Alena Arshinova (Cyrillic: Алёна Аршинова), born March 3, 1985[1] in Dresden in East Germany, is a politician, model, and sociologist.
Arshinova holds dual citizenship of Russia and the internationally unrecognised republic of Transnistria. From 2002 to 2007 she studied sociology at the state university of Transnistria, the T.G. Shevchenko University in Tiraspol.
Arshinova led the political youth organization Breakthrough (Russian: Proriv) which defends the de facto independence of Transnistria with close ties to Russia, and rejects the union with Moldova, of which the territory is a part, according to international law. She was influenced by Dmitry Soin, chief ideologist of Breakthrough (Proriv). She also wrote articles and columns for the Transnistrian news agency Lenta PMR (www.tiras.ru). In December 2005 Arshinova was interviewed for the German news magazine Der Spiegel.[2] In 2009 she was a fellow of the John Smith Memorial Trust programme for democracy and good governance.[3]
In 2007, Alena Arshinova moved to Moscow to be a postgraduate student at the faculty of sociology of the Lomonosov University. She does her doctorate on "Youth Extremism in Russia".[4] She has become involved in Russian politics. On 22 December 2010, Arshinova was elected as co-chairman of the co-ordinating council of the Young Guard of United Russia ("Molodaya Gvardia"), the youth wing of Russia's ruling party.[5] For the 2011 Russian legislative election, she contests a seat in the State Duma.[4]
Her hobbies are music, dance, and yoga. She is vegetarian and has a sister, Alexandra.