Yegor Gaidar, the controversial architect of Russia's painful transition to a post-Soviet market economy, died today. He was 53.
A liberal economist, Gaidar served as Russia's first finance minister under Boris Yeltsin. In January 1992 he abolished state control of prices, wiping out the rouble savings of millions of ordinary Russians overnight.
His reforms were described as shock therapy. They paved the way for the dubious state privatisations of the 1990s and the rise of the oligarchs. But they also saw food and other goods surge into Russia after years of Soviet hardship.
Today colleagues and friends paid tribute to Gaidar. They said his reforms had led to Russia's decade of unprecedented economic growth between 1999 and 2008. A former prime minister, Gaidar went on to head the influential Institute for Economies in Transition.
President Dmitry Medvedev described Gaidar as a brave, honest and determined man who "assumed responsibility for unpopular measures in a period of radical changes".
Medvedev said he was "an outstanding economist and statesman. His name is associated with … our country's transition to a radically new path of development," adding: "He always firmly followed his convictions, which commanded respect from both those who shared his views and his opponents."
Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who worked with Gaidar in the Union of Right Forces party, said: "Yegor was a fearless, strong and honest person and a genuine patriot." Gaidar was a deputy in Russia's federal duma for the party between 1999 and 2003.
"Gaidar knew that a lot of people hated him," Nemtsov said. "But people should know that after the collapse of the Soviet Union there were only two possibilities: disintegration, civil war and rivers of blood or difficult and painful reforms."
Gaidar's colleague and friend Anatoly Chubais, the chief of Russia's 1990s privatisation programme, added in his blog today: "He was a great person. Few people in the history of Russia or the world can compare with him in terms of force of intellect, or his clarity of understanding of the past, present and future."
Gaidar died of a blood clot at his home in the Moscow region. Friends say he had been in poor health since he was mysteriously poisoned at a conference in Ireland in 2006, collapsing soon after eating breakfast.
His sudden unexplained symptoms led to comparisons with the polonium assassination in November 2006 of the renegade FSB operative Alexander Litvenenko – though no link between the two cases was proved.
Critics accused Gaidar of intellectual conceit and said that his zealousness for market reforms was reminiscent of the fanaticism displayed by his grandfather, the Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar, for Bolshevism. Defenders point out that Gaider's market-oriented supporters now run the Kremlin.
Gaidar was born in Moscow on 19 March 1956. He graduated in economics from Moscow State University in 1978. After leaving politics, he remained influential behind the scenes, offering informal advice to Vladimir Putin on a range of economic issues.
Yegor Gaidar 
Russian liberal economist and politician Yegor Gaidar died on Wednesday at the age of 53. He was the son of the famous Russian journalist Timur Gaidar.

Born in Moscow in 1956, he graduated in economics from Moscow State University in 1978. In January 1992 in the position of Russia's first finance minister he dropped state control over prices, making Russia a capitalist country with a market economy. While working as an acting Prime Minister of Russia, Gaidar provided the so-called "shock therapy" treatment of the Russian economy, a set of liberal economic reforms.

His health was declining after he was allegedly poisoned in Ireland in 2006, collapsing soon after eating breakfast. This episode led to comparisons to Alexander Litvenenko, killed with radioactive polonium in November 2006.

Yegor Gaidar died of a blood clot at his home in the Moscow region. He is survived by his wife, three sons and daughter. His funeral is scheduled to take place on Saturday, the burial place is yet to be decided.