Gorbachev Ally Elected Prime Minister
A bureaucrat was elected prime minister of the Russian republic today, defeating a reformist ally of the federation’s president, Boris N. Yeltsin, Tass news agency reported.
The new prime minister is Ivan Silayev, who has been a deputy prime minister in the Cabinet of Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov.
The victory of a man with ties to the government of Yeltsin’s rival, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, may make it more difficult for Yeltsin to pursue changes that go beyond Gorbachev’s reform program.
Silayev won 70% of the vote in the Russian Supreme Soviet legislature to defeat Mikhail Bocharov, a leader in the Democratic Russia bloc along with Yeltsin and a factory manager who has led experiments with leasing his company from the state.
Silayev, 60, is a mechanical engineer by training who started his career at the Gorky aircraft factory, Tass said.
He moved up to minister of the aircraft industry, and then became minister of the machine tool and instrument-making industry.
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