KASYANOV, Mikhail Mikhailovich
Former prime minister of Russia and opposition politician

Mikhail Kasyanov (Михаил Михайлович Касьянов) was born December 8, 1957 in Solntsevo, near Moscow. He was the prime minister of Russia from May 2000 to February 2004 before being dismissed by then-President Vladimir Putin. He has subsequently become a prominent member of the opposition.

Kasyanov graduated from the Moscow Automobile and Road Institute in 1976 and later completed courses in economics under the state planning department of the Soviet Union. From 1976 to 1978 he served in the Soviet army.

From the late 1970s until the collapse of the Soviet Union he held various engineering and economics positions at the State planning department.

He joined the Russian Ministry of Economics in 1992, moving the following year to the Ministry of Finance, becoming deputy minister in 1995. In May 1999 he was named Minister of Finance, and in 2000 he became first deputy prime minister in parallel.

Kasyanov was named prime minister of the Russian Federation in May 2000. His government reformed many aspects of the tax, customs and pension systems and reorganized national infrastructure. During his tenure the Russian economy grew by almost one third and inflation was reduced significantly. He and the rest of his cabinet were dismissed in February 2004.

Allegations have been made that Kasyanov charged to ignore bribes and illegal business ventures during his time at the Ministry of Finance. In 2007 he was also ordered to pay damages and return a property to the government following an investigation into government houses put up for sale by Kasyanov in 2003.  He launched the company MK Analytics in 2005.

In April 2006 Mikhail Kasyanov was elected Chairman of the People’s Democratic Union (PDU). The NGO organized the inaugural "The Other Russia" conference in July 2006. Kasyanov and the PDU took part in a round of protests known as the dissenter’s marches in Moscow and St Petersburg in late 2006 and 2007.

In September 2007, Kasyanov became head of People for Democracy and Justice (PDJ), a political party based on the PDU. He had earlier announced his intention to run for president in the 2008 elections and was nominated in late 2007. He was initially supported by exiled billionaires Leonid Nevzlin and Boris Berezovsky as well as chess champion-turned-politician Garry Kasparov. Despite collecting the necessary 2 million signatures required to run, in January 2008 The Central Election Commission of Russia (ЦИК) barred his candidacy, citing an excess of forgeries within the signatures.

In May 2010, Kasyanov testified at the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, stating that charges against him were politically motivated.  He claims that Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were targeted in response to financing the Communist Party. He dismissed the volume of oil Khodorkovsky is alleged to have stolen as impossible. Kasyanov is married and has two children.

Related links:

Kasyanov’s official website

Related Russia Profile articles:

Ready, Set, Go (08/19/2009, Alexander Arkhangelsky)

Whipping Them Into Shape (04/15/2009, Roland Oliphant)

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Is Russia’s Political System Able to Handle the Crisis? (03/20/2009, Vladimir Frolov)