PERSON: Vyacheslav Nikonov

Russian State Duma Deputy

Vyacheslav Nikonov (Russian: Вячеслав Алексеевич Никонов, born in Moscow on June 5, 1956) is a Russian political scientist.

He is a grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov, prominent Bolshevik and Soviet foreign minister under Joseph Stalin, and was named after the grandfather. Nikonov graduated from the History Department of Moscow State University in 1978 and has been studying the history of the U.S. Republican Party after World War II. He has been involved in Soviet and Russian politics since the 1970s, first as a local Komsomol leader, later in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and as a member of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin's staff. In 1993 Nikonov was elected to the State Duma. In 2005 he published an early biography of Molotov (in Russian). In 2005-2007 he was a member of the Public Chamber of Russia. In 2011 was once again elected to the State Duma and in 2013 became the Chairman of the Education Committee.

Nikonov received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Edinburgh in July 2012.

-- Wikipedia