Medvedev, desde atrás y con firmeza

He was appointed first deputy prime minister of the Russian government on November 14, 2005. Formerly Vladimir Putin`s chief of staff, he is also the Chairman of Gazprom's board of directors, a post he has held (for the second time) since 2000. On December 10, 2007, he was informally endorsed as a candidate for the upcoming presidential elections by the largest Russian political party, United Russia, and officially endorsed on December 17, 2007. Medevedev's candidacy is supported by incumbent president Vladimir Putin and pro-presidential parties. A recent poll found over 63% of Russians support Medvedev in the upcoming elections. A technocrat and political appointee, Medvedev has never held elective office.

Medvedev was born to a family of university teachers and raised in a proletarian suburb of Leningrad — Kupchino.

He graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987 (together with Ilya Yeliseyev, Anton Ivanov, Nikolay Vinnichenko and Konstantin Chuychenko) and in 1990 got his PhD in private law from the same university. Anatoly Sobchak, an early democrat politician of 80's and 90's, was one of his professors, and Medvedev later participated in Sobchak's successful Saint Petersburg mayorial campaign. In 1990 he worked in Leningrad Municipal Soviet of People's Deputies. Between 1991 and 1999 he worked as a docent at his old university, now renamed Saint Petersburg State University. In 1991 - 1996 Medvedev also worked as a legal expert for the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office under Vladimir Putin.

In November 1993, Medvedev became the legal affairs director of Ilim Pulp Enterprise, a St. Petersburg-based timber company. In 1998, he was elected a member of the board of directors of the Bratskiy LPK paper mill. He worked for Ilim Pulp until 1999.

In December 2005 Medvedev was named Person of the Year (Expert magazine) by Expert magazine, influential and respected Russian business weekly. He shared the title in 2005 with Alexei Miller, CEO of Gazprom.

Dmitry Medvedev is married and has a son named Ilya (born 1996). His wife, Svetlana Vladimirovna Medvedeva née Linnik, was both his childhood friend and school sweetheart. They wed several years after their graduation from secondary school in 1982. He has a first cousin who lives in the US.

Medvedev is one of the authors of a textbook on civil law for universities first published in 1991 (the 6th edition of Civil Law. In 3 Volumes. was published in 2007) and which is regarded as "brilliant" by many civil law scholars. He is the author of a textbook for universities entitled, Questions of Russia's National Development, first published in 2007, concerning the role of the Russian state in social policy and economic development. He is also the lead coauthor of a book of legal commentary entitled, A Commentary on the Federal Law "On the State Civil Service of the Russian Federation", scheduled for publication in 2008. This work considers the Russian Federal law on the Civil Service, which went into effect on July 27, 2004, from multiple perspectives - scholarly, jurisprudential, practical, enforcement- and implementation-related.

Medvedev has often represented himself as a devoted fan of hard rock, listing Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin as his favourite bands. He is a collector of their original vinyl records and has previously said that he has collected all of the recordings of Deep Purple. As a youth, he made endless copies of their songs, although these bands were then on the official state-issued blacklist.

Despite a busy schedule, he always reserves an hour each morning and again each evening to swim and pump iron. He swims 1,500 meters (approximately 0.93 miles), twice a day. He also jogs, plays chess, and practices yoga. Among his hobbies are reading the works of Mikhail Bulgakov, which had been banned under Joseph Stalin, and following his hometown professional soccer team, FC Zenit Saint Petersburg.

He keeps an aquarium in his office and cares for his fish himself

He is a fan of an Internet slang dialect common among Russian youth, Olbanian (Russian: олбанский язык, transliteration: olbansky yazyk), and has said he believes it should be studied in schools to promote greater literacy in the Internet and modern culture in Russia. He has said he believes in the legitimacy of alternative languages used on the Internet.