Fyodorov, Boris Grigorievich

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FYODOROV, BORIS GRIGORIEVICH

(b. 1958), economist, deputy prime minister (1992–1993), finance minister (1990, 1993), advocate of liberal economic reform.

Boris Fyodorov, an ambitious young economist who served briefly as deputy prime minister, found a business career more fruitful than politics. Fyodorov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Finance and went on to earn candidate and doctor's degrees at Moscow State University (1985) and the USA/Canada Institute (1990). From 1980 to 1987 he worked at Gosbank, and then at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He was part of the team led by Grigory Yavlinsky that prepared the Five-Hundred-Day Plan in 1990. In July 1990 he became finance minister in the Russian Federation government, but resigned in December. From April 1991 to October 1992 he worked for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and then spent two months as Russian director at the World Bank. In December 1992 he became deputy prime minister in Boris Yeltsin's cabinet, taking on the job of finance minister in March 1993. In December 1993 he was elected to the State Duma from a Moscow constituency as a member of Yegor Gaidar's Russia's Choice party.

Fyodorov fell out with Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in January 1994, citing frustration with weak monetary and fiscal discipline. He then formed a liberal parliamentary fraction, Union of December 12, and in 1995 created his own party, Forward Russia, which mixed advocacy of market reform with patriotic slogans, including support for the war in Chechnya. He was reelected to the Duma in December 1995, famously publishing a book of blank pages entitled "The Economic Achievements of the Chernomyrdin Government." From May to September 1998 he headed the State Tax Administration, but his political career did not progress. In subsequent years he remained a prominent advocate of further liberal reforms and a defender of minority shareholder interests. In 2000 he was elected a member of the board of Gazprom and Unified Energy Systems, the two largest companies in Russia.

See also: chernomyrdin, viktor stepanovich; five-hundred-day plan; gaidar, yegor timurovich