Boris Nemtsov

Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov (9 October 1959 – 27 February 2015) was a Russian physicist, liberal politician, and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin.

Early in his political career, he was involved in the introduction of reforms into the Russian post-Soviet economy.

Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov was born in Sochi in 1959 to Yefim Davidovich Nemtsov and Dina Yakovlevna Nemtsova (née Eidman).

His mother, a physician, is Jewish.

Nemtsov was raised in Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod.

His parents divorced when he was five years old.

In his autobiography, Nemtsov recounts that his Russian Orthodox paternal grandmother had him baptized as an infant, and that he became a practicing Orthodox Christian.

He found out about his baptism many years later.

From 1976 to 1981, Nemtsov studied physics at State University of Gorky in the city of Gorky, receiving a degree in 1981.

Aged 25 in 1985, he defended his dissertation for a PhD in Physics and Mathematics from the State University of Gorky.

In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Nemtsov organized a protest movement in his hometown which effectively prevented construction of a nuclear-fired boiler plant in the region.

In 1989, Nemtsov unsuccessfully ran for the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies on a reform platform which for the time was quite radical, promoting ideas such as multiparty democracy and private enterprise.

In the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, he was the first governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (1991–1997).

Nemtsov was also a member of the Congress of People's Deputies (1990), Federation Council (1993–97) and State Duma (1999–2003).

Until 1990, he worked as a research fellow at the Radiophysical Research Institute, and produced more than 60 academic publications related to quantum physics, thermodynamics and acoustics.

He proposed a theoretical model for an acoustic laser and a novel design of antennas for space probes.

In Russia's first free elections of 1990, he ran for the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic representing Gorky, later renamed Nizhny Novgorod.

Nemtsov was elected, the only non-communist candidate.

He defeated twelve others.

Once in Parliament he joined the "Reform Coalition" and "Centre-Left" political groups.

In the Russian parliament, Nemtsov was on the legislative committee, working on agricultural reform and the liberalization of foreign trade.

In this position he met Boris Yeltsin, who was impressed with his work.

During the October 1991 attempted coup by Soviet hardliners, Nemtsov vehemently supported the president and stood by him during the entire clash.

After those events, Yeltsin rewarded Nemtsov's loyalty with the position of presidential representative in his home region of Nizhny Novgorod.

In November 1991, Yeltsin appointed him Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

Nemtsov's reforms won praise from former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who visited Nizhny Novgorod in 1993.

He was re-elected to that position by popular vote in December 1995.

His tenure was marked by a wide-ranging, chaotic free market reform program nicknamed "Laboratory of Reform" for Nizhny Novgorod and resulted in significant economic growth for the region.

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.

From 2000 until his death, he was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin.

He 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 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".

Nemtsov was assassinated on 27 February 2015, beside his Ukrainian partner Anna Durytska, on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow, with four shots fired from the back.

At the time of his assassination, he was in Moscow helping to organize a rally against the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and the Russian financial crisis.

At the same time, he 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.

In the weeks before his death, he expressed fear that Putin would have him killed.

In late June 2017, five Chechnya-born men were found guilty by a jury in a Moscow court for agreeing to kill Nemtsov in exchange for 15 million rubles (US$253,000); neither the identity nor whereabouts of the person who hired them is officially known.