Georgy Khosroevich Shakhnazarov ( hy, Գեորգի Շահնազարով; October 4, 1924 in
Baku
Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
, Azerbaijan SSR,
Transcaucasian SFSR
, conventional_long_name = Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic
, common_name = Transcaucasian SFSR
, p1 = Armenian Soviet Socialist RepublicArmenian SSR
, flag_p1 = Flag of SSRA ...
,
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
– May 15, 2001 in
Tula
Tula may refer to:
Geography
Antarctica
*Tula Mountains
*Tula Point
India
*Tulā, a solar month in the traditional Indian calendar
Iran
* Tula, Iran, a village in Hormozgan Province
Italy
* Tula, Sardinia, municipality (''comune'') in the pr ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
) was a Soviet politician and political scientist. He was one of the half-dozen aides closest to
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
while he was
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
leader and after his fall from power at the
collapse of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
. Shakhnazarov was an early advocate of reform and helped Gorbachev to shape his plans to open up the system to new ideas and freedoms, but, like his boss, he failed to articulate a clear vision of where he believed the country should go.
After Gorbachev was ousted by
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
, Shakhnazarov became a key figure in the newly established
Gorbachev Foundation
The Gorbachev Foundation (russian: Горбачёв-Фонд, ''Gorbachyov-Fond'') is a non-profit organization headquartered in Moscow, founded by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1991 and began its work in January 1992 ...
.
His loyalty to Gorbachev was unquestioned, and he was with him at many of the critical moments as Soviet leader. He was at Gorbachev's side during the strained meeting in
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
in October 1989 to help convince the
East German
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
Politbüro
A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states.
Names
The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contraction ...
to reform. The two shared a celebratory private glass of
champagne
Champagne (, ) is a sparkling wine originated and produced in the Champagne wine region of France under the rules of the appellation, that demand specific vineyard practices, sourcing of grapes exclusively from designated places within it, spe ...
when Gorbachev was elected the first (and last) Soviet president in March 1990.
Shakhnazarov was staying at a
sanatorium
A sanatorium (from Latin '' sānāre'' 'to heal, make healthy'), also sanitarium or sanitorium, are antiquated names for specialised hospitals, for the treatment of specific diseases, related ailments and convalescence. Sanatoriums are often ...
close to the presidential
dacha
A dacha ( rus, дача, p=ˈdatɕə, a=ru-dacha.ogg) is a seasonal or year-round second home, often located in the exurbs of post-Soviet countries, including Russia. A cottage (, ') or shack serving as a family's main or only home, or an outbu ...
at
Foros in the
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
that
fateful August 1991, when he helped Gorbachev in his plans for a
new Union Treaty
The New Union Treaty (russian: link=no, Новый союзный договор, Novyy soyuznyy dogovor) was a draft treaty that would have replaced the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Treaty on the Crea ...
to define relations between the republics. Indeed, the two spoke by telephone about it on the afternoon of 18 August, the last call Gorbachev took before the
coup plotters moved in and cut off his contact with the outside world.
[
Shakhnazarov (the Russified form of Shakhnazaryan) was born into the then large ]Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
community in the Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...
i capital, Baku
Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world a ...
. He fought with the Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
against the Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
in World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
in Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
and Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
. He graduated from the law faculty of Azerbaijan State University in 1949, and earned a doctorate in political science and philosophy at the Moscow Institute of Law in 1969. From 1952 to 1961 he was an editor at the publisher Politizdat
Publishing houses in the Soviet Union were a series of publishing enterprises which existed in the Soviet Union.
Centralization
On 8 August 1930, the Sovnarkom of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) established the state p ...
,[ where he began writing books (one of his first was ''Burzhuaznoe gosudartsvo v epokhu imperializma'' (''The Bourgeois State in an Age of Imperialism''), 1955).
In the 1960s and 1970s he spent two spells at the international Communist magazine '']Problems of Peace and Socialism
''Problems of Peace and Socialism'' (September 1958–June 1990, Russian: ''Проблемы мира и социализма)'', also commonly known as ''World Marxist Review'' (WMR), the name of its English-language edition, was a monthly theore ...
'', based in Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
, giving him a wider perspective on the world than many of his colleagues in the Party establishment.
His political career in the Central Committee's International Department—which he joined in the early 1960s—was promoted by Fyodor Burlatsky, a member of the Socialist Countries Department who had the ear of Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (– 9 February 1984) was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the po ...
. In March 1988, he was plucked from the department by Gorbachev to be a full-time adviser. At the same time he was building a parallel career as a political scientist and contributed to the professionalisation of the field in the later Soviet era. In 1975, he became president of the Soviet Association of Political Sciences (until 1991), and vice-president of the International Political Science Association
The International Political Science Association (IPSA), founded under the auspices of UNESCO in 1949, is an international scholarly association. IPSA is devoted to the advancement of political science in all parts of the world. During its histor ...
(until 1988).
In published works he recognised that Soviet society had different interest groups—an implicit rejection of a homogenised, communist society—and advocated a greater flow of information at a time of paranoid secrecy. He also publicly rejected the use of nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
s to achieve political goals.
A member of the USSR Academy of Sciences
The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...
, he was elected on the Academy's list to the first semi-free Soviet parliament, the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, when it was inaugurated in 1989. He was a member of the commission to draw up a new Soviet constitution
During its existence, the Soviet Union had three different constitutions in force individually at different times between 31 January 1924 to 26 December 1991.
Chronology of Soviet constitutions
These three constitutions were:
* 1924 Constitut ...
.
Shakhnazarov wrote up his memoirs of the Gorbachev years as ''Tsena svobody: reformatsiia Gorbacheva glazami ego pomoshchnika'' (''The Price of Freedom: Gorbachev's Reformation through the Eyes of His Aide'', 1993). He was also the author of science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
and plays. His son, Karen Shakhnazarov
Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov, PAR (russian: Каре́н Гео́ргиевич Шахназа́ров; born 8 July 1952) is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He became the Director General of Mosfilm studios in 1998.
...
, born in 1952, is a noted film director.
More radical than Gorbachev, Shakhnazarov contributed to the destruction of the system of which he had been a member, working tactically to abolish such anachronism
An anachronism (from the Ancient Greek, Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronology, chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time per ...
s as the Communist Party monopoly on power. "As often happens in revolutionary situations," he later recalled, "there are things which seem banal today but which you couldn't even mention then."
References
Books online in English
''Socialism and Equality''
(1961)
''The Role of the Communist Party in Socialist Society''
(1974)
''Socialist Democracy: Aspects of Theory''
(1974)
''The Destiny of the World: The Socialist Shape of Things to Come''
(1979)
''Futurology Fiasco: A Critical Study of Non-Marxist Concepts of How Society Develops''
(1982)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shakhnazarov, Georgy
1924 births
2001 deaths
Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Soviet Armenians
Burials in Troyekurovskoye Cemetery
Politicians from Baku
Baku State University alumni
Communist Party of Armenia (Soviet Union) politicians
Soviet military personnel of World War II
Eleventh convocation members of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union
Members of the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union