BIOGRAPHY
Grigory Luchansky was born on February 8, 1945, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan (then part of the USSR). His father, Emmanuil Luchansky, was a military doctor during World War II, and his mother, Berta, worked with disabled individuals.
Grigory Luchansky currently resides in the UK, Austria, and Latvia. He is married and has three daughters and one son.
EDUCATION
Grigory Luchansky graduated from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys (1963-1968) with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering.
He then continued his studies at the Moscow Institute of Management (now the State University of Management), specializing in construction management.
Dr. Luchansky completed his post-graduate studies at the Graduate School of the Moscow Institute of Management (1974-1978), earning a Doctorate in Economics.
BUSINESS 1960-1970s
In the 1960s, Grigory Luchansky led student construction teams in Moscow and the Altai Mountains.
Starting in 1969, he headed the Latvian Republican construction team and served as department head and chairman of the Revision Committee of the Central Committee of Youth of Latvia.
In 1974, at the age of 29, Grigory Luchansky was appointed Vice-Chancellor for administrative and financial affairs at the Latvian State University, becoming the youngest Vice-Chancellor at any university in the USSR.
KGB vs GRIGORY LUCHANSKY
In 1982, the Central Committee of the Latvian Communist Party considered Dr. Grigory Luchansky for a high-ranking position in the government of the Latvian Soviet Republic.
However, this proposal met with strong opposition from KGB Chairman Boris Pugo.
In October 1982, Grigory Luchansky was detained by a special investigative team of the KGB, with no charges brought against him. The investigation lasted a year and, according to multiple accounts from former members of the investigative team, was politically motivated. It was fuelled by absurd and anti-Semitic suspicions that, as a Jewish man, Dr. Luchansky was the leader of a "Zionist underground in Latvia."
In October 1983, Grigory Luchansky was sentenced to seven years in GULAG on trumped-up charges of "embezzlement of socialist property."
GORBACHEV AND FREEDOM
After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, Dr. Luchansky was released from prison. Upon his return to Latvia, he was invited to become the deputy chairman of ADAZI, the largest agro-company in the USSR.
At the "Days of Latvia" Exhibition of Latvian Economic Achievements in Moscow in 1987, Albert Kauls, Chairman of ADAZI and advisor to Gorbachev, publicly stated in the presence of the powerful Latvian Communist leader and former KGB commander Boris Pugo, who had been responsible for Luchansky's imprisonment, that the majority of the Latvian public believed the criminal case against Grigory Luchansky was politically motivated.
In 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev visited the ADAZI agro-company and referred to it as "an enterprise of the 21st century." Later, Gorbachev authorized ADAZI to engage in direct foreign economic operations.
In 1989, Grigory Luchansky became the general manager of ADAZIMPEX, the first non-state foreign trade company in the Soviet Union.
