Shakhrai, Sergei Mikhailovich

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SHAKHRAI, SERGEI MIKHAILOVICH

(b. 1956), lawyer and former minister of nationalities.

Sergei Shakhrai trained as a lawyer at Rostov State University and attained the rank of candidate of juridical sciences from Moscow State University (MGU) in 1982. He then taught law at MGU until 1990. Shakhrai was a Party member from 1988 to August 1991.

In 1990, Shakhrai was elected to the new RSFSR Congress of People's Deputies, where he quickly became chair of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Committee for Legislation. He simultaneously served Boris Yeltsin as a counselor for legal and nationalities affairs. In 1992 he was named a member of the Russian Federation Security Council and deputy chair responsible for nationality issues. During the November–December 1992 ethnic unrest in North Ossetia and Ingushetia, Shakhrai served as head of the temporary regional administration. A Terek Cossack, he also chaired the Russian parliamentary committee on the rehabilitation of the Cossacks. In November 1992, Shakhrai was appointed a deputy prime minister.

In legal matters, Shakhrai argued Yeltsin's case in the 1992 Constitutional Court hearings on the legality of the president's banning of the CPSU, a decree written by Shakhrai himself. He also served as Yeltsin's representative to the 1993 Duma commission drafting a new Russian constitution and negotiated many of the subsequent federal power-sharing treaties. Shakhrai became leader of the Party of Russian Unity and Accord in October 1993, running on their ticket in the December 1993 Duma election. However, he resigned from the party when the party joined the Our Home is Russia movement in August 1995.

Shakhrai was transferred from deputy prime minister to minister of nationalities and regional policy in January 1994. This move was soon over-turned; by April he was reappointed deputy prime minister and in May removed as minister of nationalities. However, he continued to influence the decisions of his replacement, Nikolai Yegorov.

Shakhrai's work in law and nationality affairs combined in the issue of Chechnya. Despite Chechen president Dzhokar Dudayev's assertions otherwise, Shakhrai insisted that Chechnya remained an integral part of the Russian Federation. When Dudayev refused to ratify the new constitution, despite Shakhrai's repeated attempts at negotiation, he provided the legal pretext for an invasion. Shakhrai and minister of defense Pavel Grachev convinced Yeltsin that an attack on Chechnya would be quick and painless; ultimately, the attack was launched in December 1994. Shakhrai's prediction proved false, however, as the first Russo-Chechen war lasted until August 1996.

Yeltsin summarily fired Shakhrai in June 1998, when the lawyer questioned the constitutionality of a possible third term as president for Yeltsin. However, Shakhrai was not unemployed for long. In October, prime minister Yevgeny Primakov appointed Shakhrai as his own legal advisor. Shakhrai also won a Duma seat for Perm oblast during the 1999 election. As of 2003 he was a member of the influential Russian Foreign and Defense Policy Council and was teaching at Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO).

See also: august 1991 putsch; party of russian unity and accord