BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, Dmitry
Anatolyevich Medvedev will be elected the third president of Russia. He is expected to take the oath of office in May. Born September 14, 1965, to a family of university professors from Krasnodar and Voronezh, he grew up in Kupchino, a working class neighborhood of St. Petersburg.
“He dedicated all of his time to school and rarely played outside with other kids. He was like a small old man,” his teacher Vera Borisovna once told New Times magazine. As a child, he said, he loved to read the Small Soviet Encyclopedia. Such academic dedication eventually earned young Dima a coveted place at the Law Faculty of Leningrad State University. In the last year of his PhD program, he started working in Anatoly Sobchak’s campaign for a seat in the new Supreme Soviet.
The two had met at the university where Sobchak was a law professor. After Sobchak became mayor of Leningrad in 1991, Medvedev worked as a lawyer on the city committee for external relations, headed by Vladimir Putin. He worked side by side with Putin until 1996, while also teaching at the university (where he earned about $8 a month).
In 1992, a group of St. Petersburg deputies accused Putin of raw material export machinations valued at $92 million. It was later believed that Medvedev, using his legal expertise, was instrumental in suppressing the scandal, thereby sealing Putin’s trust.
Parallel to his administrative and teaching careers, Medvedev started several companies in the early 1990s. One of these was Fintsell, which in 1993 became the parent firm of Ilim Pulp. According to Vedomosti, in 1994 Medvedev controlled 20% of Ilim Paper, the largest forest products enterprise in Russia. He was Ilim Pulp’s legal affairs director and was on the board of directors for Bratsky LPK Paper Mill. Medvedev quickly left both Ilim and Fintsell in 1999, prior to an investigation of Ilim’s privatization schemes, which revealed that Ilim had privatized some state paper mills illegally.
Putin brought Medvedev to Moscow in 1999 to work in the government, and then, in 2000, to run his first presidential campaign, which he won with 53 percent of the vote. Medvedev was subsequently appointed deputy chief of staff. He replaced Alexander Voloshin as chief of staff in August 2003. In 2005, Medvedev became Putin’s deputy prime minister. Medvedev has been chair or deputy chair of the Gazprom board of directors since 2000.
In 1989, he married Svetlana, his high school sweetheart. They have a son, Ilya, who was born in 1996. An avid fan of heavy metal rock music (Deep Purple, Led Zepellin, Black Sabbath), Medvedev also likes working out and enjoys surfing the internet (“visiting both pro- and anti-government sites” he said).
Medvedev reported his official income as of January 21, 2008, as R146 thousand per month, or about $6,000. He does not own a car, but his wife has a Volkswagen Golf. He reported that he has eight bank accounts with total deposits of R2.74 million. His Moscow flat is 367.8 square meters.
Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
