Ivan Silayev

Appointment

The election of a Chairman of the Council of Ministers – Government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), literally Premier of the Russian SFSR, was not considered a very important event; the Premier was elected following the election of the chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, the Supreme Soviet's deputy chairman, and after a debate on Russian agriculture. Boris Yeltsin, the chairman of the Russian SFSR Supreme Soviet, was ordered to select candidates for the post of Premier to the Supreme Soviet. Mikhail Bocharov, a successful businessman and leader of the cooperative movement, rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute Yuri Ryzhkov, and Silayev were chosen as the candidates. Ryzhkov withdrew his candidacy before the first round of voting was finished. During the election Bocharov revealed his radical economic reform plan to the Supreme Soviet deputies; in it industry would be privatised, and subsidies to unprofitable enterprises would cease in a 100 Days reform package. Silayev did not have any similar economic reform plans, but was widely considered to be Yeltsin's favourite for the post.^[4]

In the first round of voting Silayev earned 119 votes, while Bocharov earned 86 votes. To be elected to the post, a candidate needed to win over half of the vote; neither Silayev or Bocharov succeeded in this. Seeing that Silayev was Yeltsin's favourite, and had won more votes than Bocharov, Silayev ran unchallenged in the second election round, and was thus elected by a large margin.^[4]

Gorbachev tried to break the Silayev–Yeltsin alliance but to no avail. In 1989, Valentin Pavlov, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union from 14 January to 22 August 1991, had gathered together enough information on the errors and omissions of Silayev to weaken his position as Deputy Premier. Silayev never forgave Pavlov and relations between the two grew colder when Pavlov became the Prime Minister.^[5]

Silayev's government

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Silayev repeatedly opined that if he ever was given conflicting instructions by the Premier of the Soviet Union and Yeltsin, he would always "observe the laws of the RSFSR", meaning he would obey Yeltsin. During his tenure as Premier, Silayev was never the de facto leader of the government cabinet, and was loyal to Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet. In contrast to his predecessor, Aleksandr Vlasov, Silayev tried to modernise the Russian Government.^[6] Silayev decided to break with the old Soviet nomenklatura system of electing cabinet members by electing members using an "objective" and "scientific" basis. To accomplish this, Silayev asked professional psychologists to interview candidate cabinet members. Only 14 of the 200 cabinet candidates were recommended for a post in the government cabinet; even so, several of the candidates were given a post in the new government. All candidate members were selected by either Silayev, Yeltsin, or the Supreme Soviet.^[7]

Silayev's government lacked ideological unity, and several conservative members were elected to the cabinet in July 1990, among them Oleg Lobov and Gennadii Kulik. In November 1990 Grigory Yavlinsky resigned from his cabinet post, citing the failure of the 500 Days Programme. However, some commentators believe Yavlinsky resigned because of frequent conflict between him and other cabinet members. RSFSR Minister of Finance Boris Fyodorov resigned on 5 December 1990, and accused the First Deputy Premiers of taking important financial decisions on behalf of the ministry and him as minister behind his back. Lobov, the First Deputy Premier in charge of regional development, had become a de facto leader of the cabinet. Lobov was Yeltsin's favourite, and tried to weaken Silayev's position within the cabinet.^[8] With the consent of the Supreme Soviet Silayev established a 16-member Presidium for the cabinet.^[9]

Another problem facing Silayev was that the Supreme Soviet was usurping the power of the executive branch by strengthening the legislative branch. To accomplish this the Supreme Soviet established duplicated entities, such as the Committee for Mass Media, which duplicated the functions of the Ministry of Mass Media. Viktor Kisin, the Minister of Industry, told the press that the only employee of his ministry was in fact himself. In July 1990 Silayev agreed to create parallel executive-legislative administrative bodies.^[10]

In December 1990 the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian SFSR entrusted Silayev and his government to create a new plan for economic reform. The plan was finished in April 1991, and was referred to as the "Yeltsin–Silayev Plan". The plan was heavily influenced by the 500 Days Programme, and supported privatisation and the marketisation of the economy. The reform plan was criticised by an official from the State Committee on Economic Reform of the central government; he called the plan "a statement of intents"; instead of an economic reform, he called it a "manifesto". A Supreme Soviet deputy noted the proposed reform lacked real statistical insight. Even so, the proposed reform received a majority in a Supreme Soviet vote; Yeltsin's supporters knew that his economic reform proposal had to be accepted before the July presidential election.^[11] Following the July presidential election the Russian government resigned, and the post of premier was once again up for election. Silayev had strong competitors for the post, such as Yurii Skokov, but won the election.^[12]

Soviet premiership

The State Committee for the State of Emergency failed to arrest Silayev or any other high-standing Russian state officials during the August Coup.^[13] Silayev was one of several leading Russian SFSR politicians who flew to Gorbachev's summer house in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup.^[12] On 24 August the Russian SFSR Council of Ministers issued a decree transferring central government authority over economic and communications ministries to the RSFSR Government, and took control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and KGB archives. With the central government's authority greatly weakened, Gorbachev^[14] established a four-man committee, led by Silayev, that included Grigory Yavlinsky, Arkady Volsky, and Yuri Luzhkov, to elect a new Cabinet of Ministers. This committee was later transformed into the Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet economy (COMSE), also chaired by Silayev, to manage the Soviet economy.^[15] COMSE was quickly surpassed in authority by the Interstate Economic Committee (IEC), also officially known as the Economic Community, which was established on 20 September under the name Inter-Republican Economic Committee. Its function was to coordinate economic policy across the Soviet Union. As Chairman of both COMSE and the IEC, Silayev presided over a quickly disintegrating Soviet Union.^[16] On 6 September 1991 a presidential decree temporarily gave the IEC the same authority as the Cabinet of Ministers, and Silayev became the Soviet Union's de facto Premier.^[17]

When he first took office, Silayev wanted to reduce the powers of the central government and give more powers to the Soviet Republics. This view changed;^[16] he demanded that Yeltsin give back much of the authority of the central government which he had usurped following the August Coup. In this he failed, and his position as Russian SFSR Premier was severely weakened as a result. Oleg Lobov, Silayev's First Deputy Premier, led the anti-Silayev faction in the Russian SFSR Council of Ministers and managed to oust him on 26 September 1991; Lobov succeeded Silayev as acting Premier of the Russian SFSR.^[16] Silayev, as overseer of the economy, was given the task of initiating economic reforms in the Soviet Union in a way that suited both the central government and the Soviet republics.^[18] Silayev tried to maintain an integrated economy while initiating the marketisation of the economy.^[19] On 19 December COMSE was dissolved by a presidential decree,^[17] and on 26 December 1991 Silayev resigned from his post as IEC Chairman.^[2]