(b. 19 Mar. 1956; d. 16 Dec. 2009)

Russian; Minister of Economics 1991–2, Prime Minister 1992 Gaidar is the son of the well-known writer Arkadi Gaidar and grandson of Vice-Admiral Timur Gaidar. A graduate from the economics faculty of Moscow State University in 1978, he was a postgraduate student supervised by Shatalin. After working as an economist in a number of academic institutes, Aleksandr Yakovlev made him the head of the economics section of the journal Kommunist. In 1990 he became the head of the economics section of Pravda. In spring 1991 he became head of the Institute of Economic Politics within the Soviet Academy of Sciences and in November that year Minister of Economics and first deputy chairman of the government of the Russian Republic. He stood for rapid marketization and had some success in stabilizing the rouble. Boris Yeltsin then appointed him Prime Minister in June 1992, and he introduced further market liberalization. However, his liberal views were not popular with members of the Duma and he lost influence with Yeltsin to the latter's former associates from Sverdlovsk. The Duma did not confirm his position and in December he was replaced as Prime Minister by Viktor Chernomyrdin. Although he returned as first deputy Prime Minister in September 1993, his influence in government was short-lived, and he resigned in January 1994. He helped to found, and became chairman of, the Democratic Choice of Russia Party and then of the Union of Right Forces, serving in the Duma from 1999 to 2001. As Director of the Institute for the Economy in Transition, he concentrated on economic research. In 2006 he was victim of an alleged poisoning while visiting the Republic of Ireland, which he blamed on ‘obvious or hidden adversaries’ of the Russian government.

From: Gaidar, Yegor Timurovich in A Dictionary of Political Biography »

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