Translated material
Monopoly by ear
Dmitry Pinsker, Alexander Kliner
People from the KGB are trying to fill the entire power space with themselves, displacing some competitors and subjugating others.
People from the KGB are trying to fill the entire power space with themselves, displacing some competitors and subjugating others.
The Moscow political elite was overwhelmed by another wave of rumors about an imminent change of prime minister, as well as possible reshuffles in the presidential administration. According to reliable sources in the Kremlin, a large-scale shake-up should occur no later than February. Some of our interlocutors, however, insisted that a change in the cabinet of ministers could happen on the eve of the New Year holidays. And allegedly with this in mind, the president asked the Duma to extend its work until December 25: at the last meeting, parliamentarians will approve the head of the cabinet - and rest.
Government officials and politicians close to the cabinet of ministers claim that all these rumors are the fruit of the fevered imagination of either journalists or political strategists who are bored with nothing to do.
“It doesn’t seem to me that all this talk about resignations is serious. I don’t see any grounds for changing the government,” says Vladislav Reznik, deputy chairman of the Duma Budget Committee, member of the Unity faction, in an interview with Itogi. “Kasyanov is professional, stable, convenient prime minister. Why change it?"
Mikhail Kasyanov himself exudes such confidence in the future that one can only envy. “I don’t feel any reason to draw conclusions about the possibility of personnel changes. The president and I are carrying out the usual constructive work,” Mikhail Mikhailovich said in the middle of last week. As for the recent criticism of the government from the president, then, according to Kasyanov, there was no criticism, but there was, as always, an incorrect interpretation of events in the media. “The meeting held the other day with the president on the government’s economic policy was not in the form of criticism, but in the form of informing the head of state about the measures that need to be taken by the cabinet of ministers,” the prime minister inspired journalists. “The positive economic situation must be picked up by the government in a timely manner and to the maximum extent possible.” effectively used."
It must be said that not all participants in the mentioned meeting share the optimism of the head of the cabinet. “The authorities failed to manage the economy in the unique conditions that developed in 2000,” Andrei Illarionov, presidential adviser on economics, decisively declared. “Instead of taking appropriate measures, the executive and legislative authorities happily began to divide the additional income received without due to increased production efficiency, and due to changes in oil prices."
However, the very real threat hanging over Prime Minister Kasyanov has nothing to do with the economy. The threat comes from Sergei Ivanov, the secretary of the Security Council, who has long wanted to take the second post in the state. Exactly for this purpose, Sergei Borisovich took off his shoulder straps and is looking for publicity: over the past month, a whole series of interviews with him have appeared in the press. In them, he appeared not only as a seasoned geopolitician (“In foreign policy, we are finally beginning to justify our coat of arms: we look equally attentively to the East and the West. And to the South”), possessing the entire set of skills necessary for a real intelligence officer (“People in intelligence was very carefully selected, taking into account elements of psychology, quick apprehension, memory"), but also a liberal and a champion of democratic freedoms ("Currently, private media reflect mainly the interests of political and economic elites. Hard totalitarian technologies dominate... The state should not interfere work of private media, if they operate within the law").
Unipolar world
However, the matter is not only in Ivanov’s personal desire to head the cabinet of ministers. The Secretary of the Security Council simply follows the line of the president’s personnel policy, who prefers to place not just loyal associates in both key and secondary posts, but people with the same type of mentality, work organization and decision-making skills. More specifically, people from the KGB. “Putin really likes Ivanov, but he just can’t decide where it’s better to put him - in the government, at the head of the administration or in the Ministry of Defense. If only he had three Ivanovs, otherwise he has to suffer,” he noted in a conversation with “ “Results” by a foreign diplomat who closely monitors political events in Moscow. However, a significant mistake was made in these conclusions: Putin has enough “Ivanovs” - he has not three or four of them, but much more.
One of them is the current director of the FSB, a personal friend of the president, Nikolai Patrushev. At the end of last week, Itogi learned from credible sources in the Kremlin that the candidacy of the country's chief security officer is being considered by Vladimir Putin as the main contender for the post of head of the presidential administration. And perhaps this reshuffle could take place before the New Year.
