Boris Gryzlov

Boris Vyacheslavovich Gryzlov (also spelled Grizlov; Russian: Борис Вячеславович Грызлов, [bɐˈrʲiz ɡrɨˈzɫof]; born December 15, 1950), is a Russian politician. He was Interior Minister from 2001 to 2003 and Speaker of the State Duma (the lower house of parliament) from 2003 to 2011. He is one of the leaders of the largest Russian political party, United Russia. Boris Gryzlov is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Early career

Gryzlov was born in Vladivostok but was raised in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). He graduated from the Leningrad Electrical Institute of Communications in 1973 and worked as a radio engineer. From 1977 to 1996 he worked his way up from being an engineer to division director in the Elektronpribor plant. He was not a public figure before 1999. In October 1999 he became head of the St Petersburg regional branch of Sergey Shoygu's Unity party and in December 1999 he was elected to the State Duma running on the Unity party ticket. In January 2000 he was elected chairman of the Unity fraction in the Duma.

Interior Minister

In March 2001 he was appointed to the post of chief of Russian police and became Interior Minister. In this position Gryzlov proclaimed that the fight against terrorism and corruption were his priorities.

Gryzlov supported the Kremlin's policies in Chechnya and won the reputation of being a trusted and loyal supporter of the president.

In August 2001 Boris Gryzlov claimed that up to 100 industrial enterprises in Saint Petersburg, including the Petersburg Fuel Company, a leading gasoline retailing operator in the city, as well as the four main sea ports of Northwestern Russia, Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, were controlled by the Tambov Gang. In May 2002 he sent a commission to St. Petersburg to investigate corruption allegations in the city's gasoline market. The investigation was initiated after the Faeton Gasoline Company, the second leading fuel retailing company in the city, had complained to both Gryzlov and the Prosecutor General's Office in April that the Saint Petersburg City Administration had given preferential treatment to the Petersburg Fuel Company.

Parliament speaker

Within a year he returned to party politics and in November 2002 became the head of the United Russia, a centrist pro-Putin group what emerged from Unity and several other pro-government movements that joined it. In December 2003 Boris Gryzlov was elected as speaker of the Duma.

In November 2009, Gryzlov defined United Russia's ideology as "Russian conservatism" – characterizing such conservatism as "an ideology of stability and development, constant creative renovation of society without stagnation and revolutions." Gryzlov resigned from the office of Parliament speaker on 14 December 2011, amongst accusations of polling fraud orchestrated by the United Russia party in the 2011 Russian Duma elections.

Memorable quotes

In 2005, one of the statements of Gryzlov was famously mis-quoted: the phrase, ascribed to him was, Parliament is no place for discussions. Gryzlov was widely criticized and ridiculed by Russian liberals for allegedly making this statement, and was later misquoted, among others, by Garry Kasparov, a chess champion and one of the prominent opposition spokespersons in the West.

In fact, however, Gryzlov never made such a statement. Original phrase was pronounced on December, 29th, 2003: "I believe that the Parliament should not be a ground for political battles, for fighting for political slogans and ideologies. This is a place where [MPs] should be engaged in a constructive, effective legislative activity". The phrase was later abridged by journalists to the infamous "the Parliament is no place for discussions".

Following the 2007 Parliamentary elections, Gryzlov responded to criticism of electoral violations saying: They in no way put in doubt the final result. The fact that these violations have been registered shows that we have a transparent ballot.

Following the 2009 regional parliamentary elections, Gryzlov stated in response to criticism of electoral violations: Corruption and legal nihilism, inherent to Russian mentality, should not be shifted onto "United Russia" party. Representatives of the nationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration responded by telling the press that they were offended by such comments. The nationalists attempted to file charges against Gryzlov for belittling the Russian people under the same article used to prosecute nationalists for incitement to inter-ethnic violence, but these allegations were rejected by the prosecutor general.

He has also voiced significant support for the controversial Russian inventor Viktor Petrik, even co-signing together with Petrik a number of patent applications. After the Russian Academy of Sciences commission claimed that Petrik was a fraud, Gryzlov denounced the panel as obscurantism.