Prominent Russian political scientist and former Kremlin adviser Gleb Pavlovsky has died at age 71 following a serious illness, Simon Kordonsky, head of the local self-government department at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, told the Vedomosti business daily Monday.
Pavlovsky had been an influential figure in Russian politics in the first decade of President Vladimir Putin’s rule, serving as Putin’s adviser and “political technologist” starting in 1996.
He was instrumental in the development of Russia’s “managed democracy” that saw Putin’s rivals marginalized, exiled or jailed.
He also played the role of a spin doctor, hosting a weekly political segment on state television in the mid-2000s.
But he was sacked from the presidential administration in 2011, reportedly for backing then-President Dmitry Medvedev’s re-election over Putin’s return to the presidency.
From then on, he would be a vocal critic of the Kremlin and known as one of the most eloquent voices on the machinations and intrigue taking place in the halls of power.
Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last February, Pavlovsky told the Financial Times: “Putin’s used to being lucky. That’s very dangerous for a gambler, because he starts believing fate is on his side. When you play Russian roulette, you feel that God is on your side until the shot rings out.”
Pavlovsky had contributed opinion pieces to The Moscow Times from 2015-2019.
Born in Soviet Odesa, Pavlovsky had been a dissident during the Soviet era, serving a sentence of internal exile in the northern republic of Komi in the 1980s.
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