Gaidar, Yegor Timurovich

Gaidar, Yegor Timurovich (b. 19 Mar. 1956) Russian; Minister of Economics 1991–3 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. Although he lost influence with Boris Yeltsin at the expense of the latter's former associates from Sverdlovsk, Yeltsin appointed him his plenipotentiary when Gaidar visited the USA in search of loans. He was dismissed in 1993.