Anatoly Chubais

Privatization chief in Leningrad (1990–1994)

In 1990, upon the election of Anatoly Sobchak as Chairman of the Leningrad City Council, Chubais assumed the position of his Deputy. He was trying to implement Sobchak's idea of creating a Free Economic Zone in Leningrad. In 1991, Chubais declined the offer to become the Chairman of the Leningrad Executive Committee to instead become an advisor to the mayoral administration in Leningrad (by now renamed St. Petersburg) where Sobchak had just been elected mayor. At the same time, Chubais worked as the president of newly established Wassily Leontief Center for Research in Economics.

In the Yeltsin government (1992–1999)

Chubais originally advocated rapid privatization in order to raise revenue, similar to the model used in Hungary. However, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia rejected this model. Eventually, Chubais developed a compromise in the form of a proposed voucher privatization program akin to the program used in the Czech Republic at the time. On 11 June 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Russia adopted this compromise and the massive program was officially initiated by decree of President Boris Yeltsin on 19 August 1991. In November 1991, Chubais became a member of the Yeltsin cabinet where he managed the portfolio of the Committee for the Management of State Property (GKI) which was handling privatization in Russia. He was recommended to Yeltsin by Yegor Gaidar. The GKI was understaffed, so Chubais filled it with many of his associates, mostly from his time in Saint Petersburg, including Alexander Kazakov, Alfred Kokh, Dmitry Vasilyev, Maxim Boycko, and Andrei Illarionov. In June 1992 he was appointed as a deputy prime minister by Yeltsin, and was responsible for economic matters. He was also later made the first head of the Federal Commission of Securities, before being replaced in that role by Vasilyev.

The implementation of the program experienced many problems. The vouchers were not guaranteed by the government, and enterprises did not have to accept them. Some of the most profitable enterprises were not included in the voucher scheme. The vouchers were anonymized and could be bought or sold. Each voucher was worth ten thousand rubles, but the hyperinflation that Russia experienced in 1992 and 1993 greatly reduced the value. Many people ended up selling their voucher, and even those that did use them to buy shares never received ownership or income. The joint stock companies did not pay dividends. At the same time, some businessmen started funds to buy up vouchers, and used them to take control of large enterprises at a small fraction of their worth. Enterprises and properties that had provided basic services were also sold off in auctions, and after that their new owners catered to the emerging small wealthy class, increasing prices and making them unaffordable for the great majority of Russians. All of this occurred in a relatively short time frame.

This privatization program came under heavy criticism. The word voucher became synonymous with swindle, and Chubais, according to The New York Times, became "the most despised man in Russia." Chubais later admitted in his book History of Russian Privatization that the voucher program did not create a large class of property owners, and that it decreased production. Chubais and his associates worked with the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), which was in charge of U.S. foreign aid to Russia during the Clinton administration. It operated with minimal USAID oversight, and Chubais' group, and some of the foreign advisors from HIID, allegedly profited using his position in the Yeltsin administration. HIID members were involved in drafting presidential decrees related to privatization, which were promulgated by Yeltsin under the influence of Chubais. With the help of HIID, "private" organizations founded by Chubais and his associates in Russia received significant amounts of foreign aid, which they enriched themselves with.

Yeltsin reshuffled the cabinet in early 1994 as Russia experienced economic difficulties, which left Chubais as the only original reformer still in the cabinet. A new wave of privatization took place in 1994, overseen by Chubais and the GKI, which auctioned off some of the largest industrial enterprises in the world. Chubais was removed as chairman of the GKI in November 1994. From November 1994 until January 1996, Chubais held the position of First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia for economic and financial policy in the Russian government. Thanks to liberalizing reforms carried out in 1995, the Russian government was finally enjoying a measure of financial stability, something its politicians had been seeking ever since the resignation of Yegor Gaidar in 1993. By the end of 1995, the average annual inflation-rate had declined from 18% to 3%. From April 1995 until February 1996, Chubais also represented Russia in two international financial institutions – the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).

After resigning as deputy prime minister in January 1996, Chubais agreed to manage Boris Yeltsin's reelection campaign. By this time, according to public opinion surveys, Yeltsin's approval rating had fallen to roughly 3%. Chubais established the Civil Society Foundation as well as Yeltsin's Campaign Analytical Group, which became one part of the Foundation. The group helped Yeltsin regain popularity and win re-election in the second round of the polls on 3 July 1996, capturing 53.82% of the popular vote. From July 1996 until March 1997, Chubais served as the chief of the Presidential Administration of Russia. During his tenure, his office grew increasingly influential. When Yeltsin underwent an operation in the fall of 1996, his prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was vested with some of his powers, but Chubais received even more economic and political authority. Yeltsin was criticized by the State Duma for giving Chubais too much power. In March 1997, Chubais returned to the cabinet as First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. That summer he became involved in scandal regarding his book on privatization.

