About Paul Klebnikov
Photo by Forbes.com
Paul George Klebnikov was the first editor of Forbes Russia. He was murdered in Moscow on July 9, 2004. He was 41 years old. The son of Russian émigrés, he left behind a wife and three young children. Paul launched the magazine in April 2004 with a blockbuster issue that included the first-ever list of Russia's 100 richest people. The related story estimated their worth and investigated how it was acquired. Klebnikov won no friends by revealing what had long been hidden.
In his obituary of Paul, Steven Forbes described him as "a superb reporter — courageous, energetic, ever curious" whose stories contained information that "was always fresh, insightful, fascinating."
Paul first traveled to Russia in 1984 as a tourist. Starting at Forbes as a reporter in 1989 , his primary job was to cover Russian economic reform and the rise of the country's new business elite. Based in New York, he spent an average of two or three months a year in Russia. He conducted hundreds of interviews with top Russian government and business figures, as well as key Western individuals working with Russia. Paul interviewed almost all of Russia's "oligarchs" (the dozen wealthiest businessmen); in most cases, he met people at the beginning of their business careers. He also had a chance to see how U.S. policy-makers approached Russia. In 1989, he interviewed Alan Greenspan after the Federal Reserve chairman traveled to Moscow to advise the Soviet Government on monetary reform. In 1990, Paul was one of two journalists to accompany U.S. Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher and American corporate leaders on their historic tour of Russia. He rose to the position of senior editor, specializing in Eastern European and Russian affairs, before moving to Moscow as the first editor of Forbes Russia. He considered this to be a unique opportunity to bring the best of American and Western values to a country that was struggling through a difficult political, economic and social transition.
His research into the activities and connections of one of Russia's most famous businessmen led to a book, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. A second book, Conversation with a Barbarian, focused on organized crime in Chechnya. And in 2003, Paul completed a ground-breaking article, entitled "Millionaire Mullahs," which examined corruption among Iran's theocratic rulers.
Paul's coverage of Russia received numerous awards, including three citations from the Overseas Press Club (for a 1995 article on the Russian Far East, "Russia on the Pacific," a 1996 article on Boris Berezovsky, "Godfather of the Kremlin?" and a 1998 article on the Russian presidential elections, "Who will rule Russia?"), and second place for the 1997 International Wheel Award of the Detroit Press Foundation (for an article on the Russian automobile industry entitled "Would you want to drive a Lada?"). Paul 's proposals for Russian economic reform appeared as editorials in The Wall Street Journal in 1990 and Izvestia in 1993.
At Forbes, Paul reported on topics unrelated to Russia. The general theme of his work was the question of what makes one company succeed in the marketplace and another fail. Among his corporate profiles were Samsung (Korea), Canon (Japan), Renault (France), Volkswagen (Germany), Daimler-Benz (Germany), Asea Brown Boveri (Switzerland), Marc Rich (Switzerland), Xerox (U.S.), GTE (U.S.), Olivetti (Italy), Bull Computer (France), NCR (U.S.), Amway (U.S.), Montgomery Ward (U.S.), Toys R Us (U.S.) and Alcoa (U.S.). Paul was also interested and wrote on a wide variety of social and political issues including conservative African-American thought in the U.S., the problems of the Swedish welfare state, the effectiveness of the French school system, the culture of tax evasion in Italy, nuclear non-proliferation, and the rise of xenophobia in Europe.
Born and raised in New York City, Paul was a native Russian speaker. He attended the St. Bernard's School (1969-77), Phillips Exeter Academy (1977-81) and the University of California, Berkeley (1981-84), where he received a bachelor's degree in political science. In 1985, he earned a master's degree in government at the London School of Economics (thesis: Communist Party Membership in the Soviet Union, 1918-85). In 1991, he was awarded a Ph.D., by the London School of Economics (thesis: Rural Development in Russia, 1906-17). In 1986, he was awarded the Leonard Shapiro Prize (excellence in Russian studies).
