Artyom Tarasov

Artem or Artyom Mikhaylovich Tarasov (Russian: Артём Миха́йлович Тара́сов; born July 4, 1950, Moscow) is a Russian businessman and political activist of Armenian descent. In 1989 Tarasov became the first officially declared millionaire in the USSR.

Tarasov is a descendent of a well-known family of Armenian traders. Oil industrialist and dandy Nikolai Tarasov (1882–1910), co-founder of Moscow Bat theatre, and Henri Troyat (Lev Tarasov) are among his paternal relatives. Born to a photographer father and academic mother, Tarasov received several degrees as an engineer, a computer scientist, and an economic planner. He had a successful career as a scientific manager. His company, Progress, was the tenth co-operative officially registered in the Moscow, but it was shut down by the Moscow authorities as “amoral, dangerous to society and contrary to socialist principles”. Then he founded his next successful co-operative, Technika. Tarasov is the co-founder of Kommersant daily newspaper, the first independent airline, Transaero, and was elected to the Russian parliament. After a conflict with Soviet officials in 1990, he left the USSR and settled in London. In 1993, he returned to Russia and was once again elected to the Russian Duma. In 1996, he decided to run for President as an independent pro-business candidate, but his application was rejected by the electoral commission.

By the late 2000s Tarasov was spending most of his time in London. In 2005, his book, Millionaire, detailing the rise of post-Soviet oligarchs, was published.

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