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.
Up until December 1999, Konstantin Borovoi was a deputy of the Russian Parliament.
In the spring of 2010 together with Valeriya Novodvorskaya he created a liberal political party, Western Choice. On 17 March he was elected its president.

Political activism

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 2001 he and the 2,000 members of his stock exchange carried a huge flag of Russia to the White House, Russia's parliament building. 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.