Dyachenko, Tatyana Borisovna

(1960– )

   The daughter of the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin, Tatyana Dyachenko rose to prominence during the 1996 presidential election campaign. With a background in computer science and little experience in politics, she acted as an informal personal advisor to Yeltsin and coordinated key aspects of his media strategy. She also mitigated his growing neo-authoritarian tendencies and counterbalanced his advisors from the more aggressive “Party of War,” which supported banning the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, canceling the elections, and dissolving parliament. As a principal member of “the Family,” a group of close advisors to the president, she also acted as a critical go-between for certain oligarchs, such as Boris Berezovsky. While she was briefly retained as an advisor to Vladimir Putin, she was sacked in 2000 when her name was linked to corruption charges surrounding Swiss construction contracts. In 2001, she married Valentin Yumashev, father-in-law of the oligarch Oleg Deripaska.