Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak was a Russian politician and a mayor of Saint Petersburg.
Background
Anatoly Sobchak was born in Chita, Siberia, USSR, on 10 August 1937. His father, Aleksander Antonovich, was a railroad engineer, and his mother, Nadezhda Andreyevna Litvinova, was an accountant. Anatoly was one of four brothers. In 1939, the family moved to Uzbekistan, where Anatoly lived until 1953.
Both his grandfather and his father worked for the railroad and participated in the revolution and consolidation of Soviet power in Siberia. Although his family was a humble one, Sobchak revealed that his Czech grandmother tutored the family in the manners of the intelligentsia, which perhaps contributed to his demeanor and image. Like other families, the Sobchaks experienced the cruel hand of Stalinism when his grandfather was arrested in the late 1930s. His father fought in World War II, while his mother earned a meager salary to support the family.
Education
Young Sobchak was selected to go to Leningrad University, a rare honor for someone from the remote provinces. After the university, he worked at first in the Stavropol region and later attended graduate school in Leningrad.
He was a Honorary Doctor of Law at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (1991), University of Macerata (Italy, 1992), St. Petersburg Law Institute of the Russian Interior Ministry
He was a Honorary Doctor of Political Science, University of Genoa (Italy, 1992).
He was a Honorary Doctor of the University of Arts in Oklahoma City (1993).
He also was a Honorary Doctor of Humanities, Tausonskogo University (Baltimore, USA, 1993)
Career
He became a resident of Leningrad, building his career as an attorney and as a professor in the Law Department of Leningrad University.
In 1989 Sobchak was nominated and elected to the new parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies. His "I, Too, Have a Dream" speech to secure the nomination was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. 's famous speech. Sobchak was subsequently elected by the People's Deputies to the smaller, more powerful standing parliament, the Supreme Soviet. In his early political career in the Congress, Sobchak moved slowly and carefully, observing his colleagues, aware of the entrenched power and the fragility of the new democratic movement. He approached the national political arena not as a long-time bureaucrat (apparatchik) but as a critic of the Soviet state structure, theoretically based on the local Soviets or councils that for many years had been rubber stamps for the party. Boris Yeltsin, elected to the new Congress and the Supreme Soviet, also criticized the status quo but had been part of the system for many years before he was removed from the Politburo in 1987.
Sobchak worked with Andrei Sakharov to abolish Article VI, which gave special status to the CPSU, from the Soviet Constitution, continuing the struggle after Sakharov's death. In March 1990 the article was removed despite Gorbachev's continuing opposition. A confrontation between the leaders of reform and the party old guard at the 28th Party Congress in July 1990 resulted in the resignation of numerous reform leaders, including Sobchak.
In 1990 when Sobchak was elected chairman of the Leningrad city council, and shortly afterward mayor of Leningrad, he was already a politician with a national following. After 1992 Sobchak was viewed as an important leader of independent Russia, a significant voice in Russia's democratic movement, and an articulate spokesperson for the new Russia. He was criticized, however, as were other Russian leaders, for sometimes wanting to govern without accountability to anyone. In addition, his reputation as a democrat was clouded by a minor furor over an elaborate tsarist-style ball he and his wife sponsored during a time of general economic hardship. Sobchak, however, remained widely respected by Russia's intelligentsia and was one of numerous academics who made a successful transition into politics during the Gorbachev era.
Sobchak was successful in changing the name of the former Leningrad to St. Petersburg. He achieved significant progress in St. Petersburg despite its serious economic problems. The city's economy was built on the defense industry, which faced cutbacks and conversion. It is in a region with few natural resources and is dependent on other areas for raw materials and food. His goal was to develop the city as a center for free enterprise, emphasizing finance, tourism, and trade. He was able to designate it a free economic zone and to create a municipal bank to handle foreign exchange and regulate other banking activity. He encountered considerable frustration in his efforts to transform the city into a financial center, primarily because of its financial and economic backwardness in respect to Moscow, which widely outdistanced Leningrad in employment, income, banking activity, access to currency, and infrastructural soundness.
By 1991 many people began to perceive the mayor of Leningrad as the most articulate and progressive alternative to Gorbachev. In August 1991 Sobchak was involved in the anti-coup movement against the conservative party and government officials, who had tried to remove Gorbachev and reverse the reforms. He led demonstrations in Leningrad and was in frequent contact with Yeltsin, who led the resistance at the parliament building in Moscow. After the coup had failed, Sobchak tried to prevent the dissolution of the parliament and the union, realizing that rapid disruption of existing structures and the end of the Soviet Union could be more problematic than working within a less than perfect system. In post-Soviet Russia, supporters of reform advocated differing paths, and at times Sobchak disagreed with Yeltsin on the pace and course of reform.
In the parliamentary elections of December 1993, he was a leader of one of several competing reform parties and was perceived as a possible future presidential candidate. He was also well respected abroad, where he made numerous appearances as mayor of Leningrad
Sobchak had difficulty in dealing with a cumbersome city council apparatus. He was criticized for an intransigent administrative style. Sobchak's image as a haughty national leader in-waiting did not enhance his local popularity as mayor.
