Irina Mutsuovna Khakamada ( rus, Ири́на Муцу́овна Хакама́да, p=ɪˈrʲinə mʊˈtsuəvnə xəkɐˈmadə; ja, 袴田イリーナ; born April 13, 1955, in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
) is a Russian economist, political activist, journalist, publicist, and politician who ran in the
2004 Russian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Russia on 14 March 2004. Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1642 Incumbent President Vladimir Putin was seeking a second full four-year term. It was a landslide v ...
.
Khakamada was a former member (deputy) of the lower house (the
State Duma
The State Duma (russian: Госуда́рственная ду́ма, r=Gosudárstvennaja dúma), commonly abbreviated in Russian as Gosduma ( rus, Госду́ма), is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, while the upper house ...
) of the
Russian parliament
The Federal Assembly ( rus, Федера́льное Собра́ние, r=Federalnoye Sobraniye, p=fʲɪdʲɪˈralʲnəjə sɐˈbranʲɪjə) is the national legislature of the Russian Federation, according to the Constitution of the Russian F ...
for three convocations (electoral terms, 1993–2003) and Vice-Chair of the house; co-chair of a political party
Union of Right Forces
)"Liberty, Property, Legality"(russian: "Свобода, Собственность, Законность")
, headquarters = Moscow
, newspaper = Just Cause
, membership_year = 2007
, membership = 57,410
, ideology ...
(1999–2003), presidential candidate of the Russian Federation (2004), member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (2012–2018).
In 1995, ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' named Khakamada a 21st-century politician among 100 well-known women in the world.
In 2002, Khakamada served as a rapporteur from Russia at the 57th session of the
UN General Assembly. 2005 she was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
.
Biography
Khakamada was born to a Japanese father, Mutsuo Hakamada, a
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
who defected to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in 1939. Her mother, Nina Sinelnikova, with Russian, Lezgian and Armenian roots, was an English schoolteacher who lost her father to the
Stalinist purges
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...
and her mother to suicide following the family's forced relocation to
Khabarovsk
Khabarovsk ( rus, Хабaровск, a=Хабаровск.ogg, r=Habárovsk, p=xɐˈbarəfsk) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative centre of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia,Law #109 located from the China ...
.
[Noonan, Norma C. & Nechemias, Carol. Encyclopedia of Russian Women's Movements. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. , ]
Khakamada's paternal uncle is , a member of the
Japanese Communist Party
The is a left-wing to far-left political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world.
The party advocates the establishment of a democr ...
leadership. The Russia expert and political science professor Shigeki Hakamada is her half-brother.
In
kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
, Khakamada's family name is ; in
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
, her name is イリーナ・ハカマダ.
[Mitrokhin, Vasili, Christopher Andrew (2005). The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World. Basic Books. .]
Khakamada graduated from the Department of Economy of the
Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University
The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (russian: Российский университет дружбы народов), also known as RUDN University and, until 1992, Patrice Lumumba University in honor of the hero Patrice Lumumba, is a ...
in Moscow in 1978. She obtained her PhD degree from the
Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 1983, she received the academic title of associate professor in the specialty "political economy". She was a member of the
CPSU
"Hymn of the Bolshevik Party"
, headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow
, general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first)Mikhail Gorbachev (last)
, founded =
, banned =
, founder = Vladimir Lenin
, newspaper ...
from 1984 to 1989.
Duma career
Khakamada was an elected
Duma
A duma (russian: дума) is a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions.
The term ''boyar duma'' is used to refer to advisory councils in Russia from the 10th to 17th centuries. Starting in the 18th century, city dumas were for ...
representative from 1993 to 2003. She is regarded as a democratic politician who is in a moderate opposition to the Russian government. She is known for criticizing the governmental actions during
Moscow theater hostage crisis
The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater by Chechen terrorists on 23 October 2002, which involved 850 hostages and ended with Russian security services killing o ...
where she was involved as one of the negotiators. Khakamada stated that the hostage takers were not going to use their bombs to kill the people and destroy the building.
Khakamada was a member of the coordinating council of the
Union of Right Forces
)"Liberty, Property, Legality"(russian: "Свобода, Собственность, Законность")
, headquarters = Moscow
, newspaper = Just Cause
, membership_year = 2007
, membership = 57,410
, ideology ...
