Oleg Viktorovich Morozov

Oleg Morozov
Member of the State Duma from Tatarstan's Nizhnekamsk constituency
Incumbent
Assumed office September 2020
Preceded by	Airat Khairullin
In office 1993–2012
Russian Federation Senator from Tatarstan
In office September 2015 – September 2020
Personal details
Born	Oleg Viktorovich Morozov Оле́г Ви́кторович Моро́зов Kazan, Tatarstan, Soviet Union
Political party	United Russia
Spouse(s)	1. Zemfira "Irina" Gubaidullina Morozova (div. 2015) entrepreneuse
Children	2 by the first marriage
Mother	Ninella Georgievna
Father	Victor Stepanivich Morozov
Alma mater	"Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov University", Kazan
Occupation	University professor Political journalist Departmental head of presidential policy unit for domestic matters Politician Member of parliament

Oleg Morozov is a Russian national politician. He was a deputy in the State Duma between 1993 and 2012. He was then re-elected to it in a by-election in 2020.^[1][a] He served as a member of the Federation Council between September 2015 and September 2020. From May 2012 till March 2015, he worked as head of the presidential office for domestic policy.^[3] He supports the United Russia party.^[4][5]

Morozov's mother was "something of an intellectual". During the early 1980s, before entering mainstream politics, he was himself employed in the universities sector. He is fluent in German.^[6][7]

Provenance and early years[]

Oleg Viktorovich Morozov was born at Kazan. Victor Stepanivich Morozov, his father, came originally from Izmaylovo, a village in the Baryshsky District where he had grown up in a farming community. Victor Stepanivich was a red army veteran of the Great Patriotic War, which he survived with medals and the rank of colonel, despite being twice wounded. Ninella Georgievna, the mother of Oleg Viktorovich, came originally from the Kursk region, but had studied in Kazan and was a graduate of that city's prestigious "Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov University" (as it was known after 1925 during the Soviet era). She worked throughout her life for the local Defence Industries Enterprise. According to several sources Oleg Viktorovich Morozov was a precocious child, a fluent reader in Russian by the age of three, and a natural leader. In his kindergarten class he liked to gather other children round him and tell fairy stories or other tales of his own devising. A teacher needing to leave the room briefly could leave him in charge with confidence. At school he was at times mischievous and troublesome. One fellow student at his secondary school, who a few years later became his wife, confided to an interviewer that their biology teacher had thought him such a "terrible hooligan" ("... хулиганом") that she had refused to teach classes when young Oleg was in the class.^[8] But when it came to school work he nevertheless proved conscientious and capable. During school holidays he was able to take long breaks away from the city, staying with his grandmother in the old wooden house in which his father had grown up and where, a generation later, daily work still focused very much on the cow, the pigs, the chickens and the geese.^[9]

Oleg's parents were determined that the boy should go through the rest of his life equipped for "a real profession", and when, in 1971, the opportunity arose to move on to university his father urged him to obtain a practical degree, in a subject such as Engineering, Physics or Mathematics, but Morozov's stubborn streak came to the fore. Insisting that "the social sciences are more interesting" he enrolled to study at the History-Philology faculty of the Kazan Federal University. At university his habit of studying hard and gaining top marks did not necessarily endear him to other students, but he cultivated a friendly and supportive approach which enabled him to fit in with comrades. His guitar skills helped too. The thundering Aleev-Kuzin-Morozov trio was a frequent presence at student concerts.^[9] In 1976 Oleg Morozov graduated from the university with a so-called "red diploma" degree (indicating consistently high marks).^[10]

University career[]

Morozov's independence of thought, polemical talents and deep subject knowledge had not gone unremarked by the teaching staff at the History-Philology faculty. There was a new relatively young department head, Midhat Khabibovich Farukshin, who suggested that Oleg Viktorovich might wish to join the department as a research assistant, which could be combined with study for a postgraduate degree. The offer carried a virtual guarantee of a university job once the higher level degree had been obtained, and was also financially attractive in its own terms. He had married the nineteen year-old Irina Boyarynya on 19 July 1974 and, more recently, become "a family man", Morozov had good reason to value the implicit prospect of enhanced financial security. He accepted the offer and for the next few years, as a "pre-professor" ("доцентом"), combined his research and study with teaching students.^[9][10] In 1980 he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation and received his doctorate. The piece of work for which he received it was a "critical analysis of West German interpretations of socialist internationalism in theory and in practice" ("Критический анализ западногерманских интерпретаций теории и практики социалистического интернационализма").^[11]

