Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov
09.10.1959 - 27.02.2015 (55 years) (Sochi, Krasnodarskiy kray, RSFSR, USSR, [now Russia])
Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov (Russian: Бори́с Ефи́мович Немцо́в, IPA: [bɐˈrʲis jɪˈfʲiməvʲɪtɕ nʲɪmˈtsof]; 9 October 1959 – 27 February 2015) was a Russian physicist and liberal politician. Nemtsov was one of the most important figures in the introduction of capitalism into the Russian post-Soviet economy. He had a successful political career in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin. From 2000 until his death, he was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was assassinated on 27 February 2015, beside his Ukrainian partner Anna Duritskaya, on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow, with four shots fired from the back. In the weeks before his death, Nemtsov expressed fear that Putin would have him killed. Nemtsov criticized Putin's government as an increasingly authoritarian, undemocratic regime, highlighting widespread embezzlement and profiteering ahead of the Sochi Olympics, and Russian political interference and military involvement in the Ukraine. After 2008, Nemtsov published in-depth reports detailing the corruption under Putin, which he connected directly with the President. As part of the same political struggle, Nemtsov was an active organizer of and participant in Dissenters' Marches, Strategy-31 civil actions and rallies "For Fair Elections". At the time of the assassination, Nemtsov was in Moscow helping to organize a rally against the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and the Russian financial crisis. At the same time, Nemtsov was working on a report demonstrating that Russian troops were fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, which the Kremlin had been denying, and was unpopular externally but also in Russia. Nemtsov was the first governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (1991–97). Later he worked in the government of Russia as Minister of Fuel and Energy (1997), Vice Premier of Russia and Security Council member from 1997 to 1998. In 1998, he founded the Young Russia movement. In 1998, he co-founded the coalition group Right Cause and in 1999, he co-formed Union of Right Forces, an electoral bloc and subsequently a political party. He was elected several times as a member of the Russian parliament. Nemtsov was also a member of the Congress of People's Deputies (1990), Federation Council (1993–97) and State Duma (1999–2003). He also served as Vice Speaker of the State Duma and the leader of parliamentary group Union of Right Forces. After a 2008 split in the Union of Right Forces, he co-founded Solidarnost. In 2010, he co-formed the coalition "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption", which was refused registration as a party. Beginning in 2012, Nemtsov was co-chair of the Republican Party of Russia – People's Freedom Party (RPR-PARNAS), a registered political party.At the time of his death, Nemtsov was one of the leaders of the Solidarnost ("Solidarity") opposition movement, an elected member of the regional parliament of Yaroslavl Oblast, and co-chair of the RPR-PARNAS, which is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, a Pan-European political party. After Nemtsov's murder, Serge Schmemann of The New York Times paid tribute to him in an article headlined "A Reformer Who Never Backed Down." Schmemann wrote: "Tall, handsome, witty and irreverent, Mr. Nemtsov was one of the brilliant young men who burst onto the Russian stage at that exciting moment when Communist rule collapsed and a new era seemed imminent." Julia Ioffe of The New York Times described Nemtsov after his death as "a powerful, vigorous critic of Vladimir Putin", who was "a deeply intelligent, witty, kind and ubiquitous man" who "seemed to genuinely be everyone's friend"