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, began 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 councils who have absorbed a bunch of nationalities. The paternal grandfather was a Pole, a Czech grandmother; maternal grandfather Russian, Ukrainian grandmother. In addition to Anatoly, the family had three more children. My father worked as an engineer on the railway, my mother worked as an accountant.
Despite this diversity, Sobchak always considered himself Russian - “for me to be Russian is to think and speak Russian, be proud of my country and its contribution to the world heritage, and I am ashamed of the Chechen war, Chernobyl, abandoned collective farm fields and poverty of the people, whose country owns innumerable natural resources. Remember the victims of Stalinist repression and interethnic conflicts. But above all, it is about faith! Belief in the peace, democracy and prosperity of 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 hardships of maintaining a family and raising children fell on his mother’s shoulders. This poverty and half-starved existence had a great impact on the young Sobchak.
“When I was little, the rarest and most precious thing was food. 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 ours a goat, since 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 - she got sick and died. You know, I never cried as much in life as I did in that day, "recalled Anatoly Alexandrovich.
He went through his hungry years and continued his studies, gaining authority and popularity among peers. Even when he was a child, his peers gave him the nicknames “professor” and “judge” because of his broad outlook and fairness in resolving disputes. During wartime, professors of Leningrad University, actors and writers were evacuated to Uzbekistan. of them turned out to be Sobchak’s neighbors, and the stories about Leningrad and university life impressed the boy so much that he decided that he had to go to LSU.
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 Leningrad State University. He loved to study and very quickly was awarded the 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 offset by the rich cultural life of Leningrad, which Sobchak loved as his native city. After a while, Sobchak and his wife had a daughter, Maria, who later followed in the footsteps of her father and became a lawyer. However, the marriage was unsuccessful and ended in divorce in 1977.
After Sobchak University, according to the distribution, they were sent 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 dissertation and continue to work as a lawyer and teacher.
In 1973, he presented his doctoral dissertation, in which he put forward the ideas of liberalization of the socialist economy and closer ties 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 defer his doctoral defense. 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 branch of economic law in the USSR. He worked there until 1989, when 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 didn’t want to refuse 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 complex cases and had a non-standard image I went to the university to meet him, and in the end I had to wait a very long time, then I saw how, after the lecture, young pretty students gathered around him, asking him questions and trying to flirt with him, and I thought, that he did not help me a. At the time I had no idea that he, too, has experienced a divorce and not hearsay knows about it.
We went to a cafe to discuss my situation. I was so upset that I began to tell him everything about myself and my life, and cried all the time. He listened to me and decided that he needed to talk with my husband. He had the gift of persuasion, and as a result, my husband retreated.
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-monthly salary of an 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 some party, and he did not 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 rather large age gap between us — he was thirty-nine, and I was only twenty-five. We met for 5 years, and he seemed not at all in a hurry to make an offer. However, in 1980, we finally got married and a year later our daughter Ksenia, ”recalls Lyudmila Borisovna.
It is unlikely that the happy father knew that a few decades later, his daughter would surpass him in popularity and would even be a candidate for president of the Russian Federation. However, when he took her from the hospital, all he dreamed of was living long enough to celebrate her eighteen-year-olds and did not realize that he would die, just a couple of months after Ksenia Anatolyevna celebrated her 18th birthday.
This was the second marriage, and the later-Sobchak adored his wife and admitted that he owed her life. She became not just a wife; she was his companion, fighting for the cause of her husband and even for his very existence. He later wrote that during his severe persecution, her devotion, courage and support won her great respect even from his enemies. Living and working so close to Sobchak, Lyudmila also joined politics, having been elected to the State Duma in 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 laid the foundation for 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 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 Interior Ministry and the KGB against people. His direct questions during the cross-examination of the then Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov regarding the orders and actions of all government officials were broadcast throughout the country, which was unheard of only 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 to the 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 a former student, Dmitry Medvedev, and the post of vice mayor Vladimir Putin. Sobchak sincerely loved St. Petersburg, sought to improve his image around the world and return him the status of the cultural capital of Russia.
Meanwhile, the coup committed by supporters of the Communist Party in August 1991 gave Sobchak the opportunity to go down in history. While Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, gathered and coordinated the opposition in Moscow, Sobchak did the same in St. Petersburg. He boldly opposed the security forces and convinced them not to bring an army into the city.
The coup failed, the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, and Sobchak became Russia's second most popular political leader after Yeltsin. His legal background 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 the local politics of St. Petersburg and began to lose popularity after he failed to curb organized crime in the city. Soon accusations of corruption and financial impropriety began to appear in the press.
From peak 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 urban resources, which led to losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. Sobchak was accused of illegal privatization of property in prestigious areas of St. Petersburg. Some believed that Sobchak and his popularity were too uncomfortable for Boris Yeltsin, whose second presidential term would be in jeopardy if Sobchak got up decided to run.
"I would not even want my enemies to experience what my family and I have experienced in the past four years. From a person with an unsullied reputation, I turned into a corrupt official in an instant, I was persecuted and accused of all mortal sins, " wrote later in his book "A Dozen Knives in the Back" by Anatoly Sobchak.
He lost the election 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 force him to be interrogated - he was supposed to be a witness in a corruption case. His wife insisted that Sobchak was too ill to be interrogated, but the investigators did not believe her and tried to pick him up 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 treatment, taught at the Sorbonne and worked with archives.
Recovery
Sobchak returned to Petersburg in July 1999. His most ardent persecutors were either fired or arrested on criminal charges. In October 1999, Sobchak received an official notification from the Prosecutor General about the closure of the criminal case against him. All allegations published by the press were found to be unfounded. Sobchak regained his honor by winning cases against those who published slanderous materials about him.
In December 1999, Sobchak ran for the State Duma. However, the lack of support played a decisive role, and fierce competition with the city authorities-Sobchak lost, losing only 1.2%.
December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigns, Vladimir Putin, a former protege of Sobchak, was appointed acting president before the March elections. In turn, Putin appointed Sobchak his confidant in Kaliningrad, where he went on February 15.
