Lev Timofeev

Lev Timofeev (Russian: Russian Лев Миха́йлович Тимофе́ев, born 1936), is a Russian economist, political commentator and novelist. The son of a high-ranking government official, Timofeev graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

Career

In the late 1960s and 70s, Timofeev worked as a journalist for Moscow magazines such as Novy Mir and Kommunist. Timofeev's 1985 book The Technology of the Black Market or the Peasant Art of Starving was published in the West by Telos Press. The book presented a harsh condemnation of the Communist economic system.

Timofeev was arrested and sentenced to 11 years of hard labour on the grounds of "anti-Soviet propaganda". He was freed in 1987 by a special decree signed by Mikhail Gorbachev. In the late 1980s, Timofeev published Referendum magazine and served as the chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, a human rights watchdog. Timofeev became one of the most vocal proponent of economic liberalization in Russia.

In 1993 Timofeev ran for parliament on the Democratic Russia ticket. He was appointed professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University, Timofeev was for many years director of the Center for Research on Extralegal Economic Systems and advised the government of Boris Yeltsin. In the mid-1990s he joined the Transnational Radical Party and became a member of its General Council. Timofeev was the leading theorist of drug decriminalization.

In early 2000 Timofeev retired from politics and teaching and embarked on a career of novelist: since 2004 he published two novels and a collection of short stories. His 2006 novel Negative was nominated for the Booker Prize. Lev Timofeev is the father of Anton Koslov Mayr, publisher of the Russian Riviera magazine.