Still aged only 26, in 1980 he was sent to teach at the university department for "Scientific communism" ("Научный коммунизм"), regarded by some as a particularly challenging assignment for a recently qualified tutor-lecturer: the students attracted to the subject were sharp-witted, with a reputation for loving to "test" new lecturers. Oleg Viktorovich passed their tests.^[9] At around the same time he was awarded a "Candidate of Philosophical Sciences" ("кандидат философских наук") degree, an interim higher-level degree marking a significant step along the path to a full university professorship.^[9]

During 1983-84 he undertook a one-year internship in the department for Political Sciences at the University of Bonn in West Germany. It was a highly unusual opportunity at the time: he appears to have been selected for it simply because he had been identified as "one of the department's most successful teachers".^[10] On his return to Kazan in 1984, he settled to progressing what seemed likely to be a stellar career at the university. There was an important dissertation to be completed.^[8] A year later Perestroika arrived and across the Soviet Union a lot of the old assumptions began to shift in all sorts of ways - and at a speed - that few would have anticipated until the Gorbachev changes suddenly began. In 1985 Oleg Viktorovich Morozov was elected to membership of the university party committee ("партком").^[9] Since he had hitherto never shown the slightest interest in politics, this came as a surprise to comrades who knew him, including his wife and, presumably, his two young daughters: the family had always assumed that, with the children now both old enough to attend school, Oleg and Irina Morozov would pursue university careers throughout their working lives, just like Ninella Georgievna, Oleg's mother.^[8]

Politics[]

At around the same time, still only aged 29, Morozov was offered and accepted a university assistant-professorship in the department for "Scientific communism" ("Научный коммунизм").^[12] Meanwhile, it quickly became clear that his sudden interest in politics was no mere aberration. Between 1985 and 1987 he served as a deputy secretary with the university party committee.^[13] During this time he returned home one evening and announced to his wife that he had been summoned to a meeting with the regional party, to be offered the headship of its department for Agitation and Propaganda: he had accepted. Since well before 1953 the Soviet Union had incorporated a structural bias in favour of gerontocracy. Morozov was 33. When offering him the job the committee had informed him that, through the entire period of Soviet power, they had never employed so young a head of Agitprop.^[8][13][b] Oleg Viktorovich had found himself on the launch pad for a stellar rise through the ranks in the world of Soviet politics.^[13] Between 1987 and 1989 he headed up the Tartar regional committee department for the CPSU nationally, a position he held concurrently with the regional Agitprop headship.^[12]

Moscow and the crisis years[]

In 1989 he accepted a new job, working now as an instructor at the Central Committee's Science and Education department. Working directly for the Party Central Committee was in many respects a significant promotion, but it meant relocating to Moscow: that meant leaving the city which he loved and in which he had lived all his life. It meant missing out on the company and support of many friends. The Gorbachev changes since 1985 nevertheless meant that the gerontocracy was losing its monopoly of power and influence. There were already large numbers of new faces around the Central Committee.^[9] As soon as it became obvious that everything was "going well" Morozov's family joined him in Moscow.^[8]

Bu 1991 Morozov was working as an assistant to the chief of staff of President Gorbachev. His immediate superior in the government hierarchy was none other than Valery Boldin, a leader among the government insiders who remove the president from office that year. For reasons that made perfect sense to the plotters, the coup d'état took place during the holiday month of August: like thousands of others, the Morozovs were out of town when trouble broke out in the streets around the parliament building. They were staying with friends in Volgograd. When they got back to Moscow they found there was no one who would give Oleg Viktorovich another government job. For a year the family lived on Irina Morozovna's university salary of 120 roubles a month, while Oleg tried to get casual driving jobs where he could. The couple's Daewoo was their own and Kazan, where they had retained their dacha, was "only" a twelve hour drive to the east by road: Oleg reassured his family that when he was driving it was a sign that he was resting.^[8] He also found some newspaper work between 1991 and 1993, contributing as a columnist to "Soviet Tartaria" ("Советская Татария"), a newspaper based in Kazan.^[14] Only after a year and a half did he find more permanent work, employed by a non-profit operation called "NPO Biology" ("НПО Биотехнологии"), initially responsible for public relations, and later listed as a deputy director.^[8]

