Wikipedia

Yakov Ryabov

Yakov Petrovich Ryabov (Russian: Яков Петрович Рябов; 24 March 1928 – 17 April 2018) was a Soviet politician, party functionary and diplomat. A long-serving regional party leader in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, he was First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1971 to 1976, in which capacity he promoted the career of Boris Yeltsin, whom he proposed as his successor in the post. He served as Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1976 to 1979, supervising the defense industry and the military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union, before holding senior economic posts and serving as Ambassador of the Soviet Union to France from 1986 to 1990.[1][2]

Yakov Ryabov
Яков Петрович Рябов
Ambassador of the Soviet Union to France
In office
19 June 1986 – 23 May 1990
PremierNikolai Ryzhkov
Preceded byYuli Vorontsov
Succeeded byYuri Dubinin
Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union
In office
27 September 1984 – 19 June 1986
PremierNikolai Tikhonov
Nikolai Ryzhkov
Chairman of the State Committee for Foreign Economic Relations
In office
May 1983 – September 1984
First Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee (Gosplan)
In office
17 April 1979 – May 1983
Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office
26 October 1976 – 17 April 1979
First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU
In office
6 January 1971 – 2 November 1976
Preceded byKonstantin Nikolaev
Succeeded byBoris Yeltsin
Personal details
Born24 March 1928
Shishkeevo, Penza Governorate, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Died17 April 2018(2018-04-17) (aged 90)
Moscow, Russia
Resting placeTroyekurovskoye Cemetery, Moscow
PartyCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (1954–1991)
Sverdlovsk Mechanical Engineering Technical School
Ural Polytechnic Institute
ProfessionEngineer, party functionary, diplomat

Early life

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Yakov Ryabov was born on 24 March 1928 in the village of Shishkeevo in the Ruzayevsky District of Penza Governorate (later Mordovian ASSR), the ninth child in a peasant family. In 1930 his parents moved to Sverdlovsk[disambiguation needed] (now Yekaterinburg) to work on the construction of the Uralmash plant; his father became a carpenter and his mother a plasterer.[2][3]

In May 1942, after completing seven years of schooling, Ryabov began working in a kolkhoz in the Turinsky District of Sverdlovsk Oblast. From October 1942 he studied at the Sverdlovsk Mechanical Engineering Technical School in the diesel-engineering department, working simultaneously as a turner at the Uralmash plant. He graduated in 1946 as a technician-designer specialising in diesel-engine construction. In parallel with his subsequent industrial career, he completed evening studies at the Ural Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1952 as a mechanical engineer.[2][4]

Industrial and party career

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Ural Turbomotor Plant (1946–1958)

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From July 1946 Ryabov worked at the Sverdlovsk Turbomotor Plant (formerly Plant No. 76), specialising in the design and production of tank diesel engines. He rose from technician-designer to head of the design department for principal assemblies and experimental design, then served as acting head and head of the M-1 workshop from 1954 to 1955, before being elected secretary of the plant's party organisation in November 1958.[2][5]

Sverdlovsk party leader (1960–1976)

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Ryabov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1954. From October 1960 he served as First Secretary of the Ordzhonikidzevsky District Committee of the CPSU in Sverdlovsk, and from January 1963 as First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk City Committee of the CPSU; during his tenure preliminary work began on the design and construction of the Yekaterinburg Metro. From February 1966 he was Second Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, and on 6 January 1971 he was confirmed as First Secretary of the Regional Committee, a position he held until November 1976.[2][6]

In 1968, while Second Secretary, Ryabov nominated Boris Yeltsin to a senior party position by appointing him as head of the construction department of the Regional Committee, and he subsequently became Yeltsin's principal patron. After his own promotion to Moscow in 1976, Ryabov personally recommended Yeltsin to General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev as his successor at the head of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee. He later said publicly that he came to regret this decision.[1][7]

A persistent point of controversy is the role of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee in the 1977 demolition of the Ipatiev House, in which the Romanov family had been executed in 1918. While the Politburo resolution ordering the demolition was adopted on 30 July 1975 at the request of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, Ryabov delayed implementation of the order during his time at the head of the Regional Committee. The demolition was finally carried out in September 1977 under his successor, Boris Yeltsin.[8]

Secretary of the Central Committee (1976–1979)

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At the October Plenum of the Central Committee on 26 October 1976, Ryabov was elected Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, taking over the defense and military-industrial portfolio previously held by Dmitry Ustinov, who had moved to the Ministry of Defense. On 4 November 1976 he was confirmed as a member of the Defence Council of the USSR. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1990 and a delegate to the 22nd through 27th Congresses of the CPSU, as well as the 19th All-Union Conference. He was also a member of the Soviet of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union for the 9th to 11th convocations (1974–1989).[4][5]

In this capacity, Ryabov supervised ten ministries with thousands of enterprises, design bureaus and research institutes connected to the defense, chemical and military-industrial sectors. He clashed with Dmitry Ustinov over the production of the T-72 and T-64 main battle tanks, supporting the Uralvagonzavod-built T-72 against the Kharkov-built T-64, and over the state of air and missile defenses around Moscow, which he considered inadequate following an inspection in 1977. He also came into conflict with Interior Minister Nikolai Shchelokov.[4][9]

He was relieved of his post as Secretary of the Central Committee on 17 April 1979 after frank remarks he had made on Brezhnev's failing health during a meeting with the Nizhny Tagil city committee in February 1979 reached the General Secretary, and after his disputes with Ustinov over the tank programme had hardened. He was transferred to the position of First Deputy Chairman of Gosplan, the state planning committee.[4][6]

Senior economic positions (1979–1986)

