Educated at the prestigious Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, Primakov worked for the State Broadcasting and Television Services from 1953 to 1962. He joined the Communist Party in 1959 and was a correspondent for Pravda in Cairo, between 1962 and 1970, as Deputy Editor of the Asia and Africa Desk. He was the Deputy Director of World Economics and International Relations at the Soviet (now Russian) Academy of Sciences from 1970 to 1977 and was made Director in 1985. He headed the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies from 1977 to 1985 and analysed international affairs as a member of a circle of progressive foreign policy advisers to Leonid Brezhnev in the ’70s. Elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1989 and 1991 and of the Politburo in 1989 - 90. Despite his ties to Gorbachev, who had recruited him to help institute Perestroika, he manoeuvred into the administration of Russia President Boris Yeltsin, becoming the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service until his appointment as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1996. Appointed Prime Minister in September 1998, he left Government in May 1999 and later became President of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.