Sobchak, Anatoly Alexandrovich

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SOBCHAK, ANATOLY ALEXANDROVICH

(1937–2000), law professor; mayor of St. Petersburg.

Anatoly Sobchak was one of the leading liberal politicians of the perestroika era. Born in Chita, he completed a law degree at Leningrad State University in 1959. He settled permanently in Leningrad in 1962 and joined the faculty of Leningrad State University in 1973, heading the economic law institute and rising to be dean. Unusually for so senior an academic, Sobchak was for many years not a member of the Communist Party. He only joined during the presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev, becoming a candidate member in May 1987, and a full member in June 1988. The next year he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies, where he became a leader of the Inter-Regional Deputies group and chaired the committee investigating the massacre of demonstrators by Soviet troops in Tiflis in April 1989.

A loyal supporter of Boris Yeltsin, Sobchak was elected mayor of Leningrad in June 1991, the same day that a referendum approved changing the city's name to St. Petersburg. He opposed the August 1991 coup attempt and persuaded the army not to deploy troops in the city. Sobchak presided over the liberalization of the city's economy, whose many defense plants had suffered greatly from the Soviet

economic collapse. On the recommendation of the rector of Leningrad State University, Stanislav Merkouriev, Sobchak hired a young ex-KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, to handle relations with foreign investors. Putin had been a student in one of Sobchak's classes but they were not personally acquainted. Putin became Sobchak's deputy in 1993 and ran his re-election campaign in July 1996. Sobchak, surprisingly, lost to a challenge from his former deputy, Vladimir Yakovlev.

The next year Yakovlev (known as governor rather than mayor) filed a libel suit against Sobchak after the latter accused him of ties to organized crime in a newspaper interview. In October 1997 Sobchak suffered a heart attack while being questioned by police about corruption allegations, mainly pertaining to the distribution of city-owned apartments. Sobchak went to France for medical treatment and remained there in voluntary exile—beyond the reach of investigators.

The rise of Putin (who became head of the Federal Security Service in July 1998) and the dismissal of Procurator Yuri Skuratov in April 1999 enabled Sobchak to return to Russia in July 1999. The charges against him were dropped, but his public image was tarnished, and he failed to win a seat in the State Duma in the December 1999 elections. Sobchak died of a heart attack in February 2000 while on a trip to Kaliningrad as Putin's envoy. An emotional Putin attended his funeral and pledged revenge on his enemies, blaming them for his death. Observers took this as referring to Vladimir Yakovlev, but Putin failed to prevent Yakovlev's reelection as St. Petersburg governor in May 2000.

Sobchak's career, in which he evolved from a principled liberal to a defender of Russian capitalism and backer of Vladimir Putin, reflected the broader hopes and disappointments of the Russian transition from communism. Sobchak himself was aware of the contradictions, commenting just before his death that "We have not achieved a democratic, but rather a police state over the past ten years."

See also: perestroika; putin, vladimir vladimirovich; st. petersburg; yakovlev, alexander nikolayevich; yeltsin, boris nikolayevich