Yevgeny Maksimovich Prima kov (68) is the last political survivor of the kitchen cabinet set up by Mikhail Gorbachev during his presidency in the years of glasnost and perestroika. He has described Ireland as "his favourite country in western Europe" and on a visit to Dublin earlier this year let his hair down in Johnny Fox's pub with members of the capital's Russian community.
Despite his links with reformers of the Gorbachev era, including Mr Eduard Shevardnadze and Mr Alexander Yakovlev, the father of glasnost, Mr Primakov is feared almost to the point of loathing in many western countries mainly because of his strong stance against NATO's eastward expansion.
In Russia, where association with the Gorbachev era is usually a political kiss of death, his nomination as prime minister is a measure of his immense capacity as a survivor.
His fierce opposition to NATO expansion, likely to continue into his premiership, has made him the bete noire of analysts from the US and other NATO countries which paint him as a representative of old Soviet thinking and a dyed-in-the-wool cold warrior.
Such analyses are, however, grossly oversimplified. His role in Russian foreign policy has been far more subtle and more complicated than that. His opposition to NATO expansion is not only shared by democrats and communists of all stripes in Russia, it is supported by the people.
Mr Primakov's willingness to oppose American policy at a time when Russians feel pushed about by the west has gained him admiration from all sides in the Duma and from the citizen in the street.
The idea that he should be nominated for the premiership came, for example, from the freemarket liberal leader, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, in a speech to the Duma during the debate on the nomination of Mr Chernomyrdin. He has since been backed by the communists and agrarians and a number of minor parties.
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1929, Mr Primakov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies in 1953 and was regarded by contemporaries as an exceptionally bright student.
He received his PhD from Moscow State University in 1956 and began a career as a correspondent and editor in the foreign department of the state committee for radio and television.
He later became Middle East correspondent of Pravda, and headed a number of institutes attached to the Academy of Sciences of which he was appointed a member in 1979.
He was chairman of the upper house of the Supreme Soviet when he came to Mr Gorbachev's attention. The Soviet president appointed him to his advisory council in 1990 and after the failed coup of August 1991 Mr Gorbachev named him as head of the foreign intelligence section of the KGB.
He was appointed foreign minister to replace Mr Andrei Kozyrev in 1996 and achieved his most striking success when doing most of the groundwork early this year to stop US strikes on Baghdad. It was Mr Primakov's visit to Baghdad which paved the way for the successful mission of the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, to President Saddam Hussein which brought about a settlement and prevented a second desert war.
His only economic experience came as deputy head of Moscow's World Economy and External Relations Institute from 1970 to 1977 and as head of that institute from 1977 to 1985.
Privately, he has overcome a tragedy in which his first wife and son were killed in a car accident. He later married a relative by marriage of a former Soviet prime minister, Mr Alexei Kosygin.