Boris Nemtsov

Boris Nemtsov (born October 9, 1959, Sochi, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died February 27, 2015, Moscow, Russia) was a leading figure in the opposition movement for free-market economics and democratic social reforms in postcommunist Russia. After the rise of Vladimir Putin to the country’s presidency, Nemtsov became one of Putin’s most visible and outspoken critics within Russia’s political class. In February 2015 he was murdered within sight of the Kremlin.

Education, role in Yeltsin’s cabinet, and the rise of the oligarchs

Nemtsov grew up in Gorky (later Nizhny Novgorod). Although he was reared in his father’s Russian Orthodox religion, he later credited his Jewish mother with having influenced many of his social and political beliefs. Nemtsov earned a degree in radio physics (1981) and a Ph.D. in mathematics and physics (1985) from N.I. Lobachevsky State University in Gorky and worked as a quantum nuclear physicist for nearly a decade (1981–90) at the Gorky Radiophysics Research Institute.

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Nemtsov left his job to enter politics, and in 1990 he was elected to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies. He was mentored by Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin, who selected him to be governor of Nizhny Novgorod oblast (1991–97). In the 1996 presidential election, Yeltsin had faced a strong challenge from Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, and he tried to address public concerns with the country’s direction by reshuffling his cabinet. In 1997 Yeltsin named Nemtsov first deputy prime minister alongside Anatoly Chubais, the main architect of Russia’s privatization program in the early 1990s. Dubbed Yeltsin’s “young reformers,” Nemtsov and Chubais announced plans to overhaul taxation, housing, and welfare; restore central control over assertive regional leaders; and curb the power of Russia’s monopolies (in natural gas, electricity, and railways). Stock markets and foreign investors were jubilant, confident that Russia was beginning a new round of economic liberalization.

However, the new government’s avowed determination to move Russia from the “crony capitalism” of the early Yeltsin years to a more liberal, transparent model brought it into conflict with the group of financiers who had bankrolled Yeltsin’s 1996 reelection campaign. In return for services rendered, the investors had been allowed to take their pick of influential government posts and companies being privatized. Chubais and Nemtsov argued that this relationship between government and big business was distorting the operation of Russia’s fledgling market, degrading the government in the eyes of the populace, and deterring foreign investment. In short, the “young reformers” had observed (or, in Chubais’s case, enabled) the rise of Russia’s oligarchs, and they were now trying to undo the damage. They were unsuccessful. Ultimately, the intentions of Yeltsin’s reform cabinet remained largely confined to paper, stalled by opposition from Russia’s Communist-dominated Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament), the oligarchs, and the increasingly autonomous regions.

Nemtsov resigned in 1997, only to be returned to his position in the government of reformist Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko in 1998. As Russia’s economy imploded, a visibly ill Yeltsin scrambled to assert control, and he sacked Kiriyenko after just five months. Nemtsov, who had been seen by many as a possible successor to Yeltsin, resigned in protest. Yeltsin’s entourage (known in the Russian media as “the Family,” although it included allied oligarchs and financiers as well as members of the president’s true family) was casting about with increasing urgency for an heir to assume Yeltsin’s mantle. In a decision that would determine Russia’s course in the early 21st century, Yeltsin turned not to Nemtsov but to Vladimir Putin, a career intelligence officer who was virtually unknown to the general public. In July 1998 Yeltsin made Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the KGB’s domestic successor), and shortly thereafter Putin became the secretary of the influential Security Council. Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, and Yeltsin later endorsed him as his chosen presidential successor.

Opposition to Putin and assassination

Now in the opposition, Nemtsov joined Chubais and others from Russia’s small band of market reformers to create the neoliberal Union of Right Forces ahead of the December 1999 parliamentary elections. Nemtsov’s coalition captured 8.5 percent of the vote, and he won a seat in the Duma, although he failed to secure reelection in 2003. From an early date Nemtsov warned of Putin’s autocratic tendencies, and this effectively spelled the end of his national political career within Putin’s “managed democracy.” From 2005 to 2006 he served as an economic adviser to Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yushchenko. In 2008 Nemtsov founded the pro-democracy group Solidarnost with chess champion Garry Kasparov, and he later cofounded (2010) and cochaired (2012–15) the People’s Freedom Party (PARNAS). He was arrested in 2011 for having participated in an anti-Putin rally and was jailed for 15 days. In 2013 he was elected to the Yaroslavl regional parliament and had planned to run for a seat in the national Duma in 2016.

Nemtsov was a vehement critic of Putin’s invasion and illegal annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea in 2014, and he was gathering evidence to expose Russia’s role in the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Putin had insisted that the Russian military was not directly involved in the separatist conflicts in Luhansk and Donetsk, although these assertions became increasingly implausible as Russia’s casualties continued to mount. In February 2015 Nemtsov was shot dead near Moscow’s Red Square just days after he publicly denounced Russia’s continued military aggression in Ukraine. A Moscow court found five Chechen men guilty of having carried out the murder, but investigators never offered a clear motive for the crime. In 2022 an investigation by the BBC, the journalism group Bellingcat, and the website The Insider revealed that, in the months prior to Nemtsov’s death, members of an FSB assassination team had been tracking his movements across Russia. Using information from an FSB travel database, the investigators determined that Nemtsov had been followed by FSB agents on more than a dozen trips. At least one of these agents was linked to the subsequent nearly fatal poisonings of Nemtsov’s colleague Vladimir Kara-Murza and fellow opposition leader Aleksey Navalny. The Kremlin denied any connection to Nemtsov’s murder, calling the evidence a “fabrication.”