Kudrin Alexei Leonidovich (born October 12, 1960) is a Russian statesman who has been headed by the Ministry of Finance for over 10 years. He remains one of the most promising figures in Russian politics and the informal leader of the liberal-democratic direction in it.
Childhood and years of study
Where does Alexei Kudrin lead his life from? His biography began in Latvia, in the family of a military man. For the first seventeen years of his life, Alexei had a lot of fun with his family in the vast expanses of the Soviet Union, but this was the destiny of the families of most Soviet officers. From Latvia, the eight-year-old Alex goes to Mongolia (imagine the contrast!), Then, at eleven years old, to Transbaikalia, then, at fourteen, to Arkhangelsk, where he managed to finish school.
The first attempt to enroll in full-time at the Leningrad State University in 1978 was unsuccessful for Alexei; he was offered to receive evening education at the Faculty of Economics. But above him hung the possibility of conscription for military service, and in order to avoid it, his father advised Alexei to get a job at a military university - the Academy of Logistics and Transport of the Ministry of Defense. Having screwed up a couple of years in the engine laboratory of this institution, Alexei Kudrin safely transferred to the full-time university. In 1983, he successfully graduated from it.
Carier start
After defending his diploma, Alexei Kudrin is assigned to one of the Leningrad academic institutes involved in economics, and has been working in it for a couple of years. Apparently, having established himself well, in December 1985 he entered graduate school at the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and a couple of years later he defended his thesis. Then he returns to his native Leningrad Institute and until 1990 he developed Soviet economic science as much as he could.
Coming to the civil service
In 1990, in Leningrad, around the newly elected pre-council of Anatoly Sobchak, who the next year became the first mayor of St. Petersburg, a team of promising young managers begins to form, to which Alexey Kudrin also receives an invitation. He leaves scientific activity and goes to work in the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, where he leads the Committee on Economic Reform. Until 1993, Alexei Kudrin worked in various positions related to economics and finance in the city administration. Then he was appointed first deputy mayor, chairman of the Committee on Economics and Finance of the City Hall of St. Petersburg. In the same period, Vladimir Putin worked next to him as deputy mayor.
State service in Moscow during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin
After the defeat of Anatoly Sobchak in the mayoral election in 1996, his team broke up. Alexei Kudrin was invited by Anatoly Chubais , then head of the presidential administration (AP), to Moscow to the post of chief of the Main Switchgear of the AP. Soon he quenched his colleague at the St. Petersburg mayor's office of Vladimir Putin to the post of deputy in KRU. Since March 1997, he became the first deputy finance minister of Chubais in the Chernomyrdin government and retained this position during the short premiership of Sergei Kiriyenko. But the famous Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who defeated the 1998 crisis , Alexei Kudrin clearly did not like, and he forced him to leave his post. After serving six months in RAO UES of Russia under the wing of the former Chubais patron, our hero waited until the decrepit Yeltsin removed Primakov, who was rapidly gaining popularity, and returned to the Ministry of Finance to the post of first deputy after being appointed Prime Minister Stepashin.
Minister of Finance
After Vladimir Putin took up the post of president and then head of the government, Alexei Kudrin invariably served as head of the Ministry of Finance from May 2000 to September 2011.
During this period, the macroeconomic situation for Russia was very favorable due to the steady increase in prices for exported oil and gas. Aleksey Kudrin retained the additional income from oil exports in a specially created Stabilization Fund. Many economists loyal to the Russian government defined its creation as one of Kudrin’s major achievements. Nevertheless, other analysts described the Stabilization Fund as "dead money" that does not benefit the real sector of the economy. This fund was divided into the Reserve Fund and the National Welfare Fund in February 2008. The funds accumulated in them, of course, allowed the Russian Federation to relieve the acute phase of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009 relatively painlessly. And this fact once again confirmed the fact that Alexei Kudrin was right in choosing the direction of the financial strategy of the Russian government.
Loud resignation from a ministerial post
In 2011, after the unprecedented castling of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in the history of the President of the Russian Federation and Prime Minister, Kudrin Alexei Leonidovich faced a dilemma: to continue work at the premiere, behind which there is the experience and authority of the presidential power, or to leave. He chose the second option, however, after a series of serious disagreements with his new boss and an explicit offer of the latter to resign from the post of head of the Ministry of Finance. President Putin did not intervene in this conflict, and Alexei Kudrin took up teaching at St. Petersburg State University. He remained, according to the president, his friend and member of his team. Kudrin, Alexei Leonidovich, whose photo after leaving the government is shown above, remains a leading Russian economist, actively participates in the public and political life of the country, leads the public organization Committee of Civil Initiatives.