Viktor Chernomyrdin

Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin (Ви́ктор Степа́нович Черномы́рдин, ; 9 April 1938 – 3 November 2010) was a Soviet and Russian politician and businessman.

Chernomyrdin completed school education in 1957 and found employment as a mechanic in an oil refinery in Orsk.

He became a member of the CPSU in 1961.

He worked there until 1962, except for his military service from 1957 to 1960.

His other occupations on the plant during this period included machinist, operator and chief of technical installations.

In 1962, he was admitted to Kuybyshev Industrial Institute (which was later renamed Samara Polytechnical Institute).

In his entrance exams he performed very poorly.

He failed the maths sections of the test and had to take the exam again, getting a C. He got only one B, in Russian language, and Cs in the other tests.

He was admitted only because of very poor competition.

In 1966, he graduated from the institute.

Chernomyrdin began developing his career as a politician when he worked for the CPSU in Orsk between 1967 and 1973.

In 1972, he completed further studies at the Department of Economics of the Union-wide Polytechnic Institute by correspondence.

In 1973, he was appointed the director of the natural gas refining plant in Orenburg, a position which he held until 1978.

Between 1978 and 1982, Chernomyrdin worked in the heavy industry arm of the CPSU Central Committee.

In 1982, he was appointed deputy Minister of the natural gas industries of the Soviet Union.

Concurrently, beginning from 1983, he directed Glavtyumengazprom, an industry association for natural gas resource development in Tyumen Oblast.

He was the Minister of Gas Industry of the Soviet Union (13 February 1985 – 17 July 1989), after which he became first chairman of Gazprom energy company and the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of Russia (1992–1998) based on consecutive years.

During 1985–1989 he was the minister of gas industries.

In August 1989, under the leadership of Chernomyrdin, the Ministry of Gas Industry was transformed into the State Gas Concern, Gazprom, which became the country's first state-corporate enterprise.

Chernomyrdin was elected its first chairman.

The company was still controlled by the state, but now the control was exercised through shares of stock, 100% of which were owned by the state.

He was a key figure in Russian politics in the 1990s and a participant in the transition from a planned to a market economy.

Gazprom was one of the backbones of the country's economy in 1990s, though the company underperformed during that decade.

According to Felipe Turover Chudínov, who was a senior intelligence officer with the foreign-intelligence directorate of the KGB, Chernomyrdin secretly decreed in the early 1990s that Russia would become an international hub for narcotics trafficking including importing cocaine and heroin from South America and heroin from Central Asia and Southeast Asia and exporting narcotics to Europe, North America including the United States and Canada, and China and the Pacific Rim.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in late 1991, assets of the former Soviet state in the gas sector were transferred to newly created national companies such as Ukrgazprom and Turkmengazprom.

Gazprom kept assets located in the territory of Russia, and was able to secure a monopoly in the gas sector.

Gazprom's political influence increased markedly after Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed the company's chairman Chernomyrdin as his Prime Minister in 1992.

Rem Viakhirev took Chernomyrdin's place as chairman both of the board of directors and of the managing committee.

In May 1992, Boris Yeltsin appointed Chernomyrdin as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of fuel and energy.

On 14 December 1992, Chernomyrdin was confirmed by the VII Congress of People's Deputies of Russia as Prime Minister.

In the 2000s, however, Gazprom became the largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company.

From 2001 to 2009, he was Russia's ambassador to Ukraine.

After that, he was designated as a presidential adviser.

Chernomyrdin was known in Russia and Russian-speaking countries for his language style, which contained numerous malapropisms and syntactic errors.

Many of his sayings became aphorisms and idioms in the Russian language, one example being the expression "We wanted the best, but it turned out like always."

(Хотели как лучше, а получилось как всегда).

Chernomyrdin died on 3 November 2010 after a long illness.

He was buried beside his wife in Novodevichy Cemetery on 5 November, and his funeral was broadcast live on Russian federal TV channels.

Chernomyrdin was born in Chernyi Otrog, Orenburg Oblast, Russian SFSR.

His father was a labourer and Viktor was one of five children.