Their final bow?

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev held his last meeting of the Ministry of Defense as president. I suspect that Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov also participated in one of his last military department boards as its head. Both senior leaders stated that the military reform (they finally called what was happening in the right words) was “practically” implemented. And this, I write without any irony, is their great service to the country, to all of us. Recently, Medvedev, who has served as president for almost four years, has rarely heard any words of approval. Pro-Putin publicists do not want to waste praise; they are saving up for the national leader. Liberal-minded citizens present him with a long list of unfulfilled hints and promises: about freedom, which is better than lack of freedom, about modernization, which gave way to Putin's stagnation - these claims can be continued indefinitely. Serdyukov’s reputation is no better. A person who fired about 200 thousand people cannot be loved by everyone by definition. Add to this a clear reluctance to engage in their own PR, harshness (if not outright rudeness) in relations with subordinates. If I had to paint a portrait of this man, I would compare him with Arakcheev. No, not the caricatured idiot that Saltykov-Shchedrin described. The real Arakcheev, the creator of Russian artillery, an effective, you will laugh, manager. A man who wrote several notes to the emperor saying that the creation of military settlements would not bring any useful results, but when he received a direct order, he carried it out with the utmost precision.

And we really should be grateful to these two people - Medvedev and Serdyukov - for the most radical military reform in the last hundred years. It seemed to me that yesterday both were summing up a certain conclusion at the board of the military department. Medvedev: The Armed Forces “meet modern threats and are capable of responding to potential threats against us,” “the personnel and leadership of the Armed Forces have in fact shown the ability to solve tactical and strategic problems.” “In general, as a result of the reforms carried out, we have new Armed Forces. They are much more responsive to modern threats and are capable of responding to potential threats against us,” summed up the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The truth is that the reform carried out means the abandonment of a mass mobilization army. No one is going to ensure Russia’s defense through the hypothetical mobilization of millions of reservists. Thanks to the liquidation of short-staffed formations and the dismissal of an “excess” number of officers and warrant officers, it will be quite difficult to restore this system. Perhaps the reformers themselves do not even understand what layer of socio-political relations they affected with their reforms. If their reforms are not stopped, perhaps for the first time in the three-hundred-year history of the Russian Armed Forces, military service will become a profession and will cease to be a tax.

So there is every reason to believe: if future historians have reason to say at least something good about Medvedev and Serdyukov, they will probably remember the military reform of 2008-2011. The main question remains open: is it possible to return everything back? I suspect it is possible. The further the reform moved, the more often it ran into unreformed state institutions. First of all, industry, which should provide the Armed Forces with modern military equipment. At a meeting of the Board of the Ministry of Defense, Medvedev once again strictly ordered the punishment of “bad” officials who interfered with the execution of the state defense order. In fact, all participants in the process understand perfectly well: the existing system is designed to cut the budget, but not to produce modern weapons. All participants in the process understand what needs to be done. One problem is that the existing structure was created by the Chief Executive. Even if it is completely ineffective, I don’t care. After all, V.V. Putin will never admit that he created in the campaign with his closest friend Ivanov S.B. (now leading the presidential administration) a completely ineffective system of managing the defense-industrial complex. It cannot be ruled out that the next president, the same V.V. Putin, having realized that the system he personally created does not work, will try to reverse the reforms. And then seemingly effective officials may turn out to be guilty...