The biography of Anatoly Borisovich Chubais is of great interest to everyone who is interested in the history of modern Russia. The hero of our article played a particularly important role in politics in the 1990s, having gone from an ordinary deputy to a federal minister of finance. Many political reforms are associated with his name, many of which still have a negative attitude, for example, to global privatization. From this article you will learn about his biography, personal life and career.
Childhood and youth
The story of the biography of Anatoly Borisovich Chubais will begin in 1955, when he was born in the family of a military man in Borisov. His father later taught the philosophy of Lenin and Marx at the Mining Institute of Leningrad. Mother Raisa Khamovna was an economist by profession, but devoted most of her life to raising children. Chubais has a dual nationality - a Jewish mother and a Russian father.
The future politician was the second child in the family. His older brother Igor went in the footsteps of his father, becoming a doctor of philosophical sciences. Now he heads the Faculty of Russian Studies at the Institute of Social Sciences.
In the biography of Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, since childhood, there have been many transfers to the garrisons due to the specifics of his father's service. Anatoly was brought up with his older brother Igor in severity.
It is believed that he was significantly influenced by the discussions that regularly arose between his father and older brother about philosophy and politics. Apparently, this played a role in choosing his future profession. As a result, he preferred an economic career to a philosophical one, since from the school bench he had achieved particular success in the exact sciences.
Education
Chubais went to first grade in Odessa. Then he studied for some time in Lviv, only by his fifth grade the family moved to Leningrad. Anatoly was sent to school No. 188 with a military-political bias. Later, the politician repeatedly admitted that he hated this school, somehow even tried to disassemble it into bricks, but the idea failed.
In 1972, a momentous event took place in the biography of Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, when he became a student at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Engineering and Economics Institute in Leningrad. He graduated from high school in 1977 with honors, and already in 1983 he successfully defended his thesis on economics.
Early career
His career began within the walls of his own university. He was an assistant in the department, then an assistant professor.
In those same years, Chubais became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Together with like-minded people on the basis of the institute, he created a circle of democratically-minded economists in St. Petersburg. They held heated discussions about how the country should develop, and held economic seminars.
The ultimate goal of all these meetings was the promotion of democratic ideas to the broad masses of the Leningrad intelligentsia. Just at one of these seminars, Chubais met with the future head of the government of the Russian Federation, Yegor Gaidar. This meeting was decisive in the development of his future career.
Political activity
In the late 80s, Chubais became one of the leaders of the Perestroika discussion club. Its members were economists, most of whom later occupied key posts in the Russian government. Soon they began to be called "young reformers", they played a rather large role in society, having managed to attract the attention of the local political elite, which very soon occupied a key role in the Northern capital.
After Anatoly Sobchak became chairman of the Leningrad City Council, Chubais was elected his deputy. The hero of our article was nominated for this position as one of the leaders of the democratic movement in the city. Moreover, his political views impressed the regional leadership.
In 1991, Chubais received an offer to become the chief adviser on economic development at the Leningrad City Hall. He agreed, and soon created a working group, which began to create an economic strategy for the whole country. His further career developed quite rapidly. In November, he was already the head of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for State Property Management, and the next year he got a place in the team of the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin.
Government work
In his new position, Chubais, with a team of professional economists, developed a plan for large-scale privatization, conducted its technical training. This became the main and most resonant project in the career of a politician, which is still being actively discussed, there is still no unequivocal attitude to it.
As a result of the privatization campaign, more than 130 thousand state enterprises were privately owned. Most modern experts are skeptical about how this reform was carried out, and considers its results to be extremely unsatisfactory. However, this did not prevent the politician himself from continuing to move up the career ladder, occupying more and more significant posts.
By the end of 1993, Chubais won the State Duma elections from the party “Choice of Russia”, and in November became the first deputy chairman of the government of the Russian Federation. In parallel, he got the position of head of the Federal Commission, which dealt with securities and the stock market.
In the team of Yeltsin
It is known that Chubais played an important role in 1996 during the presidential election in Russia. He was the direct manager of the Yeltsin election campaign. For this, the Civil Society Foundation was created. An analytical group began working on its basis. The result of their work was truly outstanding.
On the eve of the election, Yeltsin’s rating was minimal, but as a result of the use of successful political technologies, he steadily grew. As a result, in the first round, the future president unexpectedly for many managed to get around the Communist Gennady Zyuganov, who was considered the leader of the race. Yeltsin won 35.3% of the vote against 32% of the head of the Communist Party. In the second round, the decisive support was given to Boris Nikolaevich by Alexander Lebed, who took third place with 14.5%. As a result, Yeltsin won, receiving 53.8% of the vote. Almost forty and a half million voters voted for him.
That campaign was overshadowed by a series of political scandals. It was then that the incident with the “Xerox Box” took place. On the night of June 20, producer of the Yeltsin’s headquarters Sergey Lisovsky, who was responsible for PR, as well as campaign activist Arkady Evstafiev, was detained in the White House. According to a common version, which has not yet been officially confirmed, they had a box seized from a photocopier containing 500 thousand dollars.
It is known that the initiators of the detention were the head of the security service of Yeltsin, Mikhail Korzhakov, the first deputy chairman of the government Oleg Soskovets and the head of the FSB, Mikhail Barsukov. It was an attempt by conservatives from Yeltsin’s entourage to seize the initiative from the hands of the “young reformers,” including Chubais. The plan failed, the next morning Korzhakov, Barsukov and Soskovets lost their posts.
