Early Life and Career
Born in Moscow on 27 September 1937, Pavlov graduated from the Moscow Finance Institute in 1958. He started his nomenklatura (bureaucratic) career as a government economist; he started working for as an official of the Ministry of Finance in 1959, and became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1962. Early in his career he also worked for the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Pavlov started working for the State Planning Committee in 1979, and became a member of the State Planning Committee's board in 1981. He held the office as head of the State Planning Committee's Finance Department, the department which oversaw all aspects of the country's planned economy. He served as First Deputy Minister of Finance in Boris Gostev's ministry from January to August 1986.
Pavlov was appointed Chairman of the State Committee on Prices on 15 August 1986, and retained that post until 7 June 1989. Throughout the period, and later as Minister of Finance, Pavlov supported the centralised price reform proposal posited by Nikolai Ryzhkov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He succeeded Gostev to become Minister of Finance in Ryzhkov's government in 1989 and his time in the post was considered uncontroversial, even though Lira Rozenova, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Prices, was not elected to the post of Chairman of the State Committee for her advocacy of Pavlov-backed plans for centrally administered price reform. He was the only minister in Ryzhkov's Government who was also a member of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers.
Along with Eduard Shevardnadze – Soviet Foreign Minister – Pavlov was the only nominee from Ryzhkov's Second Government to be overwhelmingly elected by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. As Minister of Finance, Pavlov was supportive of the marketisation of the Soviet economy, having overseen a rapid increase in the Soviet money supply and the increase in inflation it caused. Pavlov also set the exchange rate for the rouble against the American dollar on the Soviet black market. In 1993 he proudly admitted that during his tenure as Minister of Finance, and later Prime Minister, he had deceived several Western banks and creditors by lying about the Soviet Union's gold reserves. In 1989, Pavlov gathered together enough information on the errors and omissions of Ivan Silayev, the future Soviet Premier and Russian SFSR Premier, to weaken his position as Deputy Premier. Silayev never forgave Pavlov and relations between the two grew even more icy when Pavlov became Soviet Premier.
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