Chubais, Anatoly Borisovich (1955– )

Russian politician and economist who rose to prominence during the 1991–99 presidency of Boris Yeltsin. In 1991, he was the architect and the chief executive of the privatization of the Russian economy. Though formally dismissed from the government, he played a key role in the re-election of Yeltsin in 1996 and was rewarded with the title of chief of staff. Between 1998–2008 he was head of the United Energy Corporation, the state-owned electric power monopoly.

He conducted economic reform at breakneck speed in 1992, unloading everything from small shops to giant oil corporations onto a market primed by millions of privatization vouchers issued to every man, woman, and child. Chubais, a fierce anti-communist, presented his drive as a means of breaking the economic power of the Communist Party and creating a middle class; however, his programme, especially its second phase in which he disposed of the energy sector, was marked by increasing corruption and insider dealing.

Born in Borisov, in Belarus, which was then part of the Soviet Union, he was the son of an army officer. He studied and later taught economics at the Leningrad Economic Engineering Institute, gaining a PhD in 1983. In 1990, he was adviser and deputy to Leningrad/St Petersburg's reform communist mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, before moving to Moscow to serve Boris Yeltsin in 1991.