Aman Tuleyev
Encyclopedia
Aman Gumirovich Tuleyev , born 13 May 1944, is the governor of Kemerovo Oblast
. He ran for President of Russia in 1991, 1996 (withdrawing during the campaign) and 2000, both times coming fourth.
Tuleyev was born to Kazakh
father and half-Tatar
half-Bashkir
mother in Krasnovodsk, Turkmen SSR
, USSR.
, to be a railway clerk at the small railway settlement of Mundybash in the Kemerovo area, where he became Station chief in 1969. In 1973, he graduated from the Novosibirsk
Institute of Engineers as a railway engineer specialized in communication. From 1973 to 1978 he was Railway Station chief in the town of Mezhdurechensk
. From 1978 to 1985 he worked at Novokuznetsk
Railway Station, first as an assistant, and then as the chief of the Novokuznetsk branch of the Kemerovo Railway. In 1985, A.G.Tuleyev was appointed head of the Department of Transport and Communication in Kemerovo and in 1989 he became Head of the Kemerovo Railway System.
In 1990, he switched to politics and was elected to the Parliament of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from Kuzbas. In March 1990, Tuleyev was elected Chairman of the Kemerovo Regional Soviet.
, but the deputies voted to refuse his resignation.
In October 1993, Tuleyev took the side of Parliament against Boris Yeltsin
. After the events of that month, the Kemerovo regional Soviet of People's Deputies was disbanded, like many other regional branches of government in Siberia and elsewhere in Russia. Tuleyev however, decided to remain active in politics, and for this purpose, he created a new political movement in the Kuzbas, called "People's power. Tuleyev Block." In 1993 Tuleyev got the majority of the votes in Kuzbas and was elected to the new Russian Parliament. A year later, he was again voted Chairman of the local Parliament.
From August 1996 to June 1997 he was a Russian minister responsible for relations with the CIS
. In this capacity, he proposed plans for a union between Russia and Belarus
.
In July 1999, it was rumoured that he had accepted baptism
in the Russian Orthodox Church
. Although he denied being religious at all and claimed that an earlier visit to Mecca
was not a pilgrimage
, the Islamic Shura
of Chechnya
, under Sharia
law, condemned him to death for apostasy
.
In March 2000 as a candidate he took part in the Russian presidential elections
. In 2000, he was expelled from the nationalist-communist umbrella organization called Popular-Patriotic Union.
In 2000, Viktor Tikhonov, the brother of the former Olympic champion in biathlon, and former governor candidate of Moscow region, Alexander Tikhonov, was charged with plotting Tuleyev's assassination and sentenced to 4 years in prison. The person who is claimed to have ordered the assassination, Mikhail Zhivilo (who has since received political asylum in France
), had had a business dispute with a Tuleyev ally. In the same year, Tuleyev received his doctorate.
In December 2003, he led the electoral list of United Russia
in Kuzbass. In November 2005, he formally joined the United Russia
, one of the last regional governors to do so. The same year, Vladimir Putin
extended Tuleyev's term as governor to 2010.
Tuleyev has been criticised for creating near-to-authoritarian regime in Kemerovo Oblast
.
gathering, langlaufing, driving a snowmobile
and taking Russian bath
s. His mother, Munira Fayzovna Vlasova (maiden name Nasyrova) died in 2001, while his father, Moldagazy Kaldybaevich Tuleyev, died in the war, before Aman was born. Young Aman was brought up by his ethnic Russian
stepfather, Innokenty Ivanovich Vlasov. Tuleyev is married to Elvira Fedorovna Tuleyeva, an ethnic Russian
. They have two sons: Dmitry, who lives in Novosibirsk, and currently works as a Manager of the Federal Highways, and Andrew (died in a car accident in 1998); grandchildren - Andrew (1999) and Stanislav.
Kemerovo Oblast
Kemerovo Oblast , also known as Kuzbass after the Kuznetsk Basin, is a federal subject of Russia , located in southwestern Siberia, where the West Siberian Plain meets the South Siberian mountains...
. He ran for President of Russia in 1991, 1996 (withdrawing during the campaign) and 2000, both times coming fourth.
Tuleyev was born to Kazakh
Kazakhs
The Kazakhs are a Turkic people of the northern parts of Central Asia ....
father and half-Tatar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...
half-Bashkir
Bashkirs
The Bashkirs are a Turkic people indigenous to Bashkortostan extending on both parts of the Ural mountains, on the place where Europe meets Asia. Groups of Bashkirs also live in the republic of Tatarstan, Perm Krai, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Samara and Saratov Oblasts of...
mother in Krasnovodsk, Turkmen SSR
Turkmen SSR
The Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic , also known as the Turkmen SSR for short, was one of republics of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. It was initially established on 7 August 1921 as the Turkmen Oblast of the Turkestan ASSR. On 13 May 1925 it was transformed into Turkmen SSR and became a...
, USSR.
Career in the Soviet Union
Tuleyev was a railway engineer. In 1964, he finished his Higher Education at the Tikhoretsky Railway Technical College with distinction. He then moved to SiberiaSiberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, to be a railway clerk at the small railway settlement of Mundybash in the Kemerovo area, where he became Station chief in 1969. In 1973, he graduated from the Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...
Institute of Engineers as a railway engineer specialized in communication. From 1973 to 1978 he was Railway Station chief in the town of Mezhdurechensk
Mezhdurechensk
Mezhdurechensk may refer to:*Mezhdurechensk, Kemerovo Oblast, a city in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia*Mezhdurechensk, Komi Republic, an urban-type settlement in the Komi Republic, Russia...
