Who is Dmitry Medvedev?

Shivangi Singh The outcome of an election is not easy to predict. Well, not always. It was almost certain before the Presidential Elections in Russia that Dmitry Medvedev will emerge victorious. Everyone knew that he was going to become the next President and that he will don the mantle after Vladimir Putin. And this is what has happened – Medvedev has won the Sunday elections by a landslide and will succeed Putin at the helm of power. But who is Medvedev? People often refer to him as a ‘good guy’, ‘a straightforward man who hates taking risk’ or a ‘normal bureaucrat’. Some say, he will turn out to be a mere puppet in the Russian political game as the real power will be held by Vladimir Putin, who will run for the Prime Ministerial post and most likely win. But Medvedev’s latest metamorphosis and aggressive stand during campaigns say a different story. Let’s have a closer look into his life:

• Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev was born on September 14, 1965 and his parents were teachers. He grew up in a 40 square meter (430 square ft) flat in a suburb of Leningrad, as St Petersburg was then called.
• As a child, he loved reading the Soviet Encyclopaedia – similar to the Encyclopaedia Britannica – and Jules Verne`s Children of Captain Grant.

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• In school, he displayed leadership qualities. “He is calm, disciplined and confident," said Irina Grigorovskaya, his mathematics teacher at School 305, where he met his wife. "He was well read from a young age and he read a lot."
• Medvedev belonged to a middle class family. He says that the family never starved and holidayed on the Black Sea, a typical Soviet middle-class destination, but money was sometimes too short to buy the records he dreamed of.
• A fan of British hard rock bands Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple, Medvedev said he became disillusioned with Soviet propaganda.
• Medvedev was christened into the Russian Orthodox church aged 23 in St Petersburg.
• Medvedev went to study Law, graduating from the Law Department of St Petersburg University in 1987, which later became a source of the local and then Kremlin elite.
• Putin graduated from the same faculty in 1975 and Anatoly Sobchak, Putin`s political mentor and later Mayor of St Petersburg, taught at the faculty.
• "He was one of the bright sparks from Civil Law," said Nikolai Kropachev, current Dean of the Law Faculty, who worked with Medvedev in the 1990s. "If you asked him to find two solutions to a problem, he would find three, or find a solution no one had ever found before."
• Medvedev submitted a sparkling dissertation and went on to teach Civil Law at the faculty, where he insisted that students have a good grasp of Latin.
• He also worked for the external relations committee of the St Petersburg Mayor`s office where he established a friendship with Putin, who was also working for the Mayor after returning from a KGB posting to Dresden.
• While still teaching and working at the Mayor`s office, Medvedev moved into Russia`s chaotic business world.
• "He started practicing as a lawyer," Law faculty Dean Kropachev said. "In the 1990s completely new legislation had appeared and ... there was massive demand for lawyers."

Towards Kremlin

• Boris Yeltsin made Putin acting President on the last day of 1999, and Putin appointed Medvedev a deputy to his Chief-of-Staff, Alexander Voloshin.
• Medvedev worked as chief of Putin`s election campaign in March 2000. He was elected Gazprom board chairman in June 2000 and played a key role in Putin`s plan to reassert the Kremlin`s control over the gas giant.
• When Voloshin resigned in October 2003, over the arrest of Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Medvedev was appointed Chief-of-Staff, one of Russian politics` most powerful posts.
• In 2005, Putin moved Medvedev to the government making him first Deputy Prime Minister and gave him responsibility for carrying out four national projects to improve healthcare, education, housing and agriculture.
• After winning the election, the 42-year-old Medvedev has become the youngest Russian leader since the country’s last emperor, Tsar Nikolai II. He is also the first Russian leader with a background in private business.

But Medvedev`s personality still remains something of a mystery. He has remained ‘buttoned up’ throughout. What kind of a leader he will turn out to be? That only time will decide.