was born in Odessa in 1951. He graduated in history and since 1974 was a card-carrying member of the Russian dissident movement. In 1982 he was arrested, sentenced and exiled. Before the trial he collaborated with the authorities but during the trial backtracked on his testimony. By 1985 he was back in Moscow and engaged in various civic initiatives, including editing the influential intellectual journal Vek XX i mir (Twentieth Century and the World). Pavlovsky began to cooperate with the Kremlin at the time of Yeltsin’s re-election campaign in 1996 and since remained an essential part of the Kremlin’s political machine. It is believed that he was one of the masterminds behind Putin’s election campaign in 2000, and that he was also active in Putin’s re-election campaign in 2004. After 2008 he continued working for the Kremlin, this time advising Dmitry Medvedev. In April 2011 the Russian Presidential administration announced it had terminated its contract with Pavlovsky’s agency, reportedly because of “indiscreet comments” made about the 2012 presidential elections.
Gleb Pavlovsky, the Ukrainian-born former dissident turned “political technologist”, abruptly fell out with the Kremlin in April, reportedly over “indiscreet comments” made about the 2012 presidential elections. In interview with Transit a short while before, Pavlovsky gave a revealing inside view of the workings of political power in the former Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia.