Chubais participated in the Bilderberg Club session at Turnberry, Scotland in 1998, and co-chaired the Round Table of Industrialists of Russia and the EU during the joint session of the Government Commission of the Russian Federation and the European Union. He was also elected to the Board of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs in 2000.

According to Yeltsin's daughter and chief-of-staff Tatyana Yumasheva, Chubais opposed the nomination of Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister of Russia and Yeltsin's successor in 1999. Although Chubais believed Putin was qualified for the position, he feared that his appointment would be rejected by the State Duma, allow the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to gain a large enough parliamentary majority to amend the constitution, and start a civil war.

RAO Unified Energy System of Russia (1998–2008)

In 1998, Chubais was elected to the chairman of the board of RAO UES of Russia, the state-owned electricity monopoly, at a special general meeting of shareholders; he soon was also appointed chairman of the board.

Since 2000, Chubais consistently defended the need for further reform, which included dis-aggregating power generation, transmission, and distribution activities from the monopoly holding company in order to facilitate the subsequent sale of a majority of shares to private investors. Chubais was convinced that the un-bundling and privatization of the state monopoly were the only mechanisms able to raise the substantial funds needed to modernize Russia's electricity sector.

He was elected president of the CIS Electric Power Council (2000), and later was repeatedly re-elected to that post from 2001 to 2004.

In addition to reforms, Chubais and his team raised more than $30 billion in private investments for the Russian electric power sector. The funds were used to finance the construction of new facilities: 130 new units with a total capacity of about 29,000 MW, 10,000 kilometers of transmission lines, 60,000 kilometers of distribution network lines, and thousands of electrical sub-stations of all classes of voltage. His reforms also helped eliminate the use of barter payments and significantly reduced the number of payment defaults in the sector.

On 17 March 2005, he survived an assassination attempt. Vladimir Kvachkov was charged for the crime, but was acquitted by a jury.

In 2007, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti named Chubais the "Professional of the Year". The paper called him the only professional reformer in Russia because of his achievements in breaking of one monopoly into dozens of independent entities, introducing market forces into the electricity distribution system, and transforming a government institution structure into one attractive for private investment and management.

In July 2008, RAO UES of Russia ceased to exist as a legal entity.

RUSNANO (2008–2020)

Since September 2008, Chubais has been General Manager of the State Corporation Rosnanotech.

The official business of the corporation is to promote innovation and modernization in Russia's economy in several areas. For example, RUSNANO forms an important part of the government's strategy to find economic alternatives to fossil fuels. The corporation has set a target of 900 billions rubles in sales by 2015. In the past, Chubais has compared RUSNANO to a garden in which the corporation cultivates innovative business ventures. Over its eight years of operation (2007–2015), RUSNANO has completed over 100 investment projects which resulted in the opening of 68 new plants and 28 R&D centers. As stated in the annual RUSNANO groups' financial report, the value of RUSNANO's portfolio was estimated in 2015 at 227.7 billion rubles and its net income at 17 billion rubles.

Chubais has been a member of the Skolkovo Foundation Council since 2010, and in 2011 was elected chairman of the board of LTD RUSNANO.

He left the organization in December 2020.

Resignation (2022)

On 22 March 2022, after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Chubais resigned from his position as special envoy, after sending a letter to Mr. Putin criticizing the decision to invade Ukraine and calling for an immediate end to hostilities, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation Mariana Katzarova. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Chubais had resigned, but did not specify why, stating: "Whether he left or not is his personal matter". Alexei Venediktov, who had been in contact with him, reported that Chubais had left due to his disagreement with the war with Ukraine. Chubais left Russia, arriving in Istanbul, Turkey, on the same day, planning to remain abroad. Alexei Navalny's spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, suggested that Chubais had "left Russia only out of fear for his own skin and his own money". He was the highest ranked Kremlin official to resign following the start of the invasion, though he is not a member of Putin's inner circle. He now lives in Israel.

Independent researcher (2023)

In the summer of 2023, Chubais published an article in the Russian academic journal Voprosy Ekonomiki on the problem of non-payments in the Russian economy in the early 1990s. The author positions himself as an independent researcher from the UK.

Center for Russian Studies (2024)

On 16 April 2024, there was a presentation of the launch report of the new Center for Russian Studies (CRS) - Russian Future Initiative founded by Anatoly Chubais at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University. The mission of the center is a “comprehensive study of Russia's possible future based on the analysis of the events of its recent past.”

Anatoly Chubais commented on the opening of the Center that “Russia is changing the direction of its development for the second time in the last 35 years. It is crucial now to rise above emotions, personal destinies, and political preferences and attempt to re-understand our recent history. Only in this way can we gain lessons that will truly be relevant in the future.”