What is Sergei Udaltsov famous for – Kommersant

On January 11, a criminal case was opened against the coordinator of the “Left Front” Sergei Udaltsov for justifying terrorism. Details of the oppositionist’s biography are in the Kommersant certificate.

Sergei Stanislavovich Udaltsov was born on February 16, 1977 in Moscow. He is the great-grandson of the Bolshevik economist Ivan Udaltsov, rector of Moscow State University in 1928–1930, the first director of MGIMO. He graduated from the law department of the Moscow State Academy of Water Transport (1999), and worked in his specialty for some time.

In 1997–2003, he was a member of Viktor Anpilov’s Labor Russia movement and participated in many of the organization’s actions. In 1999 he created and headed the “Vanguard of Red Youth”. In December 1999, he ran for the State Duma on the list of the “Stalinist bloc – for the USSR” (the bloc gained 0.61%). In 2001, he initiated the All-Russian march of leftist forces “Anti-Capitalism”.

From 2004 to 2007 – member of the unregistered party of the CPSU of Oleg Shenin. He was a member of the Central Committee and was a correspondent for the party newspaper Glasnost. In 2004, he participated in an attempt to seize the office of the Minister of Education and Science Andrei Fursenko. In 2005, he unsuccessfully ran for the Moscow City Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Since December 2006, he participated in the “Marches of Dissent” in Moscow and other cities. Later he organized and participated in Days of Rage and Strategy 31 rallies. Since 2007, he has been coordinator of the Council of Initiative Groups of Moscow. Since 2008, he has been a member of the working group of the socialist Union of Coordination Councils and the Council of the Democratic National Assembly.

On October 18, 2008, at the founding congress of the “Left Front” (a social movement uniting supporters of the socialist development of Russia), he was elected to its council, is a member of the executive committee, and coordinator of the organizational department. In February 2010, he joined the Central Committee and the political council of the unregistered ROT Front party. On August 10, 2011, Amnesty International recognized him for the first time as a prisoner of conscience for his numerous arrests. According to his own words, he was arrested more than 150 times.

In January 2012, he announced his support for the presidential candidate, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, and became his confidant. He was one of the leaders of opposition protests in 2011–2012. Participated in a meeting between President Dmitry Medvedev and the non-systemic opposition in February 2012, but refused a similar meeting in April. In the summer of 2012, he was found guilty of beating Anna Pozdnyakova, an activist of the Young Guard of United Russia in Ulyanovsk, and fined 35 thousand rubles.

In June 2013, he planned to run for mayor of Moscow, but at that moment he was in custody on the Bolotnaya case. On July 24, 2014, the Moscow City Court found Sergei Udaltsov guilty of organizing mass riots on May 6, 2012 and sentenced him to four and a half years in prison.

On August 8, 2017, Sergei Udaltsov was released, after which he announced plans to “unite all the left” around a single candidate in the presidential race. In the 2018 presidential elections, he supported the candidacy of Pavel Grudinin, nominated by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and was the candidate’s confidant.

During 2023, he tried to expunge his criminal record early in order to continue his political activities and become an assistant to a State Duma deputy (his wife Anastasia Udaltsova is a deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation). On December 21, 2023, Sergei Udaltsov was detained on Red Square during an action dedicated to Joseph Stalin. The Tverskoy Court of Moscow found the oppositionist guilty of an administrative offense, as a result of which he was sentenced to 40 hours of compulsory labor.

Married, two children.