Gorbachev’s former ally Yegor Ligachyov dies aged 100
Yegor Ligachyov, a former high-ranking official of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and an ally-turned-critic of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, died on Friday at the age of 100, a spokesperson for the administration of Siberia’s Tomsk Region Alexei Savostyanov told TASS news agency.
Yegor Ligachyov was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman, who served as a Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee between 1983 and 1990.
On March 11, 1985, he supported Gorbachev during the vote to elect the new General Secretary of the Communist Party. Later, he facilitated the promotion of then first secretary of the Sverdlovsk region’s Communist Party branch, Boris Yeltsin, to a party post in Moscow. In 1992, Ligachyov admitted that the decision to support Gorbachev’s candidacy was one of his biggest mistakes.