Sobchak was unexpectedly defeated in the second round of the 1996 mayoral elections by Vladimir Yakovlev, an economist specializing in municipal affairs and Sobchak's Deputy Mayor responsible for housing. The campaign was recriminatory, with accusations by Sobchak and his wife, Lyudmila Narusova, a deputy to the state Duma from St. Petersburg, that Yakovlev, who spent far more than the 125-million-ruble limit on his campaign, had exerted pressure on the local media to provide favorable coverage for Yakovlev. Yakovlev and media employees retorted that Sobchak, who as mayor had a weekly call-in television show with a huge regular audience, and Narusova had regularly attempted to dictate coverage during his term of office.
In 1997 a criminal investigation started against Sobchak. He was accused of irregularities in the privatization of his own apartment, his elder daughter's apartment, and his wife's art studio. By the standards of the 1990s in Russia the allegations were relatively minor (although the alleged losses for city finances were still in the tens of thousands of dollars). Thus, Sobchak's supporters saw the criminal proceedings as a political repression. According to Ksenia Sobchak, this campaign was started in 1995 from Moscow to prevent her father from running in future presidential elections.
On 7 November 1997, Sobchak flew to Paris on a private plane without passport processing on the Russian side. The formal reason for his departure was medical treatment in a Paris hospital for his heart condition, but Sobchak never checked in at the hospital. Between 1997 and 1999 he lived the typical life of a political émigré in Paris.
In June 1999, his friend Vladimir Putin became much stronger politically (in a few weeks he became the Prime Minister of Russia), and he was able to make the prosecutors drop the charges against Sobchak. On 12 June 1999, Sobchak returned to Russia. After his return Sobchak became a very active supporter of Putin in his quest for the Russian presidency.
On February 17, 2000, Putin met with Sobchak and asked him to urgently travel to Kaliningrad to support his election campaign. Sobchak traveled there, accompanied by two assistants who also served as his bodyguards. On 20 February 2000, Sobchak died suddenly in the town of Svetlogorsk of the Kaliningrad Oblast. The initial suspected cause of death was a heart attack, but the findings of two medical experts were contradictory. A criminal investigation of Sobchak's death as a possible "premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances" was opened only on 6 May 2000, more than two months later. After three months, the investigation was closed without a finding. The Democratic Union party led by Valeria Novodvorskaya made an official statement that not only Sobchak, but also two of his aides had heart attacks simultaneously, which indicated poisoning. Two other men were present with Sobchak during his death, but their names were not publicly disclosed.
According to an independent investigation by Arkady Vaksberg, both bodyguards of Sobchak were treated for symptoms of poisoning after Sobchak's death, indicating at a probable contract killing by poisoning.
Achievements
Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak was a Russian politician, who is remembered as a co-author of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, and a mentor and teacher of both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.
He was a Honorary citizen of St. Petersburg (2010), Tbilisi (Georgia, 1991), Indianapolis (USA, 1992), Maryland (USA, 1993), Oklahoma (USA, 1994), Georgia (1995).
(Beautiful full-color photographs along with English text ...)
Politics
Unlike most prominent figures of the Soviet era, Sobchak was not a long-time member of the Communist party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). He joined the party in 1988 during the opening of the ranks (called perestroika) because he believed reforms would have to begin within the CPSU, the most entrenched structure in that society. His public life began as a response to Gorbachev's initiatives in perestroika in the late 1980s and was fueled by a desire to advance the reform movement.
In a period of economic decline and hardship, he also suffered, with others, from a general public disillusionment with the fathers of liberal economic reforms. He was perceived by many Russians as cold and detatched. He alienated many with his strong anti-communist positions and was accused of spending more time away from the city than in it.
Although successful in his own political career, Sobchak had reservations about politicians and political life. He functioned both as a political actor and as an observer of the very process in which he participated. His ambivalence can be summarized in a passage from his book, For a New Russia: "If we overcome the system's resistance and build a market economy, powerful democratic forces capable of preventing any relapse into the past will appear. Then we … will feel free to go back to our private lives. We are mere recruits, and most of us dream of completing the work that was suspended in spring 1989 until better times. I dream of my books, my research, and the joys of life within a Russian intellectual's compass. "
Membership
He was a Honorary member of the St. Petersburg Union of Engineering Societies (1992).
He a Member of the International Informatization Academy (Moscow, 1995).
He was a Full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Engineering (Department of economic and legal sciences) (1992).
Personality
A tall, handsome man, Sobchak had a commanding presence and good speaking skills that were assets in Russia's expanded use of television in politics and elections.
Quotes from others about the person
In The Struggle for Russia (1995), Yeltsin wrote that "Sobchak had to change in his job as St Petersburg's town governor' from his old image as a liberal, from a well-respected politician and law professor to a harsh, authoritarian administrator. "
Connections
In 1958, he married Nonna Gandzyuk, a student of Hertzen Teacher's College. They had a daughter called Maria Sobchak, born in 1965, who is currently a St Petersburg lawyer while her son Gleb Sobchak, born in 1983, graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg State University.
