Gennadiy Seleznyov  Gennadiy Nikolayevich Seleznyov (; 6 November 1947 – 19 July 2015) was a Russian politician, the Chairman of the State Duma from 1996 to 2003. Born at Serov in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Gennadiy Seleznyov went to school from 1954 to 1964. He went to study journalism and joined the communist party. In 1969 he finished university and started working for the "Pravda" newspaper. After the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was outlawed in 1991, Seleznyov quit it. In 1993, however, he joined the Communist Party of the Russian Federation led by Gennadiy Zyuganov. In the 1995 Parliamentary elections in Russia, the Communist Party took the majority. However, Zyuganov did not become the speaker of the Duma as he was too busy with his 1996 Presidential campaign. Instead, he offered the job to his fellow communist Gennadiy Seleznyov. Seleznyov took office in 1996. As speaker Seleznyov protested against many reforms of President Boris Yeltsin and the Party rejected several reforms like the proposed complete denationalization of land in 1998. When Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko opened the markets, Seleznyov protested saying the Russian economy wasn't ready yet. In 1999 the Communist Party once again took the largest number of seats and Seleznyov was re-inaugurated. Seleznyov gained a degree of infamy during his time as speaker for his announcement, shortly before an apartment bombing in Moscow, that an apartment building in Volgodonsk had been bombed. The mistake amidst a series of apartment bombings was initially ignored. However, when the city did see a bombing only three days later, Vladimir Zhirinovsky took Seleznyov to task. “Recollect, Gennady Nikolaevich, you told us on Monday that the apartment block in Volgodonsk had been blown up. Three days before the explosion… The State Duma knew that the apartment block had been blown up on Monday, and it was blown up on Thursday… We In Moscow knew about the explosion three days before it had happened!"-Vladimir Zhirinovsky  Dissident Alexander Litvinenko later described the incident as a case of the KGB mixing up the dates of the planned bombings, though controversy still surrounds the cause of the early announcement. In 1999 Gennadiy Seleznyov also ran for Governor of Moscow Oblast.