Grigory Yavlinsky
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Grigory Alexeyevich Yavlinsky (Russian: Григорий Алексеевич Явлинский; born April 10, 1952[1]) is a Russian economist, political figure, and reformer.
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[edit] Biography
Yavlinsky was born into a relatively well-off family in Lviv, Ukraine. His father Alexei was an officer, while his mother Vera taught chemistry at an institute.[2] Both his parents are buried in Lviv, and his brother Mikhail lives there.
In 1967 and 1968 he was the champion of Ukraine in junior boxing. He decided to become an economist during his school years. From 1967 to 1976 he studied at the Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy in Moscow and took a post-graduate course there. A kandidat of economics (PhD), he worked in the coal sector.
From 1984 he held a management position at the Labor Ministry and then the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He was head of the Joint Economic Department of the Government of the USSR. In 1989, he was made department head of academician Leonid Abalkin's State Commission for Economic Reforms.
[edit] Post-Soviet economic reforms
Yavlinsky's commitment to a market economy was established when in 1990 he wrote "500 Days" - a populist program for the Soviet Union promising rapid transition from communism to a free market in less than 2 years. To implement the program, Yavlinsky was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, Chairman of the State Commission of the USSR for Economic Reform. Not surprisingly the program was not implemented and Yavlinsky resigned from his post. Initially, Yavlinsky worked closely with Boris Nemtsov, one of the self-proclaimed 'Young Reformers', who was to become one of the co-leaders of the Union of Right Forces (or SPS).
[edit] Political activities
In 1995, in-fighting between 'liberal' factions in the State Duma prompted Yavlinsky and two other leaders to create Yabloko, a Russian political party. Among the features of the new party that would distinguish it from other liberal parties was its criticism of the handling of the events of October 3 and 4th, 1993, in which the Supreme Soviet fell under siege from President Yeltsin. Yabloko representatives were later to support an effort to impeach Boris Yeltsin which eventually failed.
However, he was responsible for proposing that Yevgeny Primakov become Prime Minister; many credit Primakov with the recovery from Russia's 1998 financial crisis.
Since the mid-1990s, Yavlinsky has been involved in developing tax and budget reforms. He is both an active opponent of a military solution to the problems in Chechnya and of imports of radioactive waste into Russia. He is also a rigorous and uncompromising critic of the government variant of the housing and utilities sector and electricity sector reforms. In April 2003 initiated a collection of signatures for the resignation of the government.
In 1996 and 2000, Yavlinsky ran for President with endorsement from his party. In 1996 he came in fourth place and received 7.3% of the vote. In 2000 presidential elections he came in third and received 5.8% of the vote. In 2002 he took part in the unsuccessful negotiations during the Moscow theater hostage crisis.
In 2004, he refused to run, claiming that Vladimir Putin had rigged elections so that the Yabloko faction would fail to gain the necessary 5% of votes to procure seats in the Duma. Accusations of vote-rigging by Putin's administration were also heard from the SPS and Communists.
Yavlinsky remains a leading critic of Putin and of Russia's leading United Russia Party. In a January 12, 2004 interview[3], he is quoted as saying,
- "We don't have an independent parliament any more. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union we again have a one-party parliament. There are no independent mass media of any significance any more. There is no public control over secret services and the law enforcement agencies, there is no independent legislature. The authorities considerably influence the elections. All elements of society are concentrated in the same hands which resemble the 1930s. This is a semi-Soviet system."
Yavlinsky met his wife, Yelena, while studying at the Plekhanov Institute, and the couple have two children. Their son Mikhail was born in 1971 and currently works for the BBC Russian Service in London. Their other son, Alexei, was born in 1981 and works as a computer programmer in Moscow.[4]