Duma[]

Following the "Black October" crisis, national elections were held in December 1993 for the newly reconfigured Russian Duma (lower house of parliament / "Государственная дума"). Oleg Morozov was one of those elected as a deputy (member) of the legislature. He continued to serve without a break till May 2012. At each of the six general elections held between 1993 and 2011 he stood for election, successfully, in a single member constituency in Tatarstan, representing Naberezhnye Chelny and Kazan.^[3]

In the first Duma convocation, which sat for two years, Morozov presided over the parliamentary subcommittee on co-operation between the regions.^[1] In the second and third convocations, which ran respectively from 1995 till 1999 and from 1999 till 2003, he headed the parliamentary group concerned with the regions of Russia.^[5] During the 1990s a relationship of some distance seems to have existed between Morozov and President Yeltsin: sources sympathetic to Morozov suggest that Yeltsin mistrusted Morozov's independence of spirit, while Morozov had no patience with what he regarded as the president's tsarist pretensions. During the first decade of the new millennium Morozov succeeded in creating a more constructive relationship, involving a growing measure of mutual respect, with President Putin.^[9] In the fourth convocation Morozov was a member of the emerging, and broadly pro-government, United Russia grouping.^[5][9] Between 23 December 2003 and 25 May 2012 Oleg Morozov served as one of the twelve Deputy Chairmen of the State Duma. Through most of that period, between 2005 and 2011, he was indeed "First Deputy Chairman" of the parliament.^[13] The fifth convocation ran for four years between December 2007 and December 2011. He served as a member of the parliamentary budget and taxation committee.^[13] In 2010 Forbes Russia published a report ranking the "most influential lobbyists" in the Duma. The report was presented in the context of an investigation into the links between business and politics. Morozov was reckoned to have achieved success with 21 of the 58 parliamentary bolls introduced, placing him comfortably in the magazine's "top ten": he ended up in sixth place. Reports also noted the correlation between his high ranking according to the journalists' somewhat mechanistic criteria and the extent of government orders to the defence industry factories of Tatarstan, and of other central government investment in socio-economic support for the region.^[15]

Following the extension of parliamentary terms, in 2011 Morozov was elected to the sixth convocation of the Duma, listed for the election as a United Russia candidate. He was again installed as a deputy chairman of the assembly and he again served as a member of the parliamentary budget and taxation committee. His parliamentary powers and duties were terminated ahead of schedule, however, on 6 June 2012, in connection with his transfer to the presidential office.^[13]

Head of the office of the President of the Russian Federation for Internal Policy[]

Between 25 May 2012 and 23 March 2015 Oleg Morozov served as "Head of the office of the President of the Russian Federation for Internal Policy".^[16][17][c]

Federation Council[]

Russia is one of those countries where appointment to the upper house is through nomination rather than through election. On 18 September 2015 Rustam Minnikhanov, in his capacity as President of Tatarstan, nominated Oleg Morozov to serve as a senator in the Federation Council ("Совет Федерации").^[18] During his five year term Morozov represented the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan in the national council (parliament) of the Russian Federation. He also served, within the Federation Council, as a member of the International Affairs Committee.^[13]

Personal[]

In 1999, during an interview, Morozov was "outed" by his wife as a collector of hippopotami. There were already, she said, some 300 items in the collection. It had started in 1980 when Oleg Viktorovich had purchased a soft toy in the form of a hippopotamus for his four year old daughter. Visiting children all wanted to borrow it, even for just one day. Spotting a trend, Morozov now started buying soap dishes, towels and other ephemera enhanced with hippo images. Friends noticed and started contributing to the collection which included hippopotami formed of porcelain, crystal, plastic and precious cut stones. There were also more cuddly toys. The whole family was convinced that this abundance of hippos conferred happiness and good fortune.^[8]

Recognition (selection)[]

Notes[]

References[]