YAVLINSKY, Grigory Alexeyevich
Co-founder & Former Leader of the Yabloko party

Grigory Yavlinsky (Григорий Алексеевич Явлинский) was born on April 10, 1962 in Lvov, Ukraine and is the son of an officer. His mother taught chemistry at an institute. Both his parents are buried in Lvov. His brother Mikhail also lives in Lvov. In 1967 and 1968- he was the champion of Ukraine in junior boxing. He decided to become an economist during his school years.

In 1967-76 he studied at Moscow Plekhanov's Institute of Economy and took a post-graduate course there. A candidate of economics (PhD), he worked in the coal sector.

From 1984 he held management position at the Labour 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 - member of the Academician Abalkin's commission for economic reforms.

1993 - began working in the State Duma; leader of the most professional and efficient Duma faction of the first, second and third convocations of the Duma.

1995- creation of YABLOKO, a Russian civil democratic party. (Yavlinskiy, Boldarev and Lukin were the founding members of YABLOKO party)

1996, 2000 - presidential candidate; came fourth and third.

After the default in 1998 proposed a way out of the governmental and economic crisis - the compromise figure of Evgeny Primakov as Prime Minister.

Since the mid-1990s he has been involved in developing tax and budget reforms. Active opponent of a military solution to the problems in Chechnya and of imports of radioactive waste into Russia. 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.

On June 21, 2008 Yavlinsky stepped down as leader of the Yabloko Party. Subsequently the Yabloko party held a congress on 21-22 June to reinforce the need to reform the party's governing bodies to give more independence to leaders and deter a split facing the party. Yavlinsky's resignation comes in the midst of a rift between himself and his allies and the head of the party's St. Petersburg branch, Maxim Reznik, who has long campaigned for creating a strong coalition with other opposition forces, notably the umbrella coaltion The Other Russia, to counter the dominance of pro-Kremlin parties on the political landscape. Yavlinsky believed that such an arrangement contradicts Yabloko's program and would be damaging for the party's public image.

Sergei Mitrokhin, head of the Moscow branch of Yabloko and one of Yavlinsky's allies, was elected as the new leader of the party, having received about 60% of the delegates' votes.

Married, has two sons born in 1971 and 1981.

Personal website: http://www.yavlinsky.ru

Related articles:
Interview with Grigory Yavlinksy  NTV -- BBC Monitoring  (Dec. 19, 2005)

Last updated June 23, 2008