This phrase was uttered at the 19th party conference in 1988. At that time, the first deputy chairman of the USSR State Construction Committee, Boris Yeltsin, criticized the party's central apparatus. The head of the Sverdlovsk regional committee, Ligachyov, who was sitting in the presidium, interrupted Yeltsin's speech, saying: “You, Boris, are wrong. We disagree with you not only in tactics. Boris, you have tremendous energy, but this energy is not creative, but destructive". Not paying attention to this, Yeltsin continued his speech. Later the phrase became “winged”.
Ligachyov was born on November 29, 1920 in the Novosibirsk region. In 1943 he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute, and in 1949 - the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Ligachyov began his political path under Joseph Stalin, working as a secretary in the Novosibirsk Regional Committee of the Komsomol. Under Leonid Brezhnev, he was the first secretary of the Tomsk Regional Committee of the CPSU. Together with Mikhail Gorbachyov, he pursued the policy of perestroika, and in 1990 he was dismissed from the post of secretary of the Central Committee and removed from the Politburo. After the collapse of the USSR, he returned to political activity, restoring the activities of the Communist Party: in 1993–2013. - Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, in 1995-2005. - Deputy Chairman - Secretary of the Council of the Union of Communist Parties - CPSU, in 2005–2014 - Secretary of the Council of the UPC-CPSU. In 1999-2003. was a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.
Ligachyov retired from active political activity only in 2013. Then he underwent heart surgery. In 2018, Ligachyov asked not to name Tomsk airport after him.