It's high time

Since the end of last week, the upcoming resignation of Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref has been actively discussed. It is being discussed as a settled matter, confirmed by “informed sources” in the Presidential Administration and the government. The reason for this kind of talk was another idea of ​​the head of the Cabinet of Ministers, Mikhail Fradkov, to revive the Ministry of Trade, taking this area out of the control of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, that is, Gref. It is worth recalling that just a couple of weeks ago the customs service was already taken away from the Ministry of Economic Development, making it a separate department and subordinating it directly to the prime minister. In addition, the notorious “sources” claim that the day is not far off when the Federal Property Management Agency will cease to be a “super-ministry” structure—as the MEDT was called just a few years ago. By the way, Gref allegedly wrote his resignation letter after customs, the department through which almost half of the Russian budget passes, was taken away from him.

It would seem that the entire liberal community should cry out and go into a paroxysm of despair: the last (more precisely, the penultimate - there is also Kudrin) liberal is deprived of his post and powers (or rather, first of his powers, and then of his post). However, I don’t want to scream, and I don’t feel much despair. Quite the contrary – some relief. Maybe that vague feeling - not of shame, but rather of awkwardness - that takes over every time your gaze rests on the minister will finally pass. Too many hopes were pinned on him when in the summer of 2000, under his leadership, the Center for Strategic Research wrote a program for Vladimir Putin. And it would be okay to just write the program and happily forget it, as has happened many times in our history. But Gref was appointed to carry out this program, creating a super department for him and giving him powers that any deputy prime minister would envy. And even now, without a visa from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the government does not solve a single more or less serious issue. And Gref, at least in the first years of Putin’s rule, had a powerful resource in the form of the president’s personal affection, a resource that the “technical” Prime Minister Kasyanov could not even dream of. And what exactly can the “super minister” boast of today? Flat 13% income tax rate. Reduction of other taxes, possible due to an increase in oil export duties, which, in turn, became possible thanks to a “gift” from the world market.

Perhaps that's all. De-bureaucratization, with which the government has been rushing around like a sack for several years in a row, has led to a significant increase in the number of officials. The corruption that it was supposed to reduce is taking on ever more grotesque proportions. Administrative reform resulted in the abolition of gubernatorial elections and movement towards a unitary state. It is generally better to remain silent about the reforms of natural monopolies, as well as about the announced housing and communal services reform. The pension reform, without which, according to all forecasts, the current 30-40-year-olds will be left with nothing in their old age if, God forbid, the world market situation ceases to be so favorable, has conveniently failed. But the main thing is that the country has long been moving towards a bright state-capitalist future, where the economy will be based on a couple of raw materials and weapons state monopolies. As for the former power of German Gref, what can we talk about when an even more “technical” prime minister, a former subordinate, scolds German Oskarovich as a snotty boy at almost every government meeting. And the “super minister” makes excuses for himself and works on his mistakes, although at first he allowed himself to object. He has long said goodbye to the role of an ideologist of reforms and today performs the far from honorable function of a full-time liberal in the government, a kind of screen covering the revenge of the State Planning Committee. And cutting off the minister’s powers seems quite logical: the “screen” needs little other than a loud name. Andrei Illarionov played a similar role for some time, but refused in time.

So there is no need to regret the hypothetical resignation of German Gref. It was high time for him to leave. The only regrettable thing is that if he leaves, it will not be at all because he has an insoluble ideological incompatibility with the current course - German Oskarovich has been compromising his principles for a long time and not without success. He will leave only because he was deprived of another piece of power, which he never learned to use to implement his once liberal position. As for the reduction in the functions of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, perhaps it is for the best. It is unknown who else will come to replace Gref (sooner or later this will happen anyway), and the concentration of too much power in one hand is a fraught thing, an example is before our eyes.