Sviatoslav Fyodorov, who died on June 2nd aged 72, in a helicopter crash was a rarity in the world of the new Russian business and political elite: a man who made his money through transparently legal means.
A pioneering eye surgeon, who developed the technique of radial keratomy (making small incisions around the cornea) to cure shortsight, he was widely respected by Russians.
His assembly-line operating theatres, and string of clinics, meant that there were few who did not know someone who had undergone the operation - and thrown away their spectacles for good.
But he failed to translate this reputation into political success; when he stood against Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential elections, his programme of "democratic capitalism - or employee profit-sharing - failed to win the necessary five per cent vote to avoid elimination after the first round. His early career at the Rostovon-Don flying academy ended after he had a leg amputated, following an accident, and he transferred to the medical institute. After post-graduate studies, he was appointed head of a regional eye institute.
In 1960, he performed the first artificial lens implantation in the Soviet Union, and worked on the production of crystalline lenses. In 1967, he moved to Moscow as head of the artificial lens implantation laboratory, working on surgical treatments for glaucoma.
By the early 1970s, he had developed his surgical technique for correcting myopia, by making a series of small cuts into the cornea, which, when they heal, make the cornea contract and vision improve. At first, the work was denounced as anti-physiological, but by 1980 it was recognised both in the Soviet Union and abroad, and he was appointed director of the Moscow Institute of Eye Micro-surgery.
Unusually, he was allowed to keep the majority of his hard-currency earnings, using the money to buy hi-tech equipment from West Germany and develop a conveyor-belt technique for patients, who lay on operating tables which rotated from surgeon to surgeon - allowing the operation to be performed in 15 minutes.
By 1986, growing economic liberalism under Gorbachev made it possible for him to open his own string of independent clinics. He was seen as a figurehead for what could be possible under perestroika, but two years later became a focus of attacks from hardline communists.
Strange patients began turning up at his home, two of his surgeons were arrested on trumped-up bribery charges, and eventually a prominent Soviet politician demanded that he hand over 80 per cent of his foreign currency earnings to the state.
He fought back, telling a pro-reform newspaper: "The fight for power is now the fight for property. If people get property, they will get power. If not, they will forever remain hired hands."
In 1989, he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies and, as an advocate of privatisation, was offered the post of prime minister by Yeltsin in 1991, which he declined. He left the pro-Yeltsin Democratic party of Russia and joined the Party of Economic Freedom. His ideas of economic liberalisation trod a third way between the communists and Yeltsin's full-scale adoption of free-market capitalism.
In 1995, he formed the Party of Workers' Self Rule and was elected to the state Duma, remaining a deputy until his death.
His failure in the 1996 presidential election was indicative of the way that liberal economic ideas have failed to capture Russian voters. He also attracted criticism for an incautious remark about Hitler having done much to restore German pride.
His last public statement reflected his aims as a surgeon and a politician. "We have one goal. To make it so that people live well, so that they see well . . . we are proving the potential of the Russian people, the potential of its talents, the potential of self-organisation, the potential of enterprises being self-sufficient, the potential of regions being self-sufficient.
Sviatoslav Fyodorov married three times, and is survived by his wife and four daughters.
Sviatoslav Fyodorov: born 1927; died, June.