. She opted to abstain from the council's vote on their endorsement in the
2000 presidential election, in which the party ultimately voted to support
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
's
campaign
Campaign or The Campaign may refer to:
Types of campaigns
* Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed
*Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme
* Bl ...
over that of council member
Konstantin Titov
Konstantin Alekseyevich Titov (russian: Константин Алексеевич Титов; born October 30, 1944 in Moscow) is a Russian politician. He was the Senator from Samara Oblast from 2007 to 2014 and Governor of Samara Oblast from 19 ...
.
[Антикомпромат. Союз Правых сил]
/ref>
2004 presidential campaign
Khakamada was one of the leaders of the Union of Rightist Forces when she decided to run in the 2004 Russian presidential election
Presidential elections were held in Russia on 14 March 2004. Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p1642 Incumbent President Vladimir Putin was seeking a second full four-year term. It was a landslide v ...
. She was not supported by her party, which had decided that they would not nominate a candidate. She announced her candidacy in December 2003.
Khakamada kicked off her campaign by delivering a speech which placed the blame for the Moscow theater hostage crisis
The Moscow theater hostage crisis (also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege) was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater by Chechen terrorists on 23 October 2002, which involved 850 hostages and ended with Russian security services killing o ...
at Putin's feet.[ She entered the election with better ]name recognition
In politics, name recognition is the ability a voter has to identify a candidate's name due to a certain amount of previous exposure through various campaigning methods. It can be described as the awareness voters have about specific candidates r ...
than most of the other candidates challenging Putin. Her candidacy was officially registered on 8 February. Khakamada was only the second woman to be a registered candidate in a Russian presidential election, after only Ella Pamfilova
Ella Aleksandrovna Pamfilova (; born 12 September 1953) is a Russian politician, former deputy of the State Duma, candidate for president in 2000 and former chairman (2004 - 2010) of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. On ...
in 2000.
Khakamada claimed her motivation for running was her desire to see a liberal opposition candidate. She would ultimately be the only liberal opposition candidate to run.[
In an article published in '']Novaya Gazeta
''Novaya Gazeta'' ( rus, Новая газета, t=New Gazette, p=ˈnovəjə ɡɐˈzʲetə) is an independent Russian newspaper known for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. It is published in Mo ...
'', Yulia Latynina
Yulia Leonidovna Latynina (russian: Ю́лия Леони́довна Латы́нина; born 16 June 1966) is a Russian writer and journalist. She is a columnist for ''Novaya Gazeta'' and the most popular host at the Echo of Moscow radio stat ...
alleged that Khakamada only entered the election to feign a role of a democratic opponent to provide more legitimacy to the election of Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
. Khakamada denied such allegations.
Khakamada's campaign slogan was “Irina Khakamada: Our Voice”.[ Her campaign received funding from Boris Nevzlin, a former ]Yukos
OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" (russian: ОАО Нефтяна́я Компа́ния Ю́КОС, links=no, ) was an oil and gas company based in Moscow, Russia. Yukos was acquired from the Russian government by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovs ...
chief who was being targeted for international investigation by Russian authorities and was residing in Israel during the campaign.[ She was outspoken about unfair conditions of the election, particularly about its media coverage.] Early into the campaign, analysts predicted that she might be able to receive more than 10% of the vote. Khakamada received 3.9% of votes. While she declared that she found her performance in the election to have been, "satisfactory", she alleged that there had been many irregularities with the vote.
Subsequent political activities (2004– present)
After the election Khakamada founded a new political party named Our Choice
''Our Choice'' is a 2009 book written by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and published by Rodale, Inc. in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Originally titled ''The Path to Survival'', it follows '' An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of G ...
.[ Since 2004, the chairman of the Party reorganized into the "Our Choice Interregional Public Fund for Social Solidarity", which in 2006 became part of the Russian People’s Democratic Union (RNDS) political party, led by ]Mikhail Kasyanov
Mikhail Mikhailovich Kasyanov ( rus, link=no, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Касья́нов, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsʲjanəf; born 8 December 1957) is a Russian politician who served as Prime Minister of Russia fr ...
and her.
Khakamada published the book "Gender in big-time politics" describing her personal experience of work in Kremlin.
