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 he was secretary of the Security Council.
Biography of the politician
Ivan Rybkin was born in 1946. Grew up in a peasant family. He was born in the village of Semigorka in the Voronezh region. He received his higher education at the Agricultural Institute in Volgograd. He graduated in 1968 with honors, becoming the owner of the speci alty "mechanical engineer". In 1974 he completed his postgraduate studies at the same university. He received a Ph. D. in Engineering.
In the future, Ivan Rybkin continued to improve his education. To do 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.
Employment career
Ivan Petrovich Rybkin started working in1968 in the collective farm "Zavety Ilyich" as a senior engineer. It was located in the Novoanninsky district of the Volgograd region. After serving in the army.
In 1987 he received the post of First Secretary of the Soviet District Committee in Volgograd. In 1991, when cardinal transformations began in the country, Ivan Rybkin was the head of a department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the RSFSR.
Political activities
When the August putsch failed, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was dissolved. After that, Rybkin took part in the creation of the Agrarian Party of Russia. It was originally a left-wing political movement until 2009 when its registration was temporarily suspended. Now the organization claims to be a center party.
Its first founding congress was held in February 1993. People's Deputy Mikhail Lapshin was elected chairman. In December of the same 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 votes. It was her best result ever. In total, she had 37 mandates in the federal parliament - 21 on party lists and 16 more in single-member districts.
Ivan Rybkin himself, despite his involvement in the "agrarians", was among the initiators of the restoration congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, even entered the presidium.
Participation in the Communist Party
In February 1993year, the hero of our article is already participating 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. During the same period, he was a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
Becomes a Member of Parliament. He is nominated for the post of chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation by the "agrarians" faction. As their leader Mikhail Lapshin later recalled, the party had the opportunity to nominate its candidate for speaker, he personally recommended Rybkin then.
The hero of our article himself likes to tell that when he received a certificate of the chairman of the State Duma in the president's office, he told Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin that he would never again allow a repeat of the White House.
Further activities
After the elections to the State Duma of the second convocation, Ivan Petrovich Rybkin was replaced as speaker by Gennady Seleznev, who represented the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The hero of our article himself became an ordinary single-member, his center-left bloc did not make it through the party lists.
Was the first number in Ivan Rybkin's block to vote. With him in the federal part of the list were also former head of the presidential administration of Russia Yuri Petrov and Arctic and Antarctic researcher Artur Chilingarov. During the election race, the Blok declared that they support the existing governmentrepresented by President Boris Yeltsin, while adhering to centre-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 My Fatherland movement, led by Boris Gryzlov, separated.
In the elections, Rybkin's Bloc won 1.1% of the vote, taking 11th place out of 43 parties and associations participating in the elections. The 5% barrier could not be overcome. Only three candidates got into parliament in single-mandate constituencies.
However, Rybkin did not remain out of work. In the same year he was appointed Secretary of the Security Council. He remained in this position 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 on 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 dismissed.
After that, in the status of president, he headed the public fund for the development of the Russian language.
Presidential elections
2004 was one of the brightest and most memorable years in Ivan Rybkin's biography. He decides to run for the presidency of the Russian Federation. By this time, the first term of Vladimir Putin, who plans to be re-elected, is over. Rybkin expects to becomeits 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 that time 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 disrupted by a mysterious scandal that de alt a significant blow to his reputation.
Rybkin himself later admitted that he was persuaded for a long time to take part in the presidential elections, including personally Boris Berezovsky. As a result, he decided to take part in the vote to declare that the disappearance of competition in the economy will soon lead to an absence and 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 he did not plan to go to the end from the very beginning.
Disappearance
The media became aware that on the evening of February 5, 2004, a potential candidate for the presidency of Russia disappeared. Three days later, as required by law, his wife Albina Rybkina appeared at the Arbat police station, where she wrote an official statement about her husband's disappearance. On the same day, a search was launched into his disappearance.
Two days later, the presidential candidate was found in Kyiv, a few hours later he flew to Moscow.
