The head of the local Unity branch, Alexander Mikhailushkin, said in an interview Thursday that Yurakov was sacked last week because "he showed initiative" without consulting with superiors.
"He shouldn't have given television interviews on issues that had not been prepared [for discussion] yet," Mikhailushkin said.
The immediate cause for Yurakov's ouster was his unilateral, unsanctioned nomination of a political unknown as Unity's candidate for the State Duma seat vacated when Galina Starovoitova was murdered in 1998.
The nomination of Alexander Vatagin came as a complete surprise to Unity officials in Moscow, who had planned to instruct the St. Petersburg branch to nominate Yury Solinin, the dean of the Philosophy Department at St. Petersburg State University.
Solinin still plans to run, while Vatagin ?€” who heads an association of people decorated with three of the top state honors given in Russia and the Soviet Union ?€” has declined.
Yurakov has a long history of controversy within the party. He is, at least publicly, enthralled with Putin and has used his position in Unity as a platform for his sometimes outlandish projects.
Yurakov gained notoriety for his idea of distributing desk-sized busts of the president to government offices, a plan that was quickly nipped in the bud by Viktor Cherkesov, the presidential envoy to the Northwest Federal District.
But Yurakov's enthusiasm was unchecked by this setback, and he financed ?€” allegedly through the local Unity office ?€” the publication of 10,000 school books featuring UNESCO's Basic Rights of the Child and a young Putin as a model of virtue.
The book, which describes Putin as the man who is "responsible for everything in your country," managed to slip by Cherkesov's office and into the classrooms of St. Petersburg.
Such actions apparently disturbed Putin and last fall he publicly denounced the emergence of a cult of personality revolving around him. Yurakov, however, ignored this appeal.
One source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Yurakov was so active in his personal campaign to promote Putin that some Unity district branches complained that his "wild activity ... defames the party line."
Yurakov's next scheme was a plan to produce and distribute 10,000 Mishka automobiles ?€” whose name means teddy bear, the Russian diminutive for Unity's bear mascot.
Mikhailushkin said Thursday that all the funding for the textbooks, the failed Putin bust program and the Mishka project came from Yurakov's own pocket. Mikhailushkin emphasized that no Unity funding was used.
Yurakov is an influential person, Mikhailushkin said, and could have launched the Mishka car project if he had not been removed.
"With his influence, he could have gotten it done," said another source, who declined to be identified.
"[Yurakov] shows his respect to the president, but I can't comment [on the dismissal] because this question is not within my competence," Alexei Gutsailo, spokesman for Cherkesov, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Production of the Mishkas has not begun, but Yurakov said in an interview Wednesday that he would continue with the project.
"I feel confident," Yurakov said. "My main goal is to complete this plan."
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