Luzhkov, Yuri Mikhailovich (1937– )

Russian politician, mayor of Moscow from 1992.

Luzhkov came to prominence in the mid-1990s, when he came to be seen to be providing an alternative administration in Moscow to Boris Yeltsin's presidency, with – moreover – an increasingly open ambition to replace the president.

Boris Yeltsin, while Communist Party first secretary for Moscow, brought Luzhkov into his administration to replace officials he saw as corrupt and slothful; Luzhkov took charge of the city's cooperatives, established himself as a radical under the intellectual mayor Gavril Popov and took over when Popov found the job too burdensome in 1992. His command of the city became absolute; little could be done without his personal approval. He opposed the government's privatization programme, and dared to set himself up against Anatoly Chubais, the powerful privatization minister – and got Yeltsin's grudging backing for his own, much slower, programme. He flatly denied any allegations of corruption, but commanded a wealth large enough to fuel his presidential ambitions: the relative wealth of the capital, into which nearly all foreign investment came and where some 90% of the banking capital was concentrated, was held by him to be an excellent advertisement for attracting support from the rest of the country. He added flavour to his reputation for efficiency, with a sharper edge of Russian nationalism.