Viktor Leonidovich Sheinis

Viktor Leonidovich Sheynis (; 16 February 1931 – 25 June 2023) was a Soviet and Russian politician, economist, political scientist, and member of the Political Committee of the Yabloko Party. He held a doctorate in economics.

Biography Born into a Jewish family, in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Sheynis graduated from the History Department of Leningrad State University. In 1966, he earned his PhD in Economics from the Economics Department of Leningrad State University, with a dissertation titled "Portuguese Colonialism in Africa: Economic Problems and Development Trends in the Postwar Period". In 1982, he earned his Doctor of Economics from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, with a dissertation titled "Economic Growth, Social Processes, and Differentiation of Developing Countries: Problems and Contradictions". He was also a professor.

Work and political protest From 1954 to 1957, Sheynis worked as a history teacher at Leningrad School No. 107. From 1957 to 1958, he was a graduate student at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

In 1957, Sheynis, along with other authors, wrote the article "The Truth About Hungary," criticizing the Soviet invasion of Hungary. In 1958, he was expelled from the Komsomol and graduate school for this action.

From 1958 to 1964, he worked at the Kirov (formerly Putilov) factory in Leningrad. which generally supported Boris Yeltsin's policies but opposed the unconstitutional dissolution of parliament.

On 12 December 1991, as a member of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, he voted to ratify the Belovezha Accords on the Dissolution of the Soviet Union. From 1993 to 1994, he was Deputy Chairman of the Commission on Legislative Proposals under the President of Russia. He was one of the authors of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

In the December 1993 parliamentary election, he was elected to the State Duma on the federal list of the Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin Bloc electoral association, of which he was one of the founders. He joined the Yabloko faction and was a member of the Committee on Legislation and Judicial-Legal Reform.

In the December 1995 parliamentary election, he was elected to the State Duma on the federal list of the Yabloko electoral association. He joined the Yabloko faction and was a member of the State Duma Committee on Legislation and Judicial-Legal Reform.

During the Soviet era, he was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He later became a member of Yabloko. He was a theorist and practitioner of Russian parliamentarism.

On 23 May 2010, he participated as an observer in the parliamentary elections in the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, after which he was included by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan on the list of personae non gratae for violating the "Law on the State Border" of the Republic of Azerbaijan; Baku considers the territories controlled by the NKR to be "occupied". Sheynis himself commented on this fact: "I will survive this.".

He died on 25 June 2023, at the age of 92, after a long illness. He is buried in the Khovanskoye Cemetery.

Sheynis wrote about his political experience:

He was married to sociologist and PhD candidate in economics Alla Konstantinovna Nazimova (born 1932).