Marat Gelman - biography

Marat Alexandrovich Gelman (Russian: Марат Александрович Гельман; born December 24, 1960 in Chisinau, Moldavian SSR) is an owner and director of Guelman's Contemporary Art Gallery, ex-owner of the Foundation for Effective Politics, and the former assistant director of Channel One (Russia).

Early years

He was born in the capital of Moldova, then a Soviet republic. His father was famous Soviet playwright and screenwriter Alexander Guelman. He claimed that he was studying in school #37 but abandoned it due to youth problems. In 1983 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Communication. While he was in high school he worked at the Moscow Art Theatre during the evenings. He then avoided the military draft because this institute had a military chair.

Career in Chisinau

Between 1983 and 1985 he worked as the head of non-standard equipment at the Chisinau television factory “Alpha”. In 1985 he worked as an engineer at the Chisinau Scientific Research Institute of Non-destructive Diagnostics. Between 1985 and 1990 he was the general director of a science and technical youth center (kind of commercial companies during late Soviet time) in Chisinau.

Life and work in Moscow

1990-2000

In 1990 he moved from Moldova to Moscow, Russia and established the "Guelman Gallery" there. This gallery hosted exhibitions of Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, as well as many political performances.

Since 1991 he has worked with so-called political technologies (political public relations campaigns) in cooperation with the image-making company of Yefim Ostrovsky. During the 1995 Russian Parliament elections, he was listed as a candidate in Komsomol's block "Threshold Generation" (Поколение рубежа). Together with Gleb Pavlovsky, he created the Foundation of Efficient Politics.

In 1997 he was going to start gathering voters to sign petitions for a Moscow referendum to remove the monument of Peter the Great by Tsereteli, but then stopped this due to terrorist acts (from presumably existed Komsomol's group "Revolutionary military council of RSFSR").

During the 1999 Russian Parliament elections, he was the head of election staff for the Union of Right Forces. During the elections of the Mayor of Moscow he worked for Sergei Kiriyenko.

Since 2000

In April 2002 Guelman left the "Foundation of Efficient Politics", explaining that "FEP practically became a department of media services of President Administration". Between June 2002 and February 2004 he worked as the assistant of the General Director of Channel One, head of analytics. His resignation letter explained that this job was too simple for his analytical skills.

Between March and October 2003 he worked in the election staff of Sergey Glazyev and Dmitry Rogozin coalition Rodina (its name was changing, first it was "Comrade" and "Comrades"). (Later these clients were included in his own "list of fascists and xenophobs" .)

In 2004 he has participated in the Ukrainian presidential elections as an adviser to Viktor Yanukovych (whose coalition Party of Regions most possibly has no connections with same-name Polish and Russian parties.)

Between the summer of 2005 and the autumn of 2006 he was a prominent member of the newly-created Social Democratic Party of Russia.

Internet projects

Marat Guelman is also known as a curator of many internet-projects, both art- and politics-related:

• Artist Batynkov unmasks free masons
• Putin-chess
• Irak.ru and Vojna.ru (in association with Konstantin Rykov)
• Kazakhstan art
• AES groub, "islamic project"
• supposedly art-group Voina (2008 scandal as reported by Reuters)