Gleb Pavlovsky, Russian political scientist, political strategist and founder of the Fund for Effective Politics, has died at the age of 72. This was reported by the newspaper “Vedomosti”, referring to his friend, head of the department of local self-government of the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” Simon Kordonsky.
“Yes gone. It’s night,” said political strategist Marat Gelman, confirming this information on his social networks.
INSIDE telegraph channel Pavlovsky was informed that the political scientist died “after a severe and prolonged illness” on February 26 at the First Moscow Hospice named after Vera Millionshchikova.
“Relatives and friends of Gleb Pavlovsky express their deep gratitude to all those who supported and helped all these months, suffered with us, endured, understood and protected. We will inform you about the time and place of farewell”.
According to media reports, in recent years Pavlovsky fell ill with cancer, and in January his condition worsened.
“One of the few people I can talk to”
TV presenter and press secretary of Rosneft Mikhail Leontiev said “Gazeta.ru” said that he has had little contact with Pavlovsky recently, due to differences in political views.
“Gleb recently became our rather radical opponent. Our views were almost diametrically opposite. He was also a very intelligent person who knew how to listen, and it was interesting for him, ”the TV presenter shared.
According to him, the political strategist did not transfer political relations to individuals and was always very critical of himself.
“I think he’s one of the few people from that political group you can talk to. Maybe even one, ”Leontiev said.
Commenting on the news about the death of a political scientist on the Telegram channel, journalist Ksenia Sobchak expressed the opinion that Pavlovsky “has a wonderful ability to feel the main nerve of time and quickly formulate his language.”
Let’s not make the “human age” cliché. Such was Pavlovsky twenty years ago. He himself created and comprehended these epochs,” wrote Sobchak.
He remembered that Pavlovsky had called himself a Zen Marxist in his youth. “We will miss Pavlovsky’s calm acceptance of the speed of history and his meditative observation,” concluded the journalist.
Dissident, Kremlin political strategist, opposition leader
Gleb Pavlovsky was born on March 5, 1951 in Odessa, graduated from the History Faculty of Odessa State University. In the mid-1970s, he came under KGB surveillance for the distribution of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago, moved to Moscow, and worked as a laborer to avoid being accused of parasitism.
He was editor of the samizdat magazine Poiski in 1978-1980, and was arrested for its publication in 1982 and exiled to Komi for three years. After exile, Pavlovsky returned to Moscow in 1985.
He was director of the private news agency Postfactum in 1989-1993, and in the early 1990s he became vice chairman of the board of the publishing house Kommersant.
In 1997, Pavlovsky, together with Marat Gelman, founded the Russian Journal, one of the oldest social and political online publications in the country, and became its editor-in-chief. Pavlovsky, in collaboration with Anton Nosik, participated in the creation of electronic publications Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru, vesti.ru and the project strana.ru. Between 2005-2008, he presented the Real Politics program on NTV channel.
In 1995, Pavlovsky, together with Gelman and Maxim Meyer, created the Fund for Effective Politics. He took part in the reelection campaign of President Boris Yeltsin in 1996 and developed the election campaign of Vladimir Putin in 2000..
As Meduza (considered an undesirable organization in Russia) noted in 2018, describing the life and career of a political scientist, at the end of 1998 Pavlovsky was sure that anyone could be elected.
“I didn’t care, you know? I have a machine that will select everyone. Name the deceased – we will build a structure, we will build it in it, and they will choose it,” the publication quotes.
Pavlovsky also participated in the presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovych in the 2004 elections in Ukraine. He later served as an advisor to the Presidential Administration of Russia. On April 24, 2008, he was awarded the Second Order of Merit of the Fatherland from President Dmitry Medvedev.
The Fund for Influential Policy cooperated with the administration of the President of Russia until 2011, and Pavlovsky served as an adviser to the head of the Presidential Administration. A number of media outlets call Pavlovsky one of the ideologists of the modern political regime in Russia, especially since he is among the authors of the concept of “sovereign democracy”.
In 2011, the presidential administration terminated the contract with the Fund for Influential Policy, and Pavlovsky left the post of adviser. He explained to Kommersant that his comments were “starting to cause problems for the presidential administration.” But, according to Vedomosti’s interlocutors, the reason for Pavlovsky’s disgrace was, on the eve of the 2012 presidential election, “Openly dressed in Dmitry Medvedev, he offered to discuss the modernization agenda as an electoral program”.
In 2012, Pavlovsky opposed the Kremlin, participated in opposition rallies “For Fair Elections” in February and March, and in May of the same year participated in the “March of Millions” against the return of political adviser Vladimir. President Putin.
After the entry of Russian troops into the territory of Ukraine, Pavlovsky called for the cessation of hostilities and criticized the referendums on the annexation of Ukrainian territory to Russia. The Russian Ministry of Justice considers Pavlovsky one of the participants of the Renaissance School of Free Public Thought, which Russian authorities recognized as a foreign agent in February 2023.