Yelena Mizulina

Yelena Borisovna Mizulina (Елена Борисовна Мизулина, born December 9, 1954) is a Russian politician and lawyer.

Yelena Borisovna Mizulina was born on December 9, 1954, in the city of Buy in Kostroma Oblast, Soviet Union.

In 1972 she began studying at the Faculty of Law and History of the Yaroslavl State University where she first met her future husband Mikhail Mizulin.

They were married after their fourth year as undergraduates at university.

She graduated in 1977 with a law degree and worked as a research assistant of the same university.

Between 1977 and 1984, she worked as a consultant, and then from 1984, as head consultant in the Yaroslavl regional court.

In parallel she obtained a Candidate of Sciences degree via distance learning from the Kazan State University.

In 1983 she successfully defended a dissertation entitled "The nature of supervisory review in the criminal process (based on the material provided by the Yaroslavl Regional Court)".

In 1985, she became Senior Research Associate to Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky.

Her husband later confessed that he had taken advantage of his job as the head of the ideology in the Yaroslavl Oblast to obtain the job for Yelena.

In 1987, Muzilina obtained the status of head of department of Russian history, heading the faculty until 1990.

She remained a member of the Communist Party until 1991.

In 1992, she obtained a Doctor of Science in Law degree (see Education in Russia) entitled Criminal code: the concept of self-limiting country at the Institute of State and Law.

In regard to this dissertation Yelena Mizulina has publicly declared the following: "It seemed that what I wrote was unique, and that I was indeed a learned person of God" (in Russian "казалось, что то, что я написала — уникально, что я, действительно, учёный от Бога").

Between 1992 and 1995, she was a docent and subsequently a professor at Yaroslavl State University.

In 1993, she joined the Russian legislature from the political union "The Russian Choice" and was elected to the Federal Council (upper house of parliament in the Russian Federation), where she became the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and Judicial and Legal Matters, a member of the Committee on Regulation of Parliamentary Procedures.

She served as a member of the State Duma between 1995 and 2003 and again between 2007 and 2015, and has been a member of the Federation Council since 2015.

In 1995, she joined the opposition pro-democratic political party Yabloko and the group "Reformi – the new direction" (in Russian "Реформы — новый курс").

From 1995 and on, she was the head of the Yaroslavl regional and public organisation Ravnovsie (in Russian "Равновесие" he Federation Council).

In December 1995, Muzilina was elected a member of parliament Duma from the Kirov region representing the political party Yabloko.

As a result, she resigned her position in the Federation Council in January 1996.

As a parliament member of the Duma, she held the position of the Deputy Chairman of Committee on Legislation and Judicial-legal Reforms and Deputy of the Subcommittee on Matters of State building and Constitutional Rights of Citizens.

Muzilina was also involved in the legal implementation of the failed attempt to carry out the impeachment of Boris Yeltsin.

In December 1999, she was elected member of Russian parliament, the Duma, from the Yabloko party.

In July 2000, she became the head of the 'Yaroslavl Union of Democratic Forces' (in Russian "Ярославский союз демократических сил"), which was composed of members of the Yabloko party and the Union of Right Forces.

In February 2001, she announced that she would discontinue her membership in the Yabloko party and in June of the same year she joined the Union of Right Forces party.

She explained her decision to leave Yabloko by the fact that she was "ashamed to be in a party that had obtained only 5% during elections. This had become a moral problem".

Her former colleagues from Yabloko and Union of Right Forces Sergey Mitrokhin and Leonid Gozman have accused Yelena Mizulina of changing her political affiliation to keep up with political trends.

After the Union of Right Forces lost the 2003 legislative elections, Mizulina, no longer an elected parliament member, was appointed to the Constitutional Court of Russia as the representative of the Duma.

In this position, she was a proponent of local governors being no longer elected but rather directly nominated by the president of the Russian Federation.

As a member of the Constitutional Court, she also worked as the Deputy Head of the Legal Department of the Duma and she graduated from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in 2005.

In 2007, she was elected to the Duma as a member of A Just Russia party.

In January 2008, she became the chairman of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs.

Originally A Just Russia put forward another candidate, Svetlana Goryacheva, for this position, which was not well accepted by the United Russia party, and Mizulina's candidature was offered as a compromise.

She was Chair of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs between 2011 and 2015.

She has changed her political affiliation several times, having served public office on behalf of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the liberal Yabloko and Union of Right Forces parties and went on to represent Omsk Oblast in the Duma as a member of the social democratic A Just Russia party.

She holds a doctoral degree in law.

She has received distinctions in Russia for her work as a lawyer including the Honoured Lawyer of Russia title.

Mizulina came to prominence in 2012 over the drafting of controversial laws concerning the rights of the LGBT community in Russia and the adoption of Russian orphan children by foreigners.

Due to the Crimean crisis, she was sanctioned by Canada and the United States on March 17, 2014.