Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
Kaleidoscope

COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Vladimir Gusinsky

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


Vladimir Gusinsky, multimillionaire and media tycoon, is owner of Russia's MOST bank and NTV television station. A target of attacks and veiled threats from President Boris Yeltsin's security chief, Gen. Aleksandr Korzhakov, Gusinsky is a symbol of the power of the new rich and the sometimes uneasy relationship beween business and politics in post-Soviet Moscow.  


A first generation entrepreneur, Gusinsky got his start in business under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the late 1980s. The former theater director took advantage of perestroika decrees allowing foreign investment and limited private enterprise to start a consulting venture with a U.S. company. Exploiting a vast host of political connections, he later opened up his own commercial bank, MOST, translated as "bridge" in Russian, which popularized the credit card in Russia. His bank, headquartered in Moscow's city hall, employs a private security force numbering some 1,100 people, setting a trend in business circles and elite society that has made the use of personal bodyguards an indispensable status symbol as well as a lucrative business in and of itself. In 1993, Gusinsky bought several media properties, including the NTV television station and the Sevodnya newspaper, whose critical and graphic coverage of the Chechen war has challenged state-owned media to improve their programming. With state controls over information undercut by Russia's new privately owned networks, some hard-liners in the Kremlin have viewed Gusinsky as a political threat.  


On Dec 2, 1994, presidential bodyguards under Korzhakov's command (he headed a 4,000-strong Kremlin guard before his dismissal during the summer of 1996) raided MOST's headquarters and beat and harassed Gusinsky's men without explanation. The official reason for the raid was to investigate the causes of a disastrous October stock market plunge in the value of the ruble. In January 1995 Moscow press reports alluded to an arrest warrant being prepared for Gusinsky on the grounds of corruption. Gusinsky enjoys close alliances with many Moscow city officials, especially the feisty mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. Ironically, Gusinsky lent his considerable support to the reelection campaign of Yeltsin in 1996 as the best alternative against the election of his rival, Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov.

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
Copyright © 1998 LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.