Vadim Medvedev, economist, secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and member of the Politburo, an associate of Mikhail Gorbachev in the perestroika of the USSR, died in Moscow at the age of 96. This was reported to TASS by the politician's family friend Oleg Ozhereliev.
„Vadim Andreevich Medvedev passed away today“, Ozhereliev shared.
Medvedev's grandson, Mikhail Lavrov, announced that the farewell to politics is planned for July 15, he will be buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery.
A native of the Yaroslavl region and a descendant of a peasant family, Medvedev graduated from Leningrad University and defended his doctoral dissertation in economics, devoted to issues of stimulating production. In the central apparatus of the CPSU since 1970 - worked in the departments of propaganda, science and educational institutions, the Central Auditing Commission of the CPSU. In the 70s of the last century, as rector, he headed the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, in 1984 was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Medvedev contributed to the democratization of Soviet reality during the years of Gorbachev's perestroika. The politician actively supported the withdrawal of books and magazines from the special storage system, including the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and initiated the refusal of ideological courses in higher educational institutions. From 1990 until the end of the USSR, he was a member of the Presidential Council - a group of advisers closest to Gorbachev.