Yuri Luzhkov, Russian politician, 1936-2019

Yuri Luzhkov, the larger-than-life mayor of Moscow whose legacy was sullied by corruption allegations and abuses of power, came to symbolise the Russian capital for a generation of post-communist Muscovites. 

A gregarious, hard-nosed enforcer, Luzkhov, who has died aged 83, took a hands-on approach to remaking the city in capitalism’s name, winning him approval and unchallenged power for the 18 years he presided. Decked out in his ubiquitous flat cap and mischievous grin, Luzhkov’s ebullient resolve broke the mould of a Soviet apparatchik. He married the ruthless determination of a chief executive with a politician’s knack for gauging the popular mood, more kingpin than civil servant. 

Refashioning Moscow into something close to a one-man state within a state Luzhkov reached higher than any Russian mayor before or since and built a national following that propelled him to challenge Vladimir Putin for the ultimate prize: the presidency. Although he never made it to the Kremlin, his blend of state capitalism, control of the judiciary and rigid internal politics did.

He was, according to political scientist Alexander Kynev, the “godfather of modern [Russian] politics” and “in many ways the forerunner of Putinism”.

Yuri Luzhkov was born in Moscow in 1936. A chemical engineer turned local communist politician, he entered city hall as a junior official in the late 1980s. In 1992 he was appointed mayor of a drab and grey Russian capital, beset by years of neglect under the Soviet Union and plunged into turmoil by its collapse.

“I remember returning from London, which was bathed in light at night. From [the airport] we drove along Leningradsky Prospekt and Tverskaya, the main street. Outside the windows of the car there was darkness, empty unwashed windows, rubbish on the sidewalks, potholes in the street,” he wrote in his autobiography, Moscow and Life.

Under his tenure, vast new residential neighbourhoods were built, dangerous roads upgraded and industrial complexes in the city’s heart reborn as cultural landmarks, in a construction boom that laid the foundations for the glitzy metropolis of modern Moscow.

“He is one of the few politicians to lend his name to a city and to a time: Luzhkov’s Moscow,” said Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “A new city, unimaginably different from its Soviet version, a city that seemed impossible.”

Buildings of this time, dubbed “Luzhkov Style” are impossible to ignore in Moscow. Generally despised by critics as kitsch, these gaudy monstrosities littered with unnecessary ornate features are a source of dark humour for today’s residents. But more egregious than his penchant for neoclassical eyesores was the destruction of countless historical buildings to make space for them — and the construction deals from which his wife’s company earned billions of dollars.

Luzhkov’s career was dogged by a litany of outrageous corruption scandals involving contracts won by his wife, Yelena Baturina, Russia’s richest woman with a fortune of $1.2bn. Ms Baturina, who married Luzhkov in 1991 after the death of his first wife, saw her company Inteko swell from a plastics factory making buckets into the city’s largest real estate empire. She consistently denied claims that her husband helped Inteko secure lucrative tenders.

In 1999, at the height of his powers, he joined forces with former prime minister Yevgeniy Primakov to form a party that was widely tipped to win parliamentary elections that year and unseat the regime of President Boris Yeltsin.

Yeltsin’s political machine responded violently with a tactic that foreshadowed the unbridled pro-regime media that dominates today. Kremlin-friendly television channels trashed Luzhkov in a sustained, bitter campaign that battered his ratings and scuppered his hopes. Retreating to his Moscow fiefdom, Luzkhov merged his political movement with that of incoming President Putin to form the United Russia party that has ruled ever since.

Luzhkov’s political end came as he once again sought national influence. After questioning the leadership of Mr Putin’s temporary presidential successor Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, he was sacked for “exorbitant corruption” and “losing the trust” of the Kremlin. But Mr Putin attended his funeral on Thursday and Luzhkov was buried in the exclusive Novodevichy cemetery, the resting place of political and cultural royalty. 

He was “a personality of truly extraordinary scale”, Mr Putin said this week. “A fiery, daring politician, an energetic and talented organiser and an open, kindhearted person.”