Konstantin Borovoi

Konstantin Natanovich Borovoi is a liberal Russian politician and entrepreneur, Russian Parliament Member, former Chair of Party of Economic Freedom, and Chair of Party Western Choice.

Biography

Borovoi was born in 1948 in Moscow and is the son of a math professor. He is a graduate of Moscow State University Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. In 1990, he founded the first Russian commodities market, and was its president from 1990 to 1992. He also opened the first clearing bank, an investment company and the first business-news wire. He was a financial director of Russia's Open Film Festival.
In 1992, he created an Economic Freedom Party. The party ran in the 1995 parliamentary elections, but received 0.13% of the proportional representation vote, failing to cross the electoral threshold. However, it did win a constituency seat in the State Duma, taken by Borovoi. The party was deregistered in 2003.
In April 1996, he was speaking with the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzhokhar Dudayev by phone when Dudayev was assassinated by two laser-guided missiles, after his location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted his phone call.
Up until December 1999, Borovoi was a member of the State Duma, representing the Tushino constituency.
In the spring of 2013, together with Valeriya Novodvorskaya, he created a liberal political party, Western Choice. On 17 March, he was elected its president.
In 2019, Borovoi fled to the United States after learning that there were plans to assassinate him.

Borovoi self-identifies primarily as a liberal politician. In 1991, he participated in the resistance to the Communist Coup d'État in Russia State Committee on the State of Emergency. On 20 August 1991, he and the 2,000 members of his stock exchange carried a huge flag of Russia to the White House, Russia's parliament building. From 2001 to 2004 Editor-in-Chief of America Magazine. In the spring of 2010, he was among the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Putin campaign "Putin Must Go". The campaign was begun by a coalition of opposition to Putin who regard his rule as lacking any rule of law. Together with Valeriya Novodvorskaya, he made video clips which he published on Live Journal, Facebook and YouTube. In 2012, he created a campaign called "Russia without Hitler". In 2016, he created the Valeriya Novodvorskaya Foundation.