The operator who ran Soviet machine-building and organized post-Soviet capital
During the August 1991 coup, Volsky got through to Gorbachev under house arrest and then told the world that the plotters' claim — that the Soviet leader was too ill to govern — was a lie.
He was the Central Committee Machine-Building Department head, economic aide to Andropov and Chernenko, and the figure who personified the transition from late-Soviet industrial management to post-Soviet business lobbying. As founder and 15-year president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), he turned the 'red directors' into an organized lobbying force that shaped the terms of Russia's market transition. During the August 1991 coup, he contacted Gorbachev under house arrest and publicly contradicted the plotters' claim that the Soviet leader was incapacitated by illness. He also served as Moscow's special administrator in Nagorno-Karabakh (1988–1990), deputy head of the Chechen peace mission (1995), and spent three months at Chernobyl in 1986 directing the industrial side of the disaster response.
Career Timeline
- 1955–1969ZIL auto plant: assistant foreman → head of foundry → party committee secretary
- 1969–1983CC Machine-Building Dept: auto sector head → deputy head → first deputy head
- 1983–1984Economic aide to General Secretary Andropov
- 1984–1985Economic aide to General Secretary Chernenko
- 1985–1990Head of CC Machine-Building Department
- 1988–1990Chairman, Special Administration Committee for Nagorno-Karabakh
- 1990–2005President, Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP)
- 1991.8–12Deputy PM of the USSR (industry and military complex)