In the late 1960s and 70s, Timofeev worked as a journalist for
Moscow magazines such as
Novy Mir and
Kommunist. Timofeev's 1985 book
The Technology of the Black Market or the Peasant Art of Starving was published in the West by Telos Press. The book presented a harsh condemnation of the Communist economic system. Timofeev was arrested and sentenced to 11 years of
hard labour and
internal exile on the grounds of "
anti-Soviet propaganda". He was freed in 1987 by a special decree signed by
Mikhail Gorbachev. In the late 1980s, Timofeev published Referendum magazine and served as chairman of the Moscow
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, a
human rights watchdog. Timofeev became one of the most vocal proponents of
economic liberalization in
Russia. In 1993 Timofeev
ran for parliament on the
Democratic Russia ticket. He was appointed professor at the
Russian State University for the Humanities, Timofeev was for many years director of the Center for Research on Extralegal Economic Systems and advised the government of
Boris Yeltsin. In the mid-1990s he joined the
Transnational Radical Party and became a member of its General Council. Timofeev is one of the leading theorists of drug decriminalization. In early 2000 Timofeev retired from
politics and teaching and embarked on a career of a novelist: since 2004 he published three novels and a collection of short stories. His 2006 novel
Negative was nominated for the
Booker Prize. Between 2011 and 2015 Timofeev regularly published his short stories in the
Russian Riviera magazine. == Family ==