Chubais himself later stated that Lisovsky and Yevstafyev had no money, allegedly they were planted by the people of Korzhakov.
However, in April of the following year, a criminal case was nevertheless brought up due to illegal operations with currency on an especially large scale. Soon it was closed, because investigators could not find the owners of the box.
Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, who was also part of the headquarters, repeatedly spoke about the role of Chubais in the election campaign. According to her, when in early 1996 it became obvious to the circle that the headquarters led by Soskovets were failing, it was Chubais who convinced the president to create a new structure, which was called the analytical group. It was she who played a decisive role in the victory of Yeltsin.
In RAO "UES of Russia"
In 1997, Chubais returned to the government as First Deputy Prime Minister, while becoming Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation. But in this position he did not stay long. Already in the spring of 1998, he left the service, having retired with the whole cabinet of the head of government.
Anatoly Borisovich did not sit long without work. In the same year, he won the election of the head of the board of the Russian joint-stock company Unified Energy System of Russia. In this position, he conducted a new large-scale reform. Within its framework, he began the restructuring of all the structures that make up the holding, transferring the lion's share of their shares to private hands. And many politicians actively criticized this policy reform. In conservative circles, Chubais began to be called the worst manager in Russia. However, the situation soon changed.
In 2008, the energy company was finally liquidated. Chubais was appointed CEO of the state "Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies." Three years later, under his leadership, she was reorganized into an open joint-stock company RUSNANO, where Anatoly Borisovich Chubais currently works. The company is considered a leading innovative enterprise in Russia.
Modern experts positively evaluate the work of Chubais at RUSNANO. In particular, over the past decade, the company has built 96 plants in 37 regions of the Russian Federation. Now, many say that Chubais made him talk about himself as an effective manager.
Anatoly Borisovich himself considers one of the most important and successful projects in his career to develop solar energy. In Chuvashia, RUSNANO, the Hevel plant was built, which switched from imported technology with a 9% efficiency to the domestic one, the efficiency of which was 22%. Thus, the enterprise today appeared in the top three in the world in terms of efficiency.
Another successful project was the development of nuclear medicine. The PET-Technology company has created eleven tomography centers for the diagnosis of cardiological, oncological and neurological diseases, as well as for the treatment of oncology using radiosurgery.
Attempt
The attempt on Chubais was committed in March 2005. The hero of our article, several months before, claimed in an interview that he knew about the impending attack. According to him, the attempt should take place for political reasons, as part of society is dissatisfied with his activities and believes that he "sold Russia."
On March 17, an explosive device went off on the way of his car in the area of ​​the village of Zhavoronki, Odintsovo District. According to experts, its power ranged from 3 to 12 kg of TNT. Immediately after this, the car of the politician was fired from machine guns. As a result of the attempt, no one was hurt, as the car was armored.
The accused were retired GRU colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, two former paratroopers by the names of Naydenov and Yashin and Ivan Mironov, a member of the executive committee of the Congress of Russian Communities. According to investigators, the crime was committed because of hostility to Chubais on the basis of extremist views.
The defendants in the case were charged under five counts; the jury was assembled three times. Finally, in June 2008, she passed a acquittal.
Soon the verdict was appealed, the case was sent for a new trial. In September 2010, the jury again acquitted the defendants, this time for good. However, after only three months, Kvachkov was detained again. Now on terrorism charges and rioting. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, later reduced to 8 years.
Income
The condition of Anatoly Borisovich Chubais is growing. Many mass media write about this. If in the early 2010s he declared about 200 million rubles a year, then in 2015 his income amounted to almost a billion rubles.
According to experts, the main profit came from operations with securities.
Among his assets are two apartments in Moscow, one in St. Petersburg, and one in Portugal, where Chubais now barely lives.
Personal life
For the first time, a politician married as a student. His first wife, Lyudmila Chubais, gave birth to two children. Olga and Alexei became certified economists. The son is now 38 years old, the daughter is three years younger. After the divorce, Lyudmila Chubais began to engage in the restaurant business in St. Petersburg.
In the early 90s, Anatoly Borisovich married a second time. His chosen one was the economist Maria Vishnevskaya. Chubais’s wife has Polish nationality. They lived together until 2011, after more than two decades, they divorced in marriage.
Currently, the wife of Anatoly Borisovich Chubais is a journalist and director Avdotya Smirnova. Many members of the public criticized the politician for trying to establish personal life in old age. At that time he was 57 years old, and his wife - only 43. However, the big age difference does not interfere with the happiness of the spouses.
Now Avdotya Smirnova and Chubais have been living together for six years now. For the wife of the hero of our article, that year in which they played a wedding was very fruitful. As a director, she released the short film "Plov" and the tragicomedy "Kokoko" with actresses Anna Mikhalkova and Yana Troyanova in the lead roles. In 2018, another film of hers was released - the drama "The Story of a Single Purpose".
Avdotya Smirnova and Chubais live in Moscow. They prefer to devote their free time to travel and outdoor activities. The politician himself is fond of boating and downhill skiing, this allows him to maintain good physical shape.
The family Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, as he himself admits, now devotes much more time than before.