A leading ideologue of economic reforms during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the late 1980s, former Russian Economy Minister Yevgeny Yasin died at the age of 89 in Moscow on September 25. Ukraine-born Yasin was an economy professor at Moscow State University before he was asked to lead a unit at the state commission on economic reforms at the Soviet government in 1989. In 1991, he joined the Scientific Industrial Union, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union turned into the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Yasin served as Russia's economy minister in 1994-97. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.