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Ryabov served as First Deputy Chairman of Gosplan until May 1983, when he was appointed Chairman of the State Committee of the USSR for Foreign Economic Relations (Goskomvneshekonomsvyazi). On 27 September 1984 he became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union under Premier Nikolai Tikhonov and, from 1985, Nikolai Ryzhkov, with responsibility for heavy industry, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, chemicals and petrochemicals, fertilisers, microbiology, geological prospecting and the timber-pulp-and-paper complex.[2][4]

Ambassador to France (1986–1990)

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In June 1986, Premier Ryzhkov, who was replacing all of his deputies in the Council of Ministers, asked General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to send Ryabov abroad. By presidential decree, Ryabov was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Soviet Union to the French Republic on 19 June 1986, succeeding Yuli Vorontsov.[4][10]

His tenure coincided with the height of perestroika and a marked improvement in France–Soviet Union relations. On 9 September 1986, in his first weeks at the post, Ryabov presented a senior Soviet decoration to Admiral Philippe de Gaulle at a ceremony of the French Ministry of Veterans Affairs, in the presence of Defence Minister André Giraud.[10] In 1987, the Russian diplomat Alexander Orlov, at the time political adviser at the embassy, accompanied Ryabov on an official visit to Strasbourg to inaugurate de facto consular relations with the city.[11]

In April 1987 Ryabov was at the centre of a major espionage row when, in the wake of the arrests in Paris of Soviet citizens accused of espionage related to space technology, French Foreign Minister Jean-Bernard Raimond summoned him on 1 April to deliver an expulsion order against three Soviet diplomats. The case revolved around Major Valery Konorev, listed at the Soviet Embassy as air attaché but identified by French security services as a GRU military intelligence agent. Ryabov had only days earlier publicly denied the espionage allegations to French reporters. Moscow retaliated three days later by expelling French diplomats and a businessman from the Soviet Union.[12][13]

In 1989, Ryabov attended the opening ceremony of the Année Chostakovitch, a major French festival celebrating the music of Dmitri Shostakovich timed with the bicentennial of the French Revolution and presented in the French press as a cultural counterpart to the perestroika-era thaw in Franco-Soviet relations.[14]

On 6 March 1990, Ryabov received a coded telegram signed by Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze informing him that, "in the framework of personnel changes currently being made in the diplomatic service on the European track", his retirement was being requested. He returned to Moscow on 23 May 1990 and was succeeded as ambassador by Yuri Dubinin. Gorbachev offered him no further state position, and from April 1990 Ryabov was a personal pensioner of Union significance.[2][4]

Later life

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After 1991, Ryabov remained active in public life. He was president of the Association for the Development of the Urals Region from 1992 to 2001, co-chairman of the International Demidov Foundation from 1992, and Honorary President of the Urals Diaspora Society from 2001. He worked as a representative in Russia of the French firm CIFAL, a Franco-Soviet trading company in which he had been involved during his ambassadorship. He was an academician of the Russian Engineering Academy, an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, a doctor of political sciences, and the author of seven books and over 150 academic articles, including his memoir My 20th Century.[3][15]

He was made an Honorary Citizen of Sverdlovsk Oblast on 13 March 2008, and on his ninetieth birthday on 24 March 2018 he was awarded the badge "For Services to Sverdlovsk Oblast", second class. In an interview given that day to Oblastnaya Gazeta, Ryabov reiterated that he regretted having recommended Boris Yeltsin to succeed him as First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee.[7]

Yakov Ryabov died in Moscow on 17 April 2018, aged 90. He is buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.[1][16]

Honours and awards

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References

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  1. 1 2 3 "Скончался бывший руководитель Свердловской области Яков Рябов" (in Russian). Kommersant. 17 April 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "90 лет Якову Петровичу Рябову" (in Russian). Centre for Documentation of Public Organisations of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  3. 1 2 "Наш знаменитый земляк" (in Russian). Ruzayevskie Novosti. 23 March 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Рябов Яков Петрович" (in Russian). Самые закрытые люди. От Ленина до Горбачева: Энциклопедия биографий. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  5. 1 2 "Рябов Яков Петрович" (in Russian). Khronos. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  6. 1 2 "Рябов Яков Петрович" (in Russian). Elite History. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  7. 1 2 "В Москве умер глава Уральского землячества, сделавший карьеру президенту России Ельцину" (in Russian). Znak.com. 17 April 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  8. ↑ "Ельцин вернул НКВД Ежова: какая ошибка первого президента России стала роковой" (in Russian). Moskovsky Komsomolets. 1 February 2026. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  9. ↑ "Интервью Якова Петровича Рябова, секретаря ЦК КПСС 1976-1979 гг" (in Russian). KPSS, LiveJournal. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  10. 1 2 "Ministère des anciens combattants. Remise d'une haute distinction soviétique à l'amiral Philippe De Gaulle par Iakov Riabov, ambassadeur d'URSS" (in French). ImagesDéfense, French Ministry of Armed Forces. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  11. ↑ Orlov, Alexander. "Europe, our common home". Council of Europe. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  12. ↑ "Soviet Diplomats Ousted After French Spy Arrests". The Washington Post. 3 April 1987. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  13. ↑ "Moscow Sets Expulsion of 6 Frenchmen". The Washington Post. 4 April 1987. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  14. ↑ Roycroft, Madeline (2019). "Programming Politics: The 1989 'Year of Shostakovich' in France" (PDF). Context. 44. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  15. 1 2 "Рябов Яков Петрович: биография" (in Russian). Viperson. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
  16. ↑ "Умер человек, который привёл Бориса Ельцина во власть" (in Russian). Regnum News Agency. 17 April 2018. Retrieved 4 May 2026.
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