Anton Bakov

Anton Alekseyevich Bakov (Антон Алексеевич Баков; born 29 December 1965) is a Russian businessman, monarchist politician, traveler, writer and human rights activist.

Bakov was born on 29 December 1965 in Sverdlovsk, (now Yekaterinburg) in a family of engineers who worked at the Uralmash machine building plant.

He tells there are seven generations of Russian Orthodox priests in his ancestry.

He organized several political activities including the public boycott of uncontested elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in 1984, the founding of a public movement aimed at re-opening churches closed down by the communists and the saving of the memorials of national history in Verkhoturye in 1987.

In 1987, four months after the permission to set up first independent cooperative societies in the Soviet Union and while still at university, Bakov established the private tourist agency "Cedar", the first such agency in the country.

He graduated from the Ural Polytechnic Institute (now the Ural State Technical University) in 1988.

He was a Lenin grant-aided student and graduated with honours.

While a student he became an activist in the anti-communist movement.

In 1988, he also initiated the removal of the plates with the names of Joseph Stalin's NKVD executioners from city streets.

Since 1989, he hired and later supervised for about 10 years political activities of his close university-time friend Alexander Burkov, who later became a prominent politician and in 2018 became the governor of Omsk Oblast.

Bakov is married and has four children and eight grandchildren.

In 1991 on the basis of this agency, he established the company "East Line" which involved in air cargo transfers between Europe and Asia and became the operating agent for Moscow Domodedovo Airport.

Anton Bakov is the author of the project of Ural franc—a scrip printed in 1991 for usage in early post-Soviet economical regional projects.

Bakov invited Dmitry Kamenshchik to co-operate the company, and they managed the airport to receive international status in 1992.

As a chairman of Oblast Duma Law Committee, Bakov was working on Charter of the Oblast since 1992, in 1993 it was presented as a Constitution of the Ural Republic, and in 1994 the base of that text became the official Oblast Charter with recommendations to use it in other regions.

Ural Republic is unrelated to Ural franc, as some suppose, because the Republic did not plan to establish its own currency.

However, Bakov authored the.

Bakov is also one of the creators of law base for the Ural Republic—a 1993 project to transform Sverdlovsk Oblast into republic which involved top Oblast officials and was stopped shortly after creation.

Bakov left the business in 1994, the airport grew up to become Russia's largest since then.

In 1994, Anton Bakov was elected a Serov county deputy of Sverdlovsk Oblast Parliament — Sverdlovsk Oblast Duma and the Chairman of the Duma Legislative Committee.

His first actions as a deputy were aimed against the federal appointments of city mayors and regional governors.

In 1994 he became an active member of Duma's Chairman Eduard Rossel's team.

He and his like-minded team succeeded in holding the executive government elections in 1995–1996.

At the same time Bakov created and supported the so-called Social Ambulance – a system of social control.

He was a member of the pre-election committee for E. Rossel in 1995, who won the election.

Bakov participated in the Yekaterinburg mayor elections in 1995, and came second behind Arkady Chernetsky.

In 1996 he was elected the vice-chairman of Sverdlovsk Regional Duma, and then was nominated for the post of the Governor of Kurgan region, but his candidature was not registered.

In 1997–2000 Bakov became the General Director (CEO) of the city-forming enterprise — (9,000 employees).

This experience became very important for his future career.

It never was used in this way; but in 1997–2000 the banknotes were used as money substitute at Serov Metallurgical Plant to help to overcome the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

Nowadays they have numismatic value and are exhibited at museums.

In 2000 Anton Bakov was elected to the House of Representatives (the upper chamber) of the Legislative Assembly of Sverdlovsk Oblast (from Serov single-mandate electoral district).

He is the chairman of the Russian Monarchist Party, was a member of the 4th convocation of the State Duma of Russia from 2003 to 2007 and was a candidate at 2018 Russian presidential election.

Due to being known for a long series of unusual political projects such as Ural franc, the writer Alexei Ivanov coined him a "political Leonardo".

Bakov claims to have restored the Russian Empire through his establishment of the micronation of the Imperial Throne in 2011.

His daughter Anastasia, who is an actress and singer residing in Moscow, was a candidate for mayoral elections in Yekaterinburg in 2013.

In 2014, the Imperial Throne issued a manifesto announcing that royal Romanov family heir, German Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen had succeeded Nicholas II and is now Emperor Nicholas III.

In 2017, the micronation was re-branded into Romanov Empire. Under this regime, Bakov holds the position of Archchancellor and bears the title of "His Serene Highness Prince" (Knyaz).

His son Mikhail was a candidate for Yekaterinburg City Duma the same year, and the son Ilya attempted to run for Moscow mayor at 2018 Moscow mayoral election.

Bakov is one of the first legal businessmen in Russia.