There he faced several cabinet difficulties during his tenure, and while he supported the majority of Boris Yeltsin's policies, he opposed the secessionist policies of Yeltsin, which led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, during his concurrent tenure as Soviet Premier, which he overtook in August 1991.
Silayev was born on 21 October 1930,[3] in Baktyzino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Mikhail Bocharov, a successful businessman and leader of the cooperative movement, rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute Yuri Ryzhkov, and Silayev were chosen as the candidates.
Silayev did not have any similar economic reform plans but was widely considered to be Yeltsin's favourite for the post.
[6][7] On June 18, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR approved the appointment of Silayev as Prime Minister.
In 1989, Valentin Pavlov, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union from 14 January to 28 August 1991, had gathered together enough information on the errors and omissions of Silayev to weaken his position as Deputy Premier.
During his tenure as Premier, Silayev was never the de facto leader of the government cabinet and was loyal to Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet.
[10] Silayev's government lacked ideological unity, and several conservative members were elected to the cabinet in July 1990, among them Oleg Lobov and Gennadii Kulik.
Lobov, the First Deputy Premier in charge of regional development, had become a de facto leader of the cabinet.
[13] In December 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian SFSR entrusted Silayev and his government to create a new plan for economic reform.
A Supreme Soviet deputy noted the proposed reform lacked real statistical insight.
[16] Silayev was one of several leading Russian SFSR politicians who flew to Gorbachev's summer house in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup.
With the central government's authority greatly weakened, Gorbachev[17] established a four-man committee, led by Silayev, that included Grigory Yavlinsky, Arkady Volsky, and Yuri Luzhkov, to elect a new Cabinet of Ministers.
[21] The Russian-dominated COMSE was quickly surpassed in authority by the Inter-republican Economic Committee (IEC), which was better thought to work between the different member republics, as its function was to coordinate economic policy across the Soviet Union, and was created by law on 5 September, but members were not immediately selected.
In this he failed, and his position as Russian SFSR Premier was severely weakened as a result, with him being replaced only a month after his accession to the Soviet premiership.
[26] On 19 December 1991, Yeltsin declared the COMSE committee, which served as the Soviet Union's last government, dissolved, and Silayev retired from his post, one day after he had been appointed to his new position as a diplomat for Russia.
[21] The legality of the dissolution was unclear, as Gorbachev had not concurred with it, and so most members remained in office and continued their work.
Оn 25 December 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation from the post of President of the USSR in connection with the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States,[27] meaning that the union government ceased to exist.
[28] On 18 December 1991, Silayev was appointed by Yeltsin as the Permanent Representative of Russia to the European Community in Brussels;[29] he resigned from this post on 7 February 1994.