What's so special about Odessa's new woman?

A short recap of Maria Gaidar's career in politics

Maria Gaidar, the daughter of famed economist Egor Gaidar (the author of Russia’s post-Soviet “shock therapy”), is Odessa’s new deputy governor. She will be serving under Mikheil Saakashvili, Odessa’s current governor and the Republic of Georgia’s former president, though Gaidar has in the past described Saakashvili in less than charming terms. Russia’s pro-Kremlin media has not exactly welcomed the news of Gaidar’s new appointment, and very suddenly she’s become one of the most discussed politicians in the whole country. To help readers better understand Gaidar’s legacy up to this point, Meduza offers the following short recap of her career in politics.

Gaidar the activist

Maria Gaidar has been active in politics since 2005, when she started organizing the Democratic Alternative movement and participating in street demonstrations. Her most memorable protest took place on November 23, 2006, and was called “Give the People Back Their Elections, You Bastards!” Along with Ilya Yashin (who at the time was the youth leader of the political party Yabloko), Gaidar rappelled down from the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge (where Boris Nemtsov would be murdered years later) and hung a banner bearing the demonstration’s slogan. In order to detain Gaidar and Yashin, still hanging by their ropes, the police had to call out emergency workers.

Later on, Gaidar worked with the Union of Right Forces (SPS) political party, even joining the group in the Duma elections in 2007 as head of the Moscow ticket. (The campaign was a bust, however, and the party didn’t even win 1 percent of the votes.) In 2008, SPS dissolved. Gaidar disputed it in courts, but to no avail.

Gaidar the deputy governor (of Kirov)

In 2009, Gaidar moved to the Kirov region, where the former head of SPS, Nikita Belykh, now served as governor. (Before the move, Gaidar had accused Belykh of “selling his soul to the Devil” by accepting the appointment from Dmitry Medvedev.) In Kirov, Gaidar became deputy governor and managed the region’s social policy. Today, she says the biggest achievement in Kirov was the construction of a prenatal care center, though pro-Kremlin media criticized the project for spending too much money on a CAT scan machine.

Unfriendly journalists also published stories alleging that Gaidar was behind a hit-and-run that killed a young schoolgirl. Both Gaidar and Belykh denied these reports, and Gaidar was never charged with any crime.

Gaidar and her foundation

When she left Kirov, Gaidar moved to the United States, to study at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Afterwards, when she returned to Russia, she took a position under Moscow Deputy Mayor Leonid Pechatnikov, helping to manage the city’s social policy. She remained in this job for roughly a year, without any particularly newsworthy scandals or accomplishments.

In November 2013, Gaidar left the Moscow government and began creating her own nonprofit, Sotsialny Zapros (“Social Demand”). The new group’s mission was addressing Muscovites’ social problems. For instance, the foundation helped introduce new regulations requiring patients to receive access to a doctor within a certain amount of time. (Before, the waiting period had no formal limit.) Working at Sotsialny Zapros, Gaidar tried to run for the Moscow city council in 2014, but she was unable to register her candidacy.

In the fall of 2014, the authorities raided Gaidar’s home in connection with a years-old investigation into Alexey Navalny’s advertising firm, which police say defrauded SPS of 100 million rubles ($1.7 million) in 2007. Leonid Gozman, a former SPS official, has denied these charges.

According to reports, Gaidar resigned as head of Sotsialny Zapros on July 6, and the organization has since declined a presidential grant worth 2.8 million rubles ($49,000), which it won earlier in 2015.