In the chaotic history of Russia between the late Gorbachev years and the 2000 elections of Vladimir Putin, there was at least one constant. As a behind-the-scenes adviser and diplomatic mediator, and then chief spy, foreign minister and briefly prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov rewarded this troubled period with illusory stability.
Childhood
Evgeni Maksimovich Primakov was born on October 29, 1929 in Kiev. Soon after the birth of his son, his father left the family, later in 1937 he was repressed. Together with his mother, a doctor, he moved to Tbilisi with her relatives, Georgia, where he grew up and received secondary education.
Career
After graduating from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1953, he worked on the radio before becoming a journalist for the newspaper Pravda. Fluent in Arabic, he became a special correspondent for a newspaper in the Middle East and the head of the office in Cairo, a post that in Soviet times inevitably obliged cooperation with the KGB. At this time, he personally met many Arab leaders, and until his death Primakov was considered the chief expert in our country for Middle East affairs.
In 1970, he left Pravda, after which he held various leadership positions in the think tank of the Foreign Ministry for almost two decades. Only in 1989 did he begin a political career when, in the midst of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected head of one of the two chambers of the Soviet parliament.
Primakov never belonged to the inner circle of Gorbachev's reform advisers, but they tried to use his rich Middle Eastern experience by sending to Iraq on the eve of the first Persian Gulf war in a futile attempt to convince Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait, alas, but this attempt failed.
Seven months later, in August 1991, after the coup, Primakov was appointed to the post of first deputy chairman of the KGB. In this position, he met the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. But Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, decided not to scatter valuable personnel and appointed him the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
Primakov held this post until 1996, after which he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the new post, Evgeni Maksimovich worked for two years. During this time, he earned great international respect as an experienced and cunning defender of the interests of his country. In August 1998, an economic crisis ensued in which Russia defaulted on $ 40 billion of debt and devalued the ruble.
A noticeably dying and deeply unpopular Yeltsin appointed Primakov Prime Minister, these few months, when he held this position, marked the apogee of his political career. Thanks to his harsh disposition and measured style, he quickly gained popular love and became the most popular politician in the country.
Many argue that this is precisely why Yeltsin fired him eight months later, in May 1999, seven months before the expiration of his presidential term. Primakov was replaced by Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who, by then, was Yeltsin's preferred successor.
That summer, Primakov announced his plans to run for president, agreeing to lead a powerful electoral coalition opposing the Kremlin, and for some time was a clear favorite. But he was 70 years old and his health left much to be desired. In December 1998, Primakov announced that he was giving up the fight for the presidency.
But his professional skills were still in demand. In 2003, when another Gulf war broke out, Putin sent him to Baghdad to persuade Saddam to resign and transfer his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations. As in 1991, his mission failed.
He was keenly worried about the collapse of the USSR and the fall of Russia's international authority and was an ardent supporter of a multipolar world in order to withstand the power of the United States. He proved this in 1999, when over the mid-Atlantic on his way to Washington, he received a message saying that NATO had begun bombing targets in Yugoslavia to expel Serb forces from Kosovo, after which he ordered the plane to turn around and return to Moscow. The maneuver was called "Primakov's Loop".
His favorite Western writer was John Le Carré, whom he met on a visit to London in the mid-1990s.
December 19, 1999 was elected to the State Duma of the third convocation. Chairman of the fraction "Fatherland - All Russia".
Two terms, from December 2001 to February 21, 2011. - President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation.
On February 21, 2011, he announced his resignation from the post of president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, citing the fact that he has held the post for two terms, and this is enough. March 4, 2011 at the VI Congress of the CCI officially resigned as president.
Since November 23, 2012 - Chairman of the Board of Directors of RTI
For the last fourteen years of his life, Primakov has been chairman of the Mercury Club, which includes veterans of big politics. After each meeting of the club, Evgeni Maksimovich wrote an analytical note, which the courier then delivered to the Kremlin to the president. According to the memoirs of ex-official Valery Kuznetsov, Vladimir Vladimirovich regularly consulted with Yevgeny Maksimovich on various political issues.
In the highest political circles of Russia, Evgeny Maksimovich had the nickname "Primus". On the last birthday of Primakov, October 29, 2014, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin gave him a 1980s primus with the inscription "Record-1".
