Tatar lawyer and Duma deputy who headed the national administration of Idel-Ural
Born in 1878 in the village of Tashsu near Kazan, he studied law at the University of Paris in 1901–1906 on Ismail Gasprinsky’s advice. In 1906 he joined the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin, and he sat for Kazan province in the Second and Third State Dumas. In 1917 he was on the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council, and on 5 January 1918 he was elected chairman of the Milli Idare, the body of national-cultural autonomy of the Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia, becoming head of the Idel-Ural State. When the Bolsheviks took Kazan and Ufa provinces he fled to Finland; at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he pleaded for the peoples of Idel-Ural, without result. He moved to Turkey in 1925, became a professor of legal history and a member of parliament, and died in Istanbul in 1957.
Career timeline
1901–1906Law studies at the University of Paris
1906Member of the Central Committee of Ittifaq al-Muslimin
1907–1912Member of the Second and Third State Dumas for Kazan province
1917Member of the executive committee of the All-Russian Muslim Council
1918Chairman of the Milli Idare (head of the Idel-Ural State)
1925–1957Professor of legal history in Ankara and Istanbul
1931–1954Member of the Turkish parliament (three terms)
The Supreme Soviet chairman who stood with Yeltsin against the coup, then fell to Yeltsin's tanks
During the October 1993 siege of the White House, when Yeltsin offered safety guarantees, Khasbulatov replied: 'I need no guarantees, I can offer guarantees to Yeltsin myself.'
Ruslan Khasbulatov was a Chechen-born Soviet economist and Russian politician who became the last chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. On the day of the August 1991 coup, he was Yeltsin's closest ally: he personally drafted the appeal 'To the Citizens of Russia' and helped organize the defense of the White House. After the Soviet collapse, however, he turned the parliament into the center of opposition to Yeltsin's economic reforms and concentration of power, leading to the 1993 constitutional crisis in which he and Vice-President Rutskoy commanded the parliamentary resistance until tanks shelled the building and they were arrested. Amnestied in 1994, he left politics and returned to academia, teaching world economics at his alma mater.
Career timeline
1965Graduated from the Faculty of Law, Moscow State University
1970–1990Professor and head of the Department of International Economic Relations, Moscow Institute of National Economy (Plekhanov)
1990.03Elected RSFSR People's Deputy from the Grozny constituency
1990.06–1991.10First Deputy Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
1991.07–10Acting Chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet
1991.10–1993.10Chairman of the RSFSR/Russian Federation Supreme Soviet
1994–2023Head of the Department of World Economics, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics
