 parties and associations that participated in the election. The 5% barrier could not be overcome. In single-mandate constituencies, only three candidates entered parliament.
However, Rybkin was not out of work. In the same year he was appointed Secretary of the Security Council. In this position he remained until the spring of 1998. Then for several weeks he was Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in the office of Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin. Rybkin oversaw the issues of the Commission for the Affairs of the Union of Independent States and the Chechen Republic. He was appointed on March 1, but on the 23rd of the same month the entire government was fired.
After that, in the status of president, he headed the public fund for promoting the development of the Russian language.
Presidential elections
2004 was one of the most vivid and memorable in the biography of Ivan Rybkin. He decides to run for president of the Russian Federation. By this time, the first term of Vladimir Putin, planning to be re-elected, is behind. Rybkin expects to become his direct competitor.
It is known that during the election campaign the hero of our article enjoyed the support of Boris Berezovsky, an influential oligarch who, by then, had left the country for fear of criminal prosecution.
Rybkin announced his plans to run among 11 more candidates. However, his plans were destined to be violated due to a mysterious scandal that dealt a significant blow to his reputation.
Rybkin himself later admitted that he was persuaded for a long time to take part in the presidential election, including Boris Berezovsky personally. As a result, he decided to vote to declare that the disappearance of competition in the economy will soon lead to the absence of political competition in the country, which will negatively affect the still fairly young democracy in Russia. Rybkin claims that he was originally going to declare his position, and then withdraw his candidacy, allegedly did not plan to go to the end initially.
Disappearance
The media became aware that on the evening of February 5, 2004, a potential candidate for president of Russia disappeared. Three days later, as required by law, his wife Albina Rybkina appeared in the Arbat police department, where she wrote an official statement about her husband’s disappearance. On the same day, a search case was opened on the fact of his disappearance.
Two days later, the presidential candidate was discovered in Kiev, a few hours later he flew to Moscow.
If you believe the first statements made by Rybkin himself after this mysterious disappearance, he decided to take a break from the events that preceded the presidential nomination, for a while to forget about the hype that rose around him. He turned off his mobile phones so that no one would interfere with his rest. Rybkin said that he had the right to several days of his personal life, stressing that he often went to Kiev to walk along the streets with friends, and the weather was nice on weekends.
His supporters quite toughly commented on the disappearance of Ivan Rybkin in February 2004. The head of his campaign headquarters, Ksenia Ponomareva, who was previously the chief editor of the Kommersant newspaper and the director general of ORT, said that if everything is really the way her boss told her, it means the end of his political career.
The fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was the main sponsor of the Rybkin election campaign, said that after such a trick, such a politician no longer exists in Russia.
Interestingly, there were opposing points of view on this score. For example, some believed that the whole story with his disappearance was organized just by his supporters. Ex-Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov said that all this is an original public relations event in which Berezovsky participated. And the State Duma deputy Nikolai Kovalev suspected that the disappearance was a PR project of Ksenia Ponomareva, stressing that she would recognize her style and approach to work. Kovalev admitted that he was sure: the disappearance would last no more than four days, and the idea itself caused him a homeric laughter.
Conspirological versions of extinction
There are still opinions that Rybkin disappeared not of his own free will, but when he talked about the desire to relax, he was cunning. The well-known journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya in her book points to the fact that Rybkin disappeared the day after he publicly announced the possible involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a series of house bombings in Moscow in 1999. As a result, these terrorist acts became the justification for the introduction of federal troops into the territory of the Chechen Republic, as well as the start of the Second Chechen War.
Publicist and public figure Alexander Goldfarb wrote in his book that Rybkin told him in private that he had been abducted by agents of the Federal Security Service who had pumped him with drugs and taken him to an unknown destination.
According to Goldfarb, Rybkin was lured to Ukraine, promising to arrange a meeting with the Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. At that time, he was considered the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
In Kiev, Rybkin was informed that Maskhadov would arrive in two hours, and during that time they offered to have lunch. Allegedly, the presidential candidate ate several sandwiches, and after that he did not remember anything. He was unconscious for four days, and when he woke up on February 10, they showed him a video on which, according to him, he committed "disgusting actions" with "terrible perverts." Rybkin began to blackmail, forcing to refuse to participate in the presidential election, otherwise they threatened to publish a video.
Rybkin himself later emphasized in an interview that he was leaving for Kiev for a confidential meeting, planning to stay there for no more than two days. The fact that he did not warn his wife about this, did not see anything surprising, since, according to him, he often did not tell her where he was going.
He then told Goldfarb that he was afraid for his safety, therefore he was planning to continue participating in the presidential race from abroad. But already on March 5, it became known that Rybkin officially withdraws his candidacy. In an interview with reporters, he said that he did not want to participate in this "farce".
According to another version of his disappearance, which was voiced in Andrei Kondrashov’s documentary entitled “Berezovsky, ” released on the Russia-1 channel, Rybkin was taken to Ukraine to be killed. This was supposed to help cancel the 2004 presidential election. The fact was that all the already registered candidates did not have the right to stand for re-election. Allegedly, having killed Rybkin, Berezovsky planned to remove Putin from power in order to ensure victory for his candidate in the presidential race. As a result, plans to eliminate Rybkin were frustrated by Ukrainian intelligence services. The documentary was released on central television in 2012.
Then the Dozhd TV channel turned to the very hero of our article to once again clarify the circumstances of his disappearance. However, Rybkin repeated his version that he had left for Kiev voluntarily in order to meet privately with his friends.
Election results
As a result, in 2004 Rybkin was recognized as a candidate who did not pass registration. Multimillionaire Anzori Aksentyev-Kikalishvili, pharmaceutical tycoon Vladimir Bryntsalov, former head of the Central Bank Viktor Gerashchenko, chairman of the social movement "For Social Justice" Igor Smykov, ex-owner of the Alisa exchange German Sterligov found themselves in the same situation. All of them failed to register for the post of president of the Russian Federation.
Six candidates were allowed to vote. Sergey Mironov, who at that time represented the Russian Party of Life, failed to gain 1% of the vote, Oleg Malyshkin from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia received 2%, Irina Khakamada, registered as a self-nominated candidate, 3.8%.
Third place was taken by another self-nominated candidate - Sergey Glazyev. 4.1% of voters voted for him. The second was the candidate of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Nikolai Kharitonov (13.7%).
A convincing victory in the election was won by Vladimir Putin, who received the support of more than 71% of voters who came to the polls. A total of 49.5 million people voted for him.
