Anatoly Borisovich Chubais (Russian: Анатолий Борисович Чубайс; born 16 June 1955) is a Russian-Israeli politician and economist who was responsible for privatization in Russia as an influential member of Boris Yeltsin's administration in the early 1990s.

[1] During this period, he was a key figure in introducing a market economy and the principles of private ownership to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

[8][9] In December 2020, he was appointed a special representative of the Russian president for relations with international organisations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

[21] Though his mother received a degree in economics at university, she opted to stay home to care for their children on the military bases where her husband was regularly assigned.

[3][23] In 1977, Chubais graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Engineering and Economics (LEEI) in present-day St. Petersburg and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until 1991 when he left it.

[24] While later working at LEEI, Chubais started a club called Reforma, which helped turn the city of Leningrad into a model of political reform by constructing platforms for both local and national elections.

[25] In 1982, he attained the rank of associate professor (доцент) at LEEI, while in 1983, he received his Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) degree in Economics for the dissertation entitled "Исследование и разработка методов планирования совершенствования управления в отраслевых научно-технических организациях" (Research and Development of Methods for the Planned Improvement of Management in Industrial Research and Development Organizations).

In 1982, together with economists Yury Yarmagayev and Grigory Glazkov, he published an article titled "Вопросы расширения хозяйственной самостоятельности предприятий в условиях научно-технического прогресса" (Questions of Expanding the Autonomy of Business Enterprises under the conditions of Scientific and Technological Progress) in which the authors argue that no amount of central planning can predict the end-demand for products.

[22] By 1987, Chubais had become the organiser of the Leningrad chapter of the club Perestroyka, whose mission was to promote and discuss democratic ideas among the local intelligentsia.

[22] At the end of 1990, the economist Vitaly Nayshul proposed the idea of using vouchers to facilitate mass privatization in order to transform the Soviet Union into a market economy.

Chubais strongly criticized the scheme at the time, citing the inevitable inequality and social tensions that would result if implemented as proposed.

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.

The people who benefited from this arbitrage became known as "kleptocrats"[26] because they stashed billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts rather than investing in the Russian economy.

From November 1994 until January 1996, Chubais held the position of deputy prime minister for economic and financial policy in the Russian government.

[27] 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.

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.

[34] 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.

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.

Only in this way can we gain lessons that will truly be relevant in the future.”[51] Chubais is married to Dunya Smirnova (a screenwriter and TV presenter) and has two children from his first marriage: a son, Aleksey, and a daughter, Olga.

[citation needed] On 1 August 2022, Chubais told Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak that he had been hospitalised with the neurological disorder Guillain–Barré syndrome, though Sardinian newspaper L’Unione Sarda reported that Italian authorities had not yet ruled out poisoning, and Italian intelligence services are awaiting his blood toxicology results in order to make sure he was not poisoned.

[52][53][54] In June 1993, Anatoly Chubais co-founded the "Russia's Choice" electoral bloc (Vybor Rossii), which was headed by Yegor Gaidar.

[56] In May 2000, Chubais was elected co-chairman of the Coordinating Council of the Russian National Political Organization "Union of Right Forces" at its founding congress.

On the route of his car near the village of Zhavoronki, Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast, an explosive device with a capacity of 3 to 12 kg of TNT was detonated, followed by machine gun fire.

The president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Arkady Volsky, said that the people behind the attempt on Chubais were "those whom we often see on TV, whose names appear in the media."

Vyacheslav Volodin, then Vice-Speaker of the State Duma from the United Russia faction, suggested that the people behind the assassination attempt were "new candidates for the role of sponsors of the right": Boris Berezovsky and Leonid Nevzlin.

In March 2006, the Moscow Regional Court began to consider the criminal case against Kvachkov, Yashin, and Naydenov with the participation of a jury.

On 20 December 2006, the jury was dismissed after a prosecution witness recanted his testimony given during the investigation that he had heard the defendants talking about their intention to commit an attempt on Chubais.

[60][61] In an interview with Echo of Moscow on the first day after his release, Kvachkov said that he considered himself a Russian nationalist and stated: "I did not want to kill Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, but I would like him to stand trial and be hanged."

[citation needed] In 2010, Chubais was honored by with IV degree Order For Merit to the Fatherland "for outstanding contribution to the implementation of state policy in the field of nanotechnology and many years of favorable work".