Vlasi Malenkov

Dr. Vlasi Andreyevich Malenkov (b. 10 August 1967) is a Russian Uralican politician and scholar, and also one of twenty Uralican Tribal Council members that has never failed to be voted in. He was also the third and final vice-chair of the Uralicist Movement, and would later play a large role in the formation of Uralica's Neo-Tribalist government.

Biography
Born during the Brezhnev Regime, Vlasi grew up basically hating capitalism and all its trappings, and was a staunch communist supporter from childhood until he had just stepped into his twenties (by that time, Gorbachev was in power). Always intelligent, he was given early placement in college when he was sixteen, a year earlier than most Soviets. He would end up doing a double-major in political science and psychology at Yaroslavl' State University, but during his studies, Gorbachev came into power, and in 1987, somewhat unnerved by the administration's revelation of the extent of Stalinist-era atrocities, spent the early winter doing a little personal investigation in the northern part of European Russia, particularly in Inta, Vorkuta, and Ukhta. His findings caused disillusionment with the system, as he had never heard of such things under Brezhnev, or even the transitional leaders Andropov and Chernenko. He finished his degree that spring, and after his convocation, he left the country abruptly, not being heard from by anyone in Russia for another five years.

As it turned out, he went to the United Kingdom to learn English and get a job as a Russian teacher. The British school system was quite shocked that a 22-year-old was already of high-enough education to teach high school children. After a brief post-degree professional program that helped him learn English and at the same time taught him how to teach, Vlasi was at a private school near Leeds, teaching the Russian language, and later, even psychology.

But he became homesick after a few years, and after hearing the Christmastime news in 1991 that the Soviet Union and its communism were officially dead, he gave notice that the January-April semester of school would be his last in England. In May of 1992, he returned to Kostroma, fluent in English and able to teach psychology. His parents were overjoyed.

Since Vlasi had been good with his money, he was able to bring much of it back with him to Russia, although of course he had to have it converted. After spending a year in Kostroma regaining his bearings, he decided to go back to school. Always fascinated by the workings of the human mind, he applied to several schools for their Master's programs in Psychology, and got many acceptance letters back, the most notable of these being from MIT, where he ended up. Before he left, he met up with a high-school sweetheart of his, and after chatting for a while, decided to pursue a relationship. It turned out she too was going to America, to study English at the University of Connecticut. So they went to America together, and she would drive up to visit him over the weekend.

MIT was very impressed by Vlasi's work, and encouraged him to begin his thesis work early, so he ended up finishing his work a semester early, to find he had gotten low on funds. But MIT refused to let him go, and offered him a large grant. This was to no avail, as Vlasi decided to return to Russia.

He married his sweetheart, Olga Prokofiyeva, in Kostroma in the spring of 1996. During the next two years, he would find himself working in the UK again - this time in Scotland - as a high-school teacher at a private school. Then he returned home to Russia to teach English, as English as a Second Language was beginning to show more and more demand. His first child, daughter Tatyana, was born in January of 1999.

MIT was ever-persistent, though, and Vlasi finally conceded, beginning his PhD research that September, taking the grant, with Olga staying home with their daughter. They would only stay in Boston for two years - they had planned to stay longer after Vlasi's June 2001 convocation, but then the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks made Olga incredibly nervous, so they moved back to Russia.

This time, they didn't move to their mutual hometown of Kostroma, instead opting for Volgograd. With his new degree in tow, Vlasi taught 9 semesters at Volgograd State University, with second child Gennady being born in 2002. But his tenure at VSU came to an abrupt and destructive end in the Cataclysm. Most of Volgograd was destroyed in the events of that chaotic time, although he admitted later that it could have been worse, and Volgograd could have been blown completely off the map like Rostov-na-Donu was.

They would end up at Olga's parents' home in Saransk, where they lived for the next fifteen months. While there, Vlasi was able to teach again, and even learn some of the Mordvinic language Erzya, which Olga's mother spoke fluently.