On June 11, 2006, Boris Berezovsky, fugitive from the Russian justice system, said Boris Nemtsov
Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov ( rus, Бори́с Ефи́мович Немцо́в, p=bɐˈrʲis jɪˈfʲiməvʲɪtɕ nʲɪmˈtsof; 9 October 195927 February 2015) was a Russian physicist and liberal politician. He was involved in the introduction ...
received word from Khakamada that Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
threatened her and like-minded colleagues in person. According to Berezovsky, Putin had issued threats that Khakamada and her colleagues "will take in the head immediately, literally, not figuratively" if they "open the mouth" about the Russian apartment bombings
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear ac ...
.
Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich "Sasha" Litvinenko (30 August 1962 ( at WebCite) or 4 December 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised i ...
said he had learned from Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (;, ; uk, Ганна Степанівна Політковська , 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia, in partic ...
that Putin asked Khakamada to pass a threat to Politkovskaya. Khakamada denied her involvement in passing any specific threats, and said that she warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year earlier, and that Politkovskaya blamed her and Mikhail Kasyanov
Mikhail Mikhailovich Kasyanov ( rus, link=no, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Касья́нов, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsʲjanəf; born 8 December 1957) is a Russian politician who served as Prime Minister of Russia fr ...
for becoming Kremlin's puppets. Politkovskaya and Litvinenko were murdered in October and November 2006.
2008, Khakamada left the party of her own accord, explaining the cessation of her political activities.
2016, she became a member of the Council of the Political Growth Party. She took part in the elections to the State Duma of the 7th convocation as a candidate from the “Party of Growth
Party of Growth (russian: Партия Роста, Partiya Rosta, ) is a liberal-conservative political party in Russia with representatives in several local legislatures. Created in March 2016 on the basis of the Right Cause party, the party's ma ...
”, in the first part of the regional list of Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
. The party won 1.28% of the vote and was unable to sit in parliament.
Books
*1995 - "Common cause" ("Общее дело")
*1999 - "Maiden Name" ("Девичья фамилия")
*2002 - “Peculiarities of National Politics” ("Особенности национального политика")
*2006 - “Sex in big politics. Self-instruction self-made woman " ("Sex в большой политике. Самоучитель self-made woman")
*2007 - “Love, out of the game. The story of one political suicide" ("Любовь, вне игры. История одного политического самоубийства")
*2008 - "Success in the big city" ("Success спехв Большом городе")
*2012 - "The Tao of Life: A Master Class from a Staunch Individualist" ("Дао жизни: Мастер-класс от убежденного индивидуалиста")
*2014 - “In anticipation of oneself: From image to style” ("В предвкушении себя: От имиджа к стилю")
*2017 - "Success. You ask - I answer" ("Успех. Cпрашиваете– отвечаю")
*2018 - "Restart: how to live many lives" ("Рестарт: Как прожить много жизней")
Film and television
Khakamada has appeared in several films and television series as an actress, including ''Brief Guide To A Happy Life
''Brief Guide To A Happy Life'' (russian: Краткий курс счастливой жизни, Kratkiy kurs schastlivoi zhizni) is a Russian sixteen serial television series, filmed by director Valeriya Gai Germanika and with a scenario by Anna ...
'' in 2012.
References
External links
English
Profile
— from mosnews.com
Russian
Official site
Irina Khakamada about her book
A chapter from the book
Another chapter from the book
Irina Khakamada about hostage crisis
interview by Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (;, ; uk, Ганна Степанівна Політковська , 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia, in partic ...
Presidential race
Criticism
by Yulia Latynina
Yulia Leonidovna Latynina (russian: Ю́лия Леони́довна Латы́нина; born 16 June 1966) is a Russian writer and journalist. She is a columnist for ''Novaya Gazeta'' and the most popular host at the Echo of Moscow radio stat ...
Reply to the criticism
Interview - Radio Free Europe
Interview - Radio Free Europe
Interview - Radio Free Europe
{{DEFAULTSORT:Khakamada, Irina
1955 births
Living people
Politicians from Moscow
Russian politicians of Japanese descent
Russian people of Armenian descent
Russian people of Lezgian descent
Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
Party of Economic Freedom politicians
Union of Right Forces politicians
Russian People's Democratic Union politicians
Party of Growth politicians
First convocation members of the State Duma (Russian Federation)
Second convocation members of the State Duma (Russian Federation)
Third convocation members of the State Duma (Russian Federation)
Russian artists
Candidates in the 2004 Russian presidential election
Female candidates for President of Russia
Moscow theater hostage crisis
Moscow State University alumni
Peoples' Friendship University of Russia alumni
Economists from Moscow
21st-century Russian women politicians