Vadim Bakatin 1991 presidential campaign  The 1991 presidential campaign of Vadim Bakatin was the candidacy of KGB Chairman Vadim Bakatin in the 1991 Russian presidential election. Bakatin's running mate was Ramazan Abdulatipov. Bakatin ultimately placed last in the election out of six candidates, receiving 2,719,757 votes (3.5% of the votes cast). Bakatin had previously been put forth as a candidate for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's nomination for the 1990 Soviet Union presidential election. However, he decided not to compete. It had been rumored in late-April 1991 that Bakatin was going to be selected as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's nominee in the Russian presidential election. In early may, some figures in Russian politics believed that, if he ran, Murashev was poised to be Yeltsin's strongest opponent. In mid-May Bakatin, reportedly, had agreed to be Boris Yeltsin's running mate. However, he was ultimately persuaded by Mikhail Gorbachev to challenge Yeltsin for the presidency instead. Launching his campaign in mid-May, Bakatin selected chairman of the Council of Nationalities of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet Ramazan Abdulatipov (one of presidential frontrunner Boris Yeltsin's primary political rivals) to be his running mate. He hoped that Abdulatipov would help him to appeal to voters in the Autonomous Republics of Russia, who cumulatively made-up 14% of the Russian electorate. Despite the fact that the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had officially had backed Nikolai Ryzhkov, upon Bakatin's entry into the race some members of the party commented that they believed that Bakatin would be a superior candidate to face Yeltsin in a second-round of the election. Since the party's primary goal was to beat Yeltsin, they provided support to both Bakatin and Ryzhkov's campaigns. In an effort to set himself apart, Bakatin derided Ryzhkov as a backwards-looking "man of yesterday". Bakatin campaigned vigorously. However, he was hampered by limited resources, which his campaign had dispersed too thinly for them to make enough of an impact. Nevertheless, in advance of the election, (along with Ryzhkov) he was seen as a likely individual to place second. Many polls predicted that he would place third. Bakatin's last-place finish was seen as a surprise.