But come Great War III, tragedy struck as the Uralic Purges began. As the family began to evacuate the city, Olga's stubborn parents refused to leave the home, and she urged them. But just as she was exiting the house to get into the family's van, an extremist shot her twice in the back, then killed both of her parents. Her last words were "get out of here!" as the extremist put the gun to her head. Enraged and in tears, Vlasi nonetheless left the city in a hurry. He avoided major cities like the plague as he drove as far as the van would take him. His children sobbing the whole way, he would end up in what was then called Sovetsk, where he filled his gas tank as full as he could, and proceeded onward, taking routes around Kirov to end up in Syktyvkar.

So there Vlasi was, now-jobless, and with the love of his life and her parents murdered before his eyes. He was completely and utterly destroyed mentally. He vowed to find the answers to the situation, but heated argument after heated argument with officials of governments turned nothing up but "politicians lying through their teeth."

When he did find out the answer, it only brought with it more questions. ''Why was she shot just for being Mordvinic? Who will hold these people accountable?''

He did not recover from this for several months, but he did find a job within two weeks, as Syktyvkar State University was in need of a psychology sessional at the time. It was here that he eventually met Vaido Kuik and Matti Koppinen. The former revived his hope for justice, and the latter convinced him that his wife was in a better place, being how she was Russian Orthodox, something which Vlasi knew.

His own faith was stirred by the impassioned plea of Metropolitan Nikolay Kosov before a St. Petersburg audience on 1 July of that year - how he showed simultaneous anger and sadness at what would come to be known as the Uralic Purges by way of his own lips, and how he said "true Christians" would never do such things. Not only was this a spiritual call to arms for pro-Uralic groups, but it was a slap in the face of extremists, who considered themselves to be subscribers to Orthodoxy. It was around this time that he began attending Uralicist Movement meetings, meeting many of the people he would come to call brothers and sisters in Uralicism.

He found out where Kosov's church was - at the time, it was in Cherepovets - and took a week's leave of teaching in mid-September to go talk to him. The meeting, and his subsequent baptism, lit a fire under him, and he returned to Syktyvkar a changed man. Opting not to dwell on the past, he began taking ideas espoused by Jarkko Salomäki and coming up with potential plans based on psychological principles. Although these were unrefined, both Salomäki and then-Chair Ovdey Shlomov said that the ideas could be used to come up with something more refined. Only weeks later, Salomäki was elected Chair of the Movement, and after Olga Guznischeva stepped down and Yevgeny Kolpakov declined, Malenkov was made Vice-Chair.

He began holding night meetings with Salomäki, Shlomov, Kolpakov, and Koppinen, and it was in these meetings that the blueprint of the Uralic state began being drawn up. It would be Vlasi's ethnolinguistic "tribal" divisions "for fairness' sake" within Salomäki's Biblical "Unity in Diversity" framework and Shlomov's two-tier suggestions that would form the basis for the Tribal Council and Tribal Boards.

While working within the Council, he began taking a shine to the very single Meri Vanhanen, who was Secretary of the Movement from October until January, where she was defeated in elections by the aforementioned Kolpakov. It was around January that the two began dating. He actually saved her life during the Syktyvkar Riots on 2 March 2008, by pushing her inside a building when she was a clear gunshot away from an extremist. The bullet clipped his left thigh, tearing his pantleg and giving him a burn similar to road rash. As for the extremist, he had run out of bullets, and in turning to yell for someone to give him ammo, he got a vicious kick in the head from Salomäki, from which he never recovered.

As the last vice-chair of the Movement, he was second-to-last to sign the Uralican Constitution on 18 March, before only Jarkko Salomäki.

After Uralica's foundation, he was one of the strongest supporters of Ovdey Shlomov's short but successful push for a Uralican national university, which would become Uralikan Yliopisto. He was originally slated for Dean of Cognitive Sciences, but instead was made Dean of Social Sciences when Marko Peltonen got the job. He is currently cross-listed between both faculties, and teaches within the Departments of Psychology and Sociology, and the Schools of Social Work and Child and Youth Care. He is particularly noted for his teaching in the field of Child Psychology, and has received international recognition for his work on childhood developmental disabilities.

He is not currently married, but is engaged to Meri Vanhanen. They are expected to marry in March of 2011.