Dmitry Rogozin
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Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin or Dmitri Rogozin (Russian: Дмитрий Олегович Рогозин) (born 21 December 1963 in Moscow) is a Russian politician and diplomat. He is the current Russian Ambassador to NATO. He was a leader of the Russian Rodina (Motherland) party in the State Duma and is is reputed as one of major Russian nationalists.
[edit] Biography
Dmitry Rogozin was born into the family of a famous Soviet military historian. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1986 with a degree in journalism and in 1988 graduated with another degree in economics.(In 1996 he also got a PhD in philosophy.) In 1993 Dmitry Rogozin joined the recently created party "Congress of the Russian Communities" led by general Alexander Lebed and soon became leader of the party.
Rogozin was elected to the State Duma as a deputy from Voronezh city in 1997 and became a vocal activist for protection of rights of ethnic Russians in former Soviet Union republics.
In 2003 Dmitry Rogozin became one of the leaders of the Rodina (Motherland) "national-patriotic" coalition, which won 9.2 % of the popular vote or 37 of the 450 seats in the Duma in 2003 parliamentary election. After this breakthrough, Rogozin became involved in power struggle with Rodina's other co-chairman Sergey Glazyev, who kept socialist views. While Glazyev nominated himself for Russian Presidential elections in 2004, Rogozin called for his party mates to support Vladimir Putin instead. Rogozin soon succeed Glazyev as party's sole leader
During Rogozin's leadership, Rodina shifted towards far right wing of russian politics and became one of the country's major nationalist parties. A number of contraversies on Rogozin's policies culminated in the most famous one. In 2005 Rodina was banned from election to Moscow City Duma for using chauvinist slogans in video promotion. A video portrayed Rogozin and Yuri Popov pulling up a group of impudent immigrants, followed by a slogan "Let's clean our City from garbage!"
Rogozin's nationalist views were not shared by many of his party mates. In early 2006, at party's congress, Rogozin was removed as the leader of Rodina party. Rogozin left Rodina following its merger with the Russian Party of Life and the Pensioners' Party into Fair Russia. As of November 2006 he has been the Chairman of the revived Congress of Russian Communities. In April 2007 he announced the formation of the Great Russia Party, in conjunction with the Movement Against Illegal Immigration. The party said it would support the candidacy of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko for the Presidency of Russia in 2008, a move which is impossible as Lukashenko is not a Russian citizen. The party was not officially registered with the Central Election Commission of Russia and did not contest the Russian legislative election, 2007.
In October 2007, Kremlin sources reported that Rogozin was being considered by the Kremlin for the position of of Russian representative to NATO; he was named to the post in January 2008.[3]
