Aman Tuleyev

Aman Tuleyev in June 2010

Aman (Amangeldy) Gumirovich Tuleyev (Russian: Аман Гумирович Тулеев, Kazakh: Амангелді Молдағазыұлы Төлеев, Amangeldi Moldağazıulı Töleyev), 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.

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 Siberia, 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.

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 Gaidar, 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 voted Chairman of the Council of People's Deputies of Kemerovo.

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.[1]

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.[2]

Private life

His hobbies include mushroom gathering, langlaufing, driving a snowmobile and taking Russian baths. 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, Tatiana (2005).

References

  1. ↑ "Theologians from Chechnya and Dagestan, a neighbouring mainly Moslem region of Russia, called at an assembly in Grozny for Tuleyev's death, Interfax said. They urged all Moslems to carry out the sentence at the first possible opportunity."
  2. ↑ Тулеев - кузбасский диктатор (Russian)

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