Translated material
Watching for Yandex: the life and career of Alexei Kudrin
On November 30, the Federation Council voted for the early dismissal of Alexei Kudrin from the post of chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A day earlier, Kudrin wrote in his Telegram channel: “In total, I spent about 25 years in the public sector. Now I would like to focus on large projects that are associated with the development of private initiatives in the broad sense, but have a significant effect for people. Therefore, I am leaving the post of chairman of the Accounts Chamber, about which I submitted an appropriate application to the President of the Russian Federation in the prescribed manner. ”
Rumors that the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber may resign to lead the private IT corporation of Yandex, went since the spring of this year, in the fall they gained more clear outlines, and now, finally, the intrigue was resolved.
Years of study
Alexei Kudrin is 62 years old. He was born on October 12, 1960 in the town of Dobel of the Latvian SSR. The father was a military man, so the family moved a lot. From Latvia his father was transferred to serve in Mongolia, from there to the Chita region. Alexey graduated from the school in Arkhangelsk. In the ninth grade, he decided to engage in political economy. In an interview with 2004, Kudrin said : “It was 1976, and not even comparing with abroad, one could understand that people live in a country with a deformed economy. Maybe this will seem strange to you, but I devoted all my further activities, including my studies, and then the use of effective economic models. ”
To study, he chose the Faculty of Economics of Leningrad State University, but did not get a passing ball, receiving three for an essay, so in 1978 he was enrolled in the evening department. According to the patronage of his father, he got a car mechanic at the Academy of the rear and transport of the USSR Ministry of Defense, but two years later he transferred to the daytime department of LSU. He studied on the same course with Andrei Illarionov, future adviser to President Putin in economics - but in different directions. Illarionov studied the economy of Western countries, and Kudrin - socialist (was he able to find “effective economic models” there?). According to the stories of former classmates, Kudrin did not even have liberal beliefs at that time.
Both at school and at the university, Kudrin did not have enough stars from the sky, it was, as they say, "good." But, despite this, in 1983, after graduation, he received a prestigious distribution to the Leningrad Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences (ISEP). There he met his future wife Veronika Sharov, who also worked at this institute.
Having worked for two years as an intern, in 1985, Kudrin entered the daily department of graduate schools of the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and moved to his studies in Moscow. What is strange, this happened shortly after the wedding with Veronica Sharova, who did not go to Moscow for a young husband.
In 1987, Kudrin defended his thesis. At first it was dedicated to socialist competitions. But by the time of protection, the topic became irrelevant, so he corrected the dissertation a little by changing its name to “comparison in the mechanism for implementing relations of economic competition”. They say that his supervisor academician Abalkin did not remember his famous graduate student at all.
In the same 1987, Kudrin had a daughter Polina.
In 1988, Kudrin returned to the ISEP researcher. Judging by the very successful start of his career, an unremarkable young man from an unremarkable family, he had an influential patron in those years, but his Kudrin’s name never advertised.
From "Perestroika" to the City Hall of Sobchak
In 1988, a new stage began in the life of Alexei Kudrin, who predetermined his entire future fate. At that time, Associate Professor of the Engineering and Economic Institute Anatoly Chubais, Head of the Department of Economic Policy of the Communist magazine Egor Gaidar and others organized the Perestroika socio-political club. In 2021, Chubais recalled how the club’s idea originated: “Exactly 35 years ago, a group of young and impudent economists gathered in the forests of the Karelian Isthmus in the Student Camp in the student camp in order to decide how to build a transition from a collapsing Soviet planned economy to normal market market.” In the recreation center of the Lensovet, where the club settled, several hundred people gathered at his meetings. The discussions held in the club between young scientists-economists, sociologists, journalists soon became popular, they were even shown on local television. Returning from the capital to Leningrad, Kudrin also got into this environment of economists-recessors.
In the ISEP, Kudrin took the post of deputy chairman of the Council of Young Scientists. During this period, it was decided for the first time to hold the election of the director of the institute. The organization of elections was entrusted to Kudrin. He negotiated with possible candidates: Gaidar, Shokhin, Glazyev, everyone refused. And Chubais agreed. He even went on the second round and had a chance to win, but the elections for formal reasons were postponed. Chubais no longer began to participate in them - in the summer of 1990, he headed the Committee of Economic Reform of the Leningrad Executive Committee. And Kudrin invited Kudrin to the post of his first deputy.
Alexey Kudrin, 1990
Zamir USManov / Russian Look / Global Look Press
In the executive committee, Kudrin oversaw the economy and finances, together with Chubais lobbying the idea of creating a free economic zone in Leningrad. In November 1991, Chubais received the appointment of the Chairman of the State Committee of the RSFSR for state property management and left for Moscow, and Kudrin remained working in the team of the first mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak and still oversaw the economy and finances of the city (in 1993 he headed the Committee for the economy and finance of the St. Petersburg City Hall).
When Sobchak in 1996 lost the elections to his daughter Vladimir Yakovlev, difficult times came for Alexei Kudrin. As colleagues in the city hall recalled, Yakovlev did not like Kudrin even more than another vice-mayor-Putin, since Kaf did not give him money for the “communal apartment”, and at the first opportunity, Yakovlev pointed to the curl to the door. But, in addition, Yakovlev created a commission to verify the activities of the former administration, which revealed the monstrous abuses in the financial economy of the city during the work there Kudrin, however, the initiative did not come from him, but from his direct chief of Sobchak.
So, at the direct instructions of Sobchak, Kudrin “threw” several tens of billions of rubles intended for the construction and reconstruction of the subway, on the goodwill, hidden by the mayor of the Game of Goodwill, which is why a terrible accident occurred on the Kirovsko-Zorogg branch of the metro, and the huge area turned out to be almost cut off from the city center.
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