Putin has enough people from the organs for less significant posts. Recently, there have been reports of a possible imminent change of leadership in three departments at once. The resignation of the director of the tax police service, Vyacheslav Soltaganov, is expected. It is alleged that he will be replaced by one of the Security Council Secretary's closest associates. In place of the head of the State Customs Committee, Mikhail Vanin, who received this position under Boris Yeltsin thanks to close ties with the Kremlin “family,” Vladimir Shamakhov, the head of the Northwestern Customs Administration, a close friend of another Putin confidant, Viktor Cherkesov, the presidential envoy in the North, is expected to appear. -Western district. Finally, information has emerged that Communications Minister Leonid Reiman may be dismissed. His place is being prepared to be taken by the current Deputy Minister Alexey Shcherbakov, who previously served as deputy director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, in charge of the economic department.
Among the many rumors about upcoming personnel changes, there are completely no suggestions about a possible change in the leaders of the government's economic bloc - Alexei Kudrin and German Gref. This can only be explained by the fact that the president is not even trying to look for a replacement for them from among the “plainclothes economists”: both liberals enjoy Putin’s personal favor and trust and have known him for a long time. This is quite enough to obtain and retain important positions in the future. But, as it turned out, it is not enough to avoid troubles of another kind.
A week and a half ago, the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office showed unexpected interest in the materials of the city Chamber of Control and Accounts (CAC). Two years ago, the chamber considered the actions of the city administration, which, in order to stimulate especially valuable employees, gave them preferential loans to improve their living conditions. Crime controllers did not find any crime. Prosecutors saw the incentive as corpus delicti, and on November 17, Alexei Kudrin, who headed the Committee on Economics and Finance under Anatoly Sobchak, was invited to testify at the prosecutor’s office.
Most observers perceived the summons to the investigator as a preventive action taken on the initiative of Sergei Ivanov, who is preparing to take over the post of prime minister. It is difficult to say how justified the Security Council Secretary's concerns were. At least until now, Kudrin has never been seriously considered as a candidate for prime minister, nor has he been seen as disloyal to the “St. Petersburg security officers.”
From his very ascension to the Russian throne, Vladimir Putin proceeded from the fact that the main task facing the Kremlin was the creation of a strong, effective state. And if so, then it would be more appropriate to put an administrator and manager at the head of the “power vertical” rather than an economist. The appearance of economist and negotiator with international financiers Mikhail Kasyanov as prime minister last spring was a tribute to the Kremlin “family” that ensured Putin’s victory. However, over the past months, the balance of political forces in the Kremlin has changed significantly.
“St. Petersburg security officers” have firmly established themselves on the political Olympus. So much so that, as they say in the Kremlin, they have set a course for “the final washout of the old guard from leadership positions.” Civilian strategists formulate the same idea more elegantly: in February, the president will announce in his address to the Federal Assembly the strategic goals of his reign, to achieve which a new team is needed. “It will be necessary to pass unpopular laws and tight budgets, hit governors on the hands and strengthen the power vertical. This will require a tough prime minister with significant political weight,” a high-ranking government official explained to Itogi.
But the first victim of the “washing out of old personnel” will apparently be the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the leader of Unity, Sergei Shoigu. The main complaint against him, according to our sources in the Kremlin, is quite in the style of the Soviet intelligence services: “He doesn’t like Putin.”
Kick up
The Ministry of Emergency Situations is a tasty morsel. In ten years, Sergei Shoigu managed to create an effective, tightly structured security agency that enjoys international recognition. The Ministry of Emergency Situations has learned to earn money independently from foreign contracts, for example, from mine clearance. “The Security Council members have been trying out the Ministry of Emergency Situations for a long time,” says a high-ranking Kremlin official in the recent past in a conversation with Itogi, “the main thing for them was to feel that the president would not be against it. Of course, Putin did not give direct instructions to “bury” Shoigu. But for the last "For a year he never came to his defense. And this is already a sign."
