Gennady Vasilyevich Kolbin (; 7 May 1927 – 15 January 1998) was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR from 16 December 1986 to 22 June 1989. Early life Kolbin was born in 1927 in Nizhny Tagil. From 1942 to 1943, he served as an apprentice of a model designer at a factory and a shoemaker in Nizhny Tagil. In 1943, he started studying at the Nizhny Tagil Mining and Metallurgical College. From 1947 to 1959, he served as designer-technologist, head of the technological bureau, deputy head, head and deputy chief engineer at the plant in Nizhny Tagil. Kolbin joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1954. In 1955 he graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute named after S. M. Kirov in absentia and later studied in graduate school. Political career In 1959, he served as secretary of the party committee at the plant. In 1962 , he served as Second Secretary and First Secretary of the Lenin District Committee of the CPSU of Nizhny Tagil. From 1962 to 1970, he served as Second Secretary and First Secretary of the Nizhny Tagil City Committee of the CPSU. From 1970 to 1975, Kolbin was appointed as Secretary and later as Second Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU. Kolbin then served as the Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia. He served the Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR from 1975 to 1984. After leaving, in 1976, to Moscow, following promotion as the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU, Yakov P. Ryabov was considered as the main candidate for the post of first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU. However, at the suggestion of Ryabov, acting secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, Boris Yeltsin, was nominated for this post. Kolbin was appointed as the First Secretary of the Ulyanovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, from 1983 to 1986. On his initiative, the Microelectronics Center, a branch of Moscow State University, was opened in Ulyanovsk, and a decision was made to build the President Bridge across the Volga River. He served as the Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR from 1971 to 1975. Kolbin served as the Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989.