. From 1978 to 1985 he worked at Novokuznetsk
Novokuznetsk
Novokuznetsk is a city in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia. It serves as the administrative center of Novokuznetsky District, but it is not administratively a part of it...
Railway Station, first as an assistant, and then as the chief of the Novokuznetsk branch of the Kemerovo Railway. In 1985, A.G.Tuleyev was appointed head of the Department of Transport and Communication in Kemerovo and in 1989 he became Head of the Kemerovo Railway System.
In 1990, he switched to politics and was elected to the Parliament of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) from Kuzbas. In March 1990, Tuleyev was elected Chairman of the Kemerovo Regional Soviet.
Political career in Russia
Through most of the 1990s, he was a prominent politician of the Communist Party of Russian Federation. In August 1991, he supported the GKChP coup attempt. In January 1992, Tuleyev offered his resignation from the Post of Chairman of the Kemerovo Oblast Regional Council in protest against the policies of Yegor GaidarYegor Gaidar
Yegor Timurovich Gaidar was a Soviet and Russian economist, politician and author, and was the Acting Prime Minister of Russia from 15 June 1992 to 14 December 1992....
, but the deputies voted to refuse his resignation.
In October 1993, Tuleyev took the side of Parliament against Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
. After the events of that month, the Kemerovo regional Soviet of People's Deputies was disbanded, like many other regional branches of government in Siberia and elsewhere in Russia. Tuleyev however, decided to remain active in politics, and for this purpose, he created a new political movement in the Kuzbas, called "People's power. Tuleyev Block." In 1993 Tuleyev got the majority of the votes in Kuzbas and was elected to the new Russian Parliament. A year later, he was again voted Chairman of the local Parliament.
From August 1996 to June 1997 he was a Russian minister responsible for relations with the CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
. In this capacity, he proposed plans for a union between Russia and Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
.
In July 1999, it was rumoured that he had accepted baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
in the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
. Although he denied being religious at all and claimed that an earlier visit to Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
was not a pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
, the Islamic Shura
Shura
Shura is an Arabic word for "consultation". The Quran and Muhammad encourage Muslims to decide their affairs in consultation with those who will be affected by that decision....
of Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, under Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
law, condemned him to death for apostasy
Apostasy
Apostasy , 'a defection or revolt', from ἀπό, apo, 'away, apart', στάσις, stasis, 'stand, 'standing') is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy is known as an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday...
.
In March 2000 as a candidate he took part in the Russian presidential elections
Russian presidential election, 2000
Russian presidential elections were held on 26 March 2000. Incumbent Prime Minister, and acting President Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded Boris Yeltsin on his resignation December 31, 1999, was seeking a four-year term in his own right and won the elections in the first round. Polling stations...
. In 2000, he was expelled from the nationalist-communist umbrella organization called Popular-Patriotic Union.
In 2000, Viktor Tikhonov, the brother of the former Olympic champion in biathlon, and former governor candidate of Moscow region, Alexander Tikhonov, was charged with plotting Tuleyev's assassination and sentenced to 4 years in prison. The person who is claimed to have ordered the assassination, Mikhail Zhivilo (who has since received political asylum in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
), had had a business dispute with a Tuleyev ally. In the same year, Tuleyev received his doctorate.
In December 2003, he led the electoral list of United Russia
United Russia
United Russia is a centrist political party in Russia and the largest party in the country, currently holding 315 of the 450 seats in the State Duma. The party was founded in December 2001, through a merger of the Unity and Fatherland-All Russia parties...
in Kuzbass. In November 2005, he formally joined the United Russia
United Russia
United Russia is a centrist political party in Russia and the largest party in the country, currently holding 315 of the 450 seats in the State Duma. The party was founded in December 2001, through a merger of the Unity and Fatherland-All Russia parties...
, one of the last regional governors to do so. The same year, Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
extended Tuleyev's term as governor to 2010.
Tuleyev has been criticised for creating near-to-authoritarian regime in Kemerovo Oblast
Kemerovo Oblast
Kemerovo Oblast , also known as Kuzbass after the Kuznetsk Basin, is a federal subject of Russia , located in southwestern Siberia, where the West Siberian Plain meets the South Siberian mountains...
.
Private life
His hobbies include mushroomMushroom
A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...
gathering, langlaufing, driving a snowmobile
Snowmobile
A snowmobile, also known in some places as a snowmachine, or sled,is a land vehicle for winter travel on snow. Designed to be operated on snow and ice, they require no road or trail. Design variations enable some machines to operate in deep snow or forests; most are used on open terrain, including...
and taking Russian bath
Banya (sauna)
Banya in Russian can refer to any kind of steam bath, but usually to the Russian type of sauna. In Bulgarian, banya usually refers to a bath and bathing...
s. His mother, Munira Fayzovna Vlasova (maiden name Nasyrova) died in 2001, while his father, Moldagazy Kaldybaevich Tuleyev, died in the war, before Aman was born. Young Aman was brought up by his ethnic Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
stepfather, Innokenty Ivanovich Vlasov. Tuleyev is married to Elvira Fedorovna Tuleyeva, an ethnic Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
. They have two sons: Dmitry, who lives in Novosibirsk, and currently works as a Manager of the Federal Highways, and Andrew (died in a car accident in 1998); grandchildren - Andrew (1999) and Stanislav.