Nikolai Ryzhkov
Soviet-Russian politician (1929–2024)
Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov (Russian: Николай Иванович Рыжков; Ukrainian: Микола Іванович Рижков; 28 September 1929 – 28 February 2024) was a Russian politician. He served as the last chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 and was succeeded by Valentin Pavlov as prime minister. The same year, he lost his seat on the Presidential Council, going on to become Boris Yeltsin's leading opponent in the 1991 presidential election of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He was the last surviving premier of the Soviet Union following the death of Ivan Silayev on 8 February 2023.
Ryzhkov was born in the town of Shcherbynivka, Ukrainian SSR (now Toretsk) in 1920. After graduating in 1959, he worked first in local industry before being moved into government in the 1970s, working his way up through the hierarchy of Soviet industrial ministries. He was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee in 1979. Following Nikolai Tikhonov's resignation as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Ryzhkov was voted into office in his place. During his tenure he supported Mikhail Gorbachev's 1980s reform of the Soviet economy.
Elected to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in December 1995 as an independent, Ryzhkov subsequently led the Power to the People voting bloc, later becoming the formal leader of the People's Patriotic Union of Russia alongside Gennady Zyuganov, who was an unofficial leader.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nikolai Ryzhkov” is soviet-Russian politician (1929–2024). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nikolai, Ryzhkov and Soviet-Russian, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q366524. VIAF identifies the subject as 188268912. The Library of Congress control number is n81047725. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 2024, 1985 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nikolai Ryzhkov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.