“History teaches even those who do not learn. It teaches them lessons for their ignorance and disrespect”.

Vasily Klyuchevsky, Russian historian

Pavel Ivlev, Russian attorney and political refugee. He graduated from Law Faculty at Moscow State University in 1993, studied law at Columbia University, New York, and at Queen Mary University of London. From 1994, he provided legal advice to the Yukos oil company and its CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In 1997, Pavel Ivlev became a partner in the ALM Feldmans law firm that was later destroyed by Russian law-enforcement authorities in the context of the Yukos case. In 2004, as a result of wrongful persecution, Ivlev was forced to leave Russia for New York City, where in 2009 he founded the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom to campaign for free market and civic freedoms in Russia.