Ivan Silayev

At the 26th Congress Silayev was elected to the Central Committee (CPSU).

Ivan Stepanovich Silayev (Ива́н Степа́нович Сила́ев; 21 October 1930 – 8 February 2023) was a Soviet and Russian politician.

Silayev was born on 21 October 1930, in Baktyzino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.

After graduating in the 1950s, Silayev began his political career in the Ministry of Aviation Industry in the 1970s.

During the Brezhnev Era he became Minister of Aviation Industry, Minister of Machine-Tool and Tool Building Industry, and a Central Committee member.

He graduated from the Kazan Aviation Institute in 1954 as a mechanical engineer.

During his tenure at the Gorky Aviation Plant (Gorky is now Nizhny Novgorod), where he started in 1954, he advanced from the lowest level to become the plant's foreman from 1971 to 1974.

In 1959 Silayev became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

He served briefly as Minister of Machine-Tool and Tool Building Industry of the Soviet Union from 1980 to 1981.

Following this, Silayev served as Deputy Minister of Aviation Industry, and was later appointed Minister of Aviation Industry in 1981 in Nikolai Tikhonov's first government.

When Nikolai Tikhonov's Second Government was dissolved, Mikhail Gorbachev appointed him in 1985 deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in Nikolai Ryzhkov's First Government.

In 1985, during Mikhail Gorbachev's rule, Silayev was appointed deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and chairman of the Machine-Building Bureau of the Council of Ministers in Nikolai Ryzhkov's first and second governments.

In 1986, he served as head of a government commission into the Chernobyl Disaster.

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.

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 nor 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 15 June a large margin.

On June 18, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR approved the appointment of Silayev as Prime Minister.

Gorbachev tried to break the Silayev–Yeltsin alliance but to no avail.

He left all posts in the central government in October 1990 to focus in his post as chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian SFSR, which he had been appointed to in June of that year.

He served in these posts until he was appointed Premier of the Russian SFSR in 1990.

He served as Prime Minister of the Soviet Union through the offices of chairman of the Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet economy (28 August – 25 December 1991) and chairman of the Inter-republican Economic Committee (20 September – 14 November 1991).

Responsible for overseeing the economy of the Soviet Union during the late Gorbachev era, he was the last head of government of the Soviet Union, succeeding Valentin Pavlov.

There he faced several cabinet difficulties during his tenure, and while he supported the majority of Boris Yeltsin's policies, he opposed the secessionist policies of Yeltsin, which led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, during his concurrent tenure as Soviet Premier, which he overtook in August 1991.

Therefore, a month later, he was removed from the post of Prime Minister of the Russian SFSR and was replaced by acting Prime Minister Oleg Lobov.

Silayev de facto became Prime Minister of the Soviet Union on 28 August 1991 following the failed August coup and the abolishment of the Cabinet of Ministers, when no new cabinet could be formed and the new economic committee, chaired by him since 24 August, was granted the authority of the cabinet.

In 1989, Valentin Pavlov, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union from 14 January to 28 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.

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.

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.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he continued to work for the Yeltsin administration as the Permanent Representative of Russia to the European Community (the European Union since 1992) until his resignation in 1994.

During the 2007 legislative election, Silayev ran as a candidate for the Agrarian Party of Russia.