Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Kaleidoscope
COUNTRY:
Russia
PERSON: Grigory Yavlinsky
HEADLINE: Biographies
Grigory Yavlinsky is a liberal Russian politician who placed fourth in June
1996 presidential elections. The Harvard-trained economist heads the Yabloko
party, the leading reformist party in the State Duma.
Grigory Alekseevich Yavlinsky was born on Apr 10, 1952 in
Lvov, and was educated at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economics. He was
an electrician briefly in the late 1960s before becoming a senior labor
researcher for the Moscow Ministry of Coal Industry, a post he held during
1976-80. He headed the Research Institute of Labor from 1980 to
1984, after which he worked his way to the top of the department of
manufacturing at the Soviet state labor committee from 1984 to 1989. He was a
member of a state committee on economic reform for government ministers during
1988-90 and as chair of the committee in 1990 he authored the blueprint for
a radical economic reform program calling for the transformation of the command
economy within 500 days that was never carried out by Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev. In 1991 he advised the Russian prime minister on economic matters
and became a chairperson of the Center for
Political and Economic Studies. In late 1991 he was a member of Gorbachev's
Political Advisory Council. With fellow reformers Yuri Boldyrev and Vladimir
Lukin, he founded the liberal party Yabloko and entered the State Duma in 1993.
The party scored well in December 1995 parliamentary elections
despite the departure of Boldyrev, who quit over policy disputes.
An ambitious and smart political reformer, Yavlinsky has brashly claimed that
he can reverse the mistakes of the government of President Boris Yeltsin.
Untainted by any role in the Yeltsin administration, Yavlinsky was acknowledged
as the leading democratic candidate
for high office in a field otherwise dominated by nationalists and communists.
To win over supporters other than his core base of intellectuals and academics,
Yavlinsky made some populist promises, such as vowing to raise pensions and
wages without increasing inflation. Yet perhaps the biggest obstacle
in the way of Yavlinky's presidential campaign was the fact that he is half
Jewish in a country with a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism.
[Sources: International Who's Who; The New York Times]
LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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