Yegor Ligachev

Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev (Его́р Кузьми́ч Лигачёв, born 29 November 1920) is a Soviet politician who was a high-ranking official in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Originally a protege of Mikhail Gorbachev, Ligachev became a challenger to his leadership.

Early life
Ligachev was born on 29 November 1920 in Dubinkino, not far from Novosibirsk. Between 1938 and 1943 he attended the Ordzhonikidze Institute for Aviation in Moscow and attained a technical engineering degree. Ligachev joined the Communist Party at the age of 24 in 1944, later studying at the Higher Party School in 1951.

Political career
Ligachev's career began in Siberia, where he was born, and took him to some of the highest functions of the Party. Ligachev was often regarded as Gorbachev's second man, holding important posts such as Secretary for Ideology. However, Ligachev lost his posts in 1990, a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, resigning from his political career at the 28th Party Congress. Ligachev was critical of Yeltsin and Gorbachev to an extent, although he is often held as most remarkable for being Gorbachev's primary critic.

In the USSR
Ligachev was First Secretary of the Novosibirsk Komsomol, before becoming Deputy Chairman of the Novosibirsk Soviet, and then Secretary of the Novosibirsk Obkom between 1959 and 1961.

Ligachev's first major post was attained in 1961, when he began working in the CPSU Central Committee. In 1965, he became First Secretary of the Party in Tomsk, Siberia. He was to hold this position until 1983, when he was discovered by Yuri Andropov and made head of the Party Organization Department and a Secretary of the Central Committee.

In 1966, Ligachev was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee, and ten years later in 1976 he was promoted to a full member. When Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary in 1985, Ligachev was promoted to become a Secretary of higher status, and was generally viewed as one of Gorbachev’s primary allies: he had helped organize a pro-Gorbachev faction in hope of having Gorbachev succeed Andropov in 1984, although this attempt failed (instead, Konstantin Chernenko was chosen as a stop-gap candidate). Ligachev was made head of the Secretariat.

Ligachev supported reform of the Soviet Union and initially supported Gorbachev; however, as Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika and glasnost began to resemble social democratic policies he distanced himself from Gorbachev, and by 1988 he was recognized as the leader of the more conservative, anti-Gorbachev faction of Soviet politicians. Ligachev served in the Politburo between 1985 and 1990. Ligachev, having made some speeches criticising Gorbachev, was demoted from his more prestigious position as Secretary for Ideology to Secretary for Agriculture in 1988.

Perhaps the highlight of Ligachev's career was the 28th Congress of the CPSU in 1990. Ligachev criticized Gorbachev for circumventing the Party via Soviet Presidency, and he argued Glasnost had gone too far. During the Party Congress, Ligachev challenged Gorbachev for the office of General Secretary, standing as the "Leninist" candidate. Having been defeated, Ligachev left the Politburo and went into temporary retirement.

Russian Federation
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ligachev became a notable communist politician in the Russian Federation. Ligachev was elected three times to the Russian State Duma as a member for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, a position he currently holds, and became the Duma’s oldest member.

Ligachev remains an active politician in the Communist Party and has been a member of its Central Committee since co-founding the party in 1993. However, he lost his seat in the Duma in 2003, when he polled 23.5% of the vote against United Russia candidate Vladimir Zhidkikh's 53.0%.

Ligachev released his memoirs in 1996, titled Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev. The Memoirs reveal Gorbachev's role in the USSR's dissolution, from a personal, up-close perspective. Serge Schmemann of the NY Times wrote that the author was driven "to seek explanations for what went wrong, to understand his own role" and while the reviewer wished for more intrigue (in the form of detailed accounts of events other than the dissolution of the USSR), he believed the book was an interesting and detailed account of that period from the perspective of an "honest Bolshevik".

Significance
Ligachev became one of Gorbachev’s primary critics, accused of leading a conservative faction. Although publicly endorsing perestroika, Ligachev was opposed to Gorbachev’s attempts to expand Soviet authority and limit the responsibilities of party officials. Ligachev did not support the decision to end the CPSU’s monopoly of political power in 1990, nor did he support Gorbachev’s response to the gradual withdrawal of Soviet authority in Eastern Europe, saying, for example, that "We should not overlook the impending danger of the accelerated reunification of Germany".

However, in 1988, Ligachev denied that he was leading a conservative faction, saying that the Party leadership were united behind Gorbachev. He also rejected suggestions after the fall of the Soviet Union that he had been opposed to Gorbachev in his memoirs and in speeches. Ligachev clearly demonstrated conservative ideas in his opposition of Yeltsin's political ideas, on the other hand, opposing the principles of glasnost. He later repudiated his opposition to Gorbachev's policies, saying it was "only too late [he] discerned a social democrat in Gorbachev".

Ligachev denied time and again that he was opposed to Gorbachev in sources including his memoirs.

Ligachev's economically hard-line views were upheld in speeches he made to the CPSU's Congress in 1990. The following deplored privatization of the economy:

Public ownership unites, but private ownership disunites people's interests and indisputably causes social stratification of society.... For what purpose was perestroika started? For the purpose of most fully using the potential of socialism. Then does the sale of enterprises into private hands really promote the revealing of the possibilities inherent in the socialist system? No, it does not.... Lately people have begun saying, "Perestroika will develop, with the party or without it". I think otherwise. With the party, and only with the vanguard party, can we move forward on the way of socialist renewal. Without the party of Communists, perestroika is a lost cause....

However, in this speech he also rejected the idea he was a conservative, saying he was a realist. Ligachev also stated earlier that "the slackening of state discipline" was "among the reasons for the troubled state of the economy". Furthermore, together with KGB head Viktor Chebrikov, Ligachev took several opportunities before he was demoted to Secretary for Agriculture in 1988 to warn against rapid reform.

Although not mentioned in his memoirs to any notable extent, Ligachev played a notable role in dismissing Yeltsin, arguing with him for long periods of time in 1987. Ligachev opposed Yeltsin's idea that Party officials enjoyed greater privilege. He became well known after the phrase "Boris, you are not right!", that was quoted widely in 1990s.

Ligachev was considered "Second Secretary" of the Central Committee (and thus the Soviet Union) for most of his time in the Politburo.

Ligachev appears in the videogame Crisis in the Kremlin.