The first mayor of St. Petersburg was a lawyer, professor and politician Anatoly Sobchak. At one time, he was one of the first, together with Boris Yeltsin, to seek democratic reforms in post-Soviet Russia. For a long time, he served as rector of the law faculty of Leningrad State University and his students were many representatives of the political and financial elite of modern Russia, including President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Childhood
Anatoly Sobchak was born on August 10, 1937 in Chita, like many children born in the country of the Soviets, he absorbed a bunch of nationalities. The paternal grandfather was a Pole, the grandmother was Czech; maternal grandfather is Russian, grandmother is Ukrainian. In addition to Anatoly, there were three more children in the family. His father worked as an engineer on the railway, his mother worked as an accountant.
Despite this diversity, Sobchak always considered himself Russian - “for me to be Russian is to think and speak Russian, to be proud of my country and its contribution to the world heritage, and ashamed of the Chechen war, Chernobyl, abandoned collective farm fields and the poverty of the people, whose country possesses innumerable natural resources. Remember the victims of Stalinist repressions and interethnic conflicts. But above all, it's about faith! Faith in peace, democracy and prosperity in Russia, which we must leave to our children and grandchildren.
Anatoly was one of four sons. When he was only two years old, the whole family moved to Uzbekistan. In 1941, Sobchak's father went to the front, and all the burdens of maintaining the family and raising children fell on the shoulders of his mother. This poverty and half-starved existence had a great influence on the young Sobchak.
“When I was little, food was the rarest and most precious thing. I had many friends, good parents and pets, but I never had enough food. I still remember this constant feeling of hunger. Our only salvation was our goat, as we could not afford to keep a cow. My brothers and I went to collect grass every day. Once someone hit our goat with a stick - it got sick and died. You know, I have never cried so much in my life as I did that day,”Anatoly Aleksandrovich recalled.
He went through the hungry years and continued his studies, gaining authority and popularity among his peers. Even when he was a child, for his qualities peers gave him the nicknames "professor" and "judge", because he had a broad outlook and was fair in resolving disputes. During wartime, Leningrad University professors, actors and writers were evacuated to Uzbekistan. of them turned out to be Sobchak's neighbors. Stories about Leningrad and university life impressed the boy so much that he decided that he must go to Leningrad State University.
Student time
After graduating from high school, Sobchak entered the law faculty of Tashkent University. He studied there for one year, and then received a transfer to the Leningrad State University. He loved to study and was very quickly awarded a Lenin scholarship. At the same time, he married Nonna Gandzyuk, who also came to Leningrad to get an education. The young couple was very poor, but what was lacking in food or material wealth was compensated by the abundant cultural life of Leningrad, which Sobchak fell in love with as his hometown. After a while, Sobchak and his wife had a daughter, Maria, who later followed in her father's footsteps and became a lawyer. However, the marriage was unsuccessful and ended in divorce in 1977.
After Sobchak University, he was assigned to work as a lawyer in the Stavropol Territory. Sobchak worked there for three years, and three years later, in 1962, he returned to Leningrad to defend his Ph. D. thesis and continue his work as a lawyer and teacher.
In 1973 he presented his doctoral dissertation, in which he put forward the ideas of the liberalization of the socialist economy and closer links between the state economy and the private market. His ideas were considered rather risky, and his thesis was rejected. Sobchak later learned that he was blacklisted by the university because of his support for his former professor, who was fired after his daughter emigrated to Israel. Sobchak decided to postpone defending his doctorate. When he felt that the situation had changed, he wrote another dissertation, successfully defended it in Moscow and became a Doctor of Law in 1982.
In his alma mater, Sobchak founded and headed the first department of economic law in the USSR. He worked there until 1989 - the time he went into politics. Sobchak's knowledge, wisdom and manner of teaching made him very popular among students, and even when he later became mayor of St. Petersburg, he continued to lecture at the university.
Companion Lyudmila Narusova
In 1975, Sobchak met with Lyudmila Narusova, who was destined to become his second wife.
“I was divorced and my husband did not want to give up the apartment my parents paid for. It was a difficult situation and someone recommended a lawyer who taught at the university. I was told that he was involved in difficult cases and has an unconventional way of thinking. I went to university to meet him and ended up having to wait for him for a very long time. Then I saw how, after the lecture, young pretty students crowded around him, who asked him questions and tried to flirt with him, and I thought that he would not help me. At the time, I had no idea that he also experienced a divorce and knew firsthand about it.
We went to a cafe to discuss my situation. I was so upset that I started telling him everything about myself and my life, and I cried all the time. He listened to me and decided that he needed to talk to my husband. He had the gift of persuasion, and as a result, my husband backed down.
To thank the lawyer for his help, I bought him a bouquet of chrysanthemums and prepared three hundred rubles in an envelope. It was the money-month salary of the assistant professor. He took the flowers and returned the money, saying - you are so pale. Why don't you go to the market and buy yourself some fruit. I was very offended by this. Three months later we met at a party and he didn't even remember me. And it was even worse. I did my best to make sure he never forgets me again! We started dating, but we had a pretty big age gap between us - he was thirty-nine and I was only twenty-five. We met for 5 years, and he seemed in no hurry to propose. However, in 1980 we finally got married and a year later our daughter Ksenia,”recalls Lyudmila Borisovna.
