President Medvedev

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.