Soviet ex-premier Nikolai Ryzhkov, who vainly tried to prevent USSR’s economic meltdown, dies at 94

MOSCOW (AP) — Former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov has died at age 94. Ryzhkov presided over botched efforts to shore up the crumbling national economy in the final years of the USSR. Ryzhkov worked during his six-year tenure to implement Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal reforms that lifted rigid centralized controls and encouraged private initiative. But it failed to adapt to the quickly changing economic and political environment and set the stage for the 1991 Soviet collapse. Ryzhkov’s death was announced Wednesday by the speaker of the upper house of Russian parliament where he served until October.