The happy father could hardly have guessed that a few decades later, his daughter would surpass him in popularity and even become a candidate for the presidency of the Russian Federation. However, when he took her out of the hospital, all he dreamed of was living long enough to celebrate her eighteen and had no idea that he would die, just a couple of months after Ksenia Anatolyevna celebrated her 18th birthday.
This was the second marriage, and the late Sobchak adored his wife and admitted that he owed her his life. She became more than just a wife; she was his companion, fighting for her husband's cause and even for his very existence. He later wrote that during his severe persecution, her loyalty, courage and support won her great respect even from his enemies. Living and working so close to Sobchak, Lyudmila also joined politics, being elected to the State Duma for St. Petersburg in 1995.
From university life to politics
Meanwhile, Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, as a result of the total reform of the country - perestroika, which marked the beginning of the democratization of power. In 1989, Sobchak was elected People's Deputy of the USSR in the first democratic elections in the country.
A talented lawyer and professor, he was also talented in politics. He was appointed head of the parliamentary investigation into the shooting of peaceful demonstrators in Tbilisi in 1989 - his report exposed the gross misconduct of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB against people. His direct questions during the cross-examination of then Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov regarding the orders and actions of all government officials were broadcast across the country, which was unheard of just a few years ago.
Mayor of St. Petersburg
In 1990, Sobchak was elected chairman of the Leningrad City Council. The following year, in the general election of the head of the city, he was elected the first mayor of Leningrad. On the same day, a referendum was held on the return of Leningrad's historical name St. Petersburg.
Sobchak quickly assembled a strong team of young professionals who were also talented managers. Most of the people on his team now make up the political elite of Russia. One of his assistants was former student Dmitry Medvedev, and the post of vice-mayor Vladimir Putin. Sobchak sincerely loved St. Petersburg, sought to improve its image throughout the world and return it to the status of the cultural capital of Russia.
Meanwhile, a coup carried out by supporters of the Communist Party in August 1991 gave Sobchak the opportunity to go down in history. While Boris Yeltsin, Russia's President, rallied and coordinated the opposition in Moscow, Sobchak did the same in St. Petersburg. He bravely confronted the security forces and persuaded them not to bring the army into the city.
The coup failed, the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, and Sobchak became Russia's second most popular political leader after Yeltsin. His legal education and experience allowed him to practically write the new Constitution of post-Soviet Russia. However, Sobchak was perhaps too soft a politician and could not use his immediate popularity after the coup to move to a higher level of politics. Instead, he fell into the trap of local politics in St. Petersburg and began to lose popularity after failing to curb organized crime in the city. Allegations of corruption and financial dishonesty soon began to appear in the press.
From the peak of popularity to criminal prosecution
In early 1996, Sobchak's competitors launched a full campaign to discredit him, organized by his assistant Vladimir Yakovlev. Scandals involving Sobchak and his team appeared in the press - they were accused of inept management of city resources, which led to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. Sobchak was accused of illegal privatization of property in the prestigious districts of St. Petersburg. Some felt that Sobchak and his popularity were too inconvenient for Boris Yeltsin, whose second term would be in jeopardy if Sobchak rose to run.
“I would not even want my enemies to experience what my family and I have experienced over the past four years. From a man with an unblemished reputation, I instantly turned into a corrupt official, I was persecuted and accused of all mortal sins, "Anatoly Sobchak wrote later in his book" A Dozen Knives in the Back ".
He lost the elections by just over 1%, but the persecution did not stop. Sobchak already had two heart attacks, and he felt very bad. In 1997, prosecutors tried to forcibly bring him in for questioning - he was supposed to be a witness in a corruption case. His wife insisted that Sobchak was too sick to be interrogated, but the investigators did not believe her and tried to take him away by force. She called an ambulance, and the doctors diagnosed Anatoly Alexandrovich with a third heart attack.
After the hospital in November 1997, Anatoly and his wife left for France. He lived in Paris for 2 years, underwent medical treatment, taught at the Sorbonne and worked with the archives.
Recovery
Sobchak returned to St. Petersburg in July 1999. His most ardent pursuers were either fired or arrested on criminal charges. In October 1999, Sobchak received an official notification from the Prosecutor General's Office to close the criminal case against him. All accusations published by the press were found unfounded. Sobchak regained his honor by winning cases against those who published libelous material about him.
In December 1999, Sobchak ran for the State Duma. However, the decisive role was played by the lack of support, and fierce competition with the city authorities - Sobchak lost, losing only 1.2%.
On December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigns, Vladimir Putin, a former protégé of Sobchak, was appointed acting president until the March elections. In turn, Putin appointed Sobchak as his confidant in Kaliningrad, where he went on February 15.
Death and legacy
Five days later, on February 20, 2000, Sobchak was found dead. Immediately, the press voiced the opinions of Sobchak's wife and relatives that it was a murder, but an autopsy established that the cause of death was acute heart failure.
Rumors of the murder appeared immediately, but the prosecutor's office of the Kaliningrad region opened a criminal case into the murder (poisoning) only in May. An autopsy carried out in St. Petersburg showed the absence of both alcohol and poisoning. In August, prosecutors dropped the case. Although Anatoly's brother Alexander Alexandrovich is still sure that his brother was killed.
Sobchak was a member of a generation that was pursuing a political stage in both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Having gained massive popularity during perestroika, he became one of the ideologues and political leader of capitalist reforms. In a sense, Sobchak's death, which coincided with the end of Yeltsin's presidency, closed the romantic period of Russia's democratization.