According to the first statements made by Rybkin himself after this mysterious disappearance, he decided to take a break from the events,which preceded the nomination for the presidency, for a while to forget about the hype that has risen around him. He turned off his mobile phones so that no one would interfere with his rest. Rybkin said that he has the right to a few days of his personal life, stressing that he often travels to Kyiv to walk the streets with friends, and besides, the weather was fine on the weekend.
His supporters commented rather harshly on the disappearance of Ivan Rybkin in February 2004. The head of his campaign headquarters, Ksenia Ponomareva, who previously was the editor-in-chief of the Kommersant newspaper and the general director of the ORT television channel, said that if everything is true, as her boss said, then this means the end of his political career.
Fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was the main sponsor of Rybkin's election campaign, said that after such a stunt such a politician no longer exists in Russia.
It is interesting that there were also opposite points of view on this matter. For example, some believed that the whole story with his disappearance was organized just by his supporters. Former Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov said that all this was an original PR campaign in which Berezovsky took part. And State Duma deputy Nikolai Kovalev suspected that the disappearance was a PR project for Ksenia Ponomareva, stressing that he recognized her style and approach to work. Kovalev admitted that he was sure that the disappearance would drag on for no more than four days, and the idea itself caused him Homeric laughter.
Conspiracy versions of the disappearance
There are still opinions that Rybkin did not disappear of his own free will, but when he spoke about the desire to rest, 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 apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999. As a result, these terrorist acts became the justification for the entry 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 a personal conversation that he was kidnapped by agents of the Federal Security Service, who drugged him and took him away in an unknown direction.
According to Goldfarb, Rybkin was lured to Ukraine by promising to arrange a meeting with Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. At that time, he was listed as the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
In Kyiv, Rybkin was informed that Maskhadov would arrive in two hours, and during this 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, he was shown a video in which, according to him, he committed "disgusting acts" with "terrible perverts." They began to blackmail Rybkin, forcing him to refuse to participate in the presidential elections, otherwise they threatened to publish the video.
Rybkin himself lateremphasized in an interview that he was leaving for Kyiv for a confidential meeting, planning to stay there for no more than two days. He did not see anything surprising in the fact that he did not warn his wife about this, 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, so he expects to continue participating in the presidential race from abroad. But already on March 5, it became known that Rybkin was officially withdrawing 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 called "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 point was that all the already registered candidates did not have the right to be nominated for re-elections. Allegedly, by killing Rybkin, Berezovsky planned to remove Putin from power in order to ensure victory in the presidential race for his candidate. Plans to eliminate Rybkin were thwarted by the Ukrainian special services as a result. The documentary was released on TV screens in 2012.
Then the TV channel "Rain" turned to the very hero of our article to once again find out the circumstances of his disappearance. However, Rybkin repeated his version that he left for Kyiv voluntarily in order to meet his acquaintances privately.
Election results
Finally in 2004Rybkin was declared an unregistered candidate. Multimillionaire Anzori Aksentiev-Kikalishvili, pharmaceutical tycoon Vladimir Bryntsalov, ex-head of the Central Bank Viktor Gerashchenko, chairman of the public movement "For Social Justice" Igor Smykov, ex-owner of the Alisa stock exchange German Sterligov found themselves in the same position. All of them have not been registered for the post of President of the Russian Federation.
Six candidates were allowed to vote. Sergei Mironov, who at that time represented the Russian Party of Life, failed to get even 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 independent 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%).
Vladimir Putin won a convincing victory in the elections, having received the support of more than 71% of voters who came to the polls. In total, 49.5 million people voted for him.
Further activities of Rybkin
Little is known about Ivan Rybkin's family. He has a wife Albina, while he prefers not to advertise his private life. After the failure in the 2004 presidential election, Rybkin rarely appears in public.
It is known that in 2011 he became one of the applicants for a rally and procession in Moscow on the Russian Flag Day on August 22.
Nowhe is 71 years old, the hero of our article himself calls himself a retired politician. He lives permanently in the Moscow region - in the village of Dubki, located not far from Odintsovo. He admits that he has been reading a lot lately, especially addicted to Russian classics (Lermontov, Bunin, Yesenin, Nekrasov), working on his own books of memoirs.
Ivan Rybkin is no longer involved in politics, although he closely follows everything that happens in the country.