Cooling on the part of the Kremlin inhabitants towards their recent comrade-in-arms in the fight against Primakov-Luzhkov’s “Fatherland” intensified gradually - first, Shoigu lost direct access to the president, then he practically disappeared from the air of the state TV channel. The fact that relations between the Kremlin and Sergei Shoigu leave much to be desired was also evidenced by the fact that Shoigu was not allowed to carry out the rescue operation on the Kursk nuclear-powered ship. After the accident of a military transport plane near Batumi, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations was humiliated throughout the country for the first time - Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov personally took charge of search and rescue operations. In November, Sergei Kuzhugetovich's holiday was ruined - speaking at the board of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the department, Prime Minister Kasyanov began to criticize the minister for inappropriate spending of budget funds. As a result, the hero of the day was forced not to accept congratulations, but to explain himself and make excuses.
Then persistent rumors appeared that Shoigu’s resignation from the post of leader of Unity was a done deal. Last Tuesday, the Duma faction issued a statement from which it followed that all attacks on Shoigu were a provocation, that he was and remains the head of the party, and some “bearish” activists even began to argue that the provocation was staged not by anyone, but by Boris himself Berezovsky. Meanwhile, Itogi knows for certain that at a closed meeting of the faction, which took place after the recent Unity congress, Sergei Shoigu was sharply criticized by almost all the speakers (the Duma members were offended that in the keynote speech at the congress he compared some deputies from Unity with “roadside prostitutes”), and the faction leader Boris Gryzlov and the chairman of the executive committee Sergei Popov held negotiations with the Speaker of the Federation Council Yegor Stroev, who seemed to want to take the post of party leader.
There are good reasons to believe that all these scandals surrounding the “extraordinary” minister are a reflection of the intra-Kremlin inter-clan struggle. Putin himself, by tradition, remains above the fray and, quite possibly, has not yet made a final decision on Shoigu’s fate. At least Sergei Kuzhugetovich himself, speaking from the president last Wednesday, told reporters: “The movement was created on the instructions of the president. Actually, I carried out this instruction. And neither I nor the president have any doubts that I will continue this work. As for my resignation, the rumors about my death are clearly exaggerated."
Perhaps it is the absence of a publicly stated position of Vladimir Putin that explains the fact that the political elite is discussing the possibility of removing the minister from the game through a promotion according to the “kick up” formula derived by the classics of American popular literature on management. They will appoint Shoigu, for example, as a deputy prime minister with broad but unclear powers, remove him from the post of party leader due to excessive workload, and then, for the same reason, dismiss him from the Ministry of Emergency Situations (after having placed the “right person” in the first deputies).
And the point is not that the minister personally “does not like Putin,” but quite the opposite: Putin’s associates do not like Shoigu, because he turned out to be one of the few major domestic politicians and officials who owe nothing to the new Russian president. Moreover, the leader of Unity has good reason to consider Putin his debtor. So, paradoxically, the reason for the Kremlin’s disfavor with Sergei Kuzhugetovich is of the same kind as the reason for the disgrace and forced flight from the country of Boris Berezovsky, thanks to whom Vladimir Putin ended up in the chair of the President of Russia.
Monobloc
Having provided Sergei Ivanov with the necessary “administrative resource,” Vladimir Putin is calmly observing whether his “alter ego” will be able to take advantage of this resource. Apparently, the president has nothing against if Ivanov and his people fill the entire power space.
If this does happen, then we can talk about a radical change in the configuration of power and the emergence of a fundamentally new decision-making mechanism. Boris Yeltsin, as we know, always diligently built a system of “checks and balances” in his circle and almost never allowed one political group to completely destroy its rivals. The result of the competition between clans for access to the presidential ear can be considered a natural selection of personnel and polyvariance in choosing the direction of movement. And if Vladimir Putin allows his colleagues from his previous work in the authorities to fill all the power space, he will inevitably face the fact that the winners in bureaucratic battles will care not so much about the effective management of the state, but primarily about maintaining a monopoly on the right to be the chief advisers to the head states.
With the participation of Alexander Golts