Translated material
Staff maneuvers
Experts divided the president and prime minister
Headmaker. Recently, the Kremlin and the White House are increasingly diverging in assessments of the economic situation in the country and measures that need to be undertaken. They look differently at whether the economy has reached the bottom, whether a new wave of banking crisis awaits us and whether the VAT should be reduced. Behind the difference in positions are the contradictions of expert teams. Which experts work for who - the New Times sorted out 
The presidential advisers to the main expert forces working for the president are the Institute of Modern Development (Incor), the Higher School of Economics (GU-SSE) and the Russian Economic School (RASH). After holding a meeting with experts in Insora on April 14 (see more on page 20), the president clearly demonstrated that he considers this institution to be his analytical headquarters. Incor Chairman Igor Jurgens claims that the structure he head actively participated in the development of the Russian-American agenda on the eve of the meeting of Medvedev-Obama. In addition, experts of the institute regularly prepare the notes “Up” concerning the labor market, which, in fact, predetermined the theme of the meeting held on April 14th.
“Incor is developing a liberal-modeling doctrine,” said the New Times, who wanted to maintain anonymity, an expert representing a “competing” structure. - The president uses her theses when he makes speeches, but in reality it does not work. As a result, Inor looks like a kind of bureau of good intentions. ”
Otherwise, an adviser to Incor Nikita Maslennikov sees the situation: “The role of the“ lawyers of the devil ”was initially assigned to us: in our analytical materials we must say things that are unpleasant for the ears and eyes of the authorities. Therefore, we have already managed to "form" ill -wishers. "
Another analytical center - the Higher School of Economics - has long been cooperating with the assistant to the President of Economics Arkady Dvorkovich. At the same time, the HSE experts are actively interacting with the Ministry of Economic Development, which is understandable: the rector Yaroslav Kuzminov is the spouse of the current head of Elvira Nabiullina. At the same time, Nabiullina often enters into hot discussions with Dvorkovich, and the latter, according to, is very jealous of Iner's initiatives. However, this is a classic of the genre: there are no friends in the administrative market - everyone fights for increasing their hardware weight, which in Russia is traditionally determined by the proximity to the first -person ear.
Dvorkovich’s opponents recently won an important hardware victory: after a multi-month search, the Protection of Alexei Kudrin Ilya Lomakin-Rumyantsev was appointed the head of the expert department of the president, whose shoulders are experience in the Ministry of Finance. Dvorkovich himself, according to the sources of The New Times, learned about the appointment when he was asked to pick up his things from the office of the head of the department, which he occupied a year ago.
Recently, shares of the Russian Economic School have grown a lot on the expert market, whose specialists are better than others (according to a number of The New Times) are able to analyze world economic experience. And the ideas of the rector of Rash Sergey Guriev, ¹ as people from his environment say, can be seen in the speeches of Dmitry Medvedev. In particular, this applies to his resonant speeches - then in the rank of presidential candidate - in Davos (“Freedom is better than not free” and in Krasnoyarsk (“Four and”). Resh is one of the main consultants of the Assistant President Arkady Dvorkovich, who himself once graduated from this school.
Periodically, expert developments prepared by analysts of investment banks, in particular, Evgeny Gavrilenkov (Troika Dialogue ”) and Ruben Aganbegyan (Renaissance Capital) are also received by the presidential structures. However, the business consultant Nikolai Kovarsky, in a conversation with The New Times, called for carefully evaluate the significance of all kinds of analytical notes that are presented “up”: “The matter is not so much in who writes them, but in who reads them and whether it reads them at all,” he explained.
The White House experts for the government are very actively working by the Institute of Economics of the Transition period (IEPP) Yegor Gaidar and the Academy of the National Economy (ANCH) - the structures in many ways "related". ANCH is one of the founders of the IEPP, and the rector of the Academy Vladimir Mau for a long time was Yegor Gaidar's right hand. Experts of expert cuisine notes that, despite the ideological proximity of the positions of analysts from the Higher School of Economics, on the one hand, and IEPP-Anch-on the other, between these structures often jumps a spark. An example of this, in particular, is a discussion about VAT. If we talk about the differences in a broader plan, then, as the interlocutors of The New Times, presidential experts insist on the reformist steps in the economy aimed at launching mechanisms for its modernization. And Gaidar and Mau of more than the rest are afraid of uncontrolled growth of budget deficit: the 1998 catastrophe was very acute and did not want to repetition. That is why they support the head of the Ministry of Finance Alexei Kudrin in his reluctance to reduce or cancel the value added tax: what then will we fill in the budget? They ask.
Since the government is a very branched structure, quite a lot of analytical teams work on its units and departments. In particular, an economic expert group headed by Evsey Gurvich. At one time, it was created under the Ministry of Finance and is still actively interacting with this department.
Together against the crisis of the consolidation of disparate expert groups, the crisis contributed to the crisis. The general site was the expert council at the commission to increase the sustainability of the development of the Russian economy, headed by the first Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov. This advice includes nearly 8 dozen specialists - almost all the "stars" of the expert economic community. Its chairman was Vladimir Mau, and his right hand was Ksenia Yudaeva, the chief economist of Sberbank.
As they say, in large part, thanks to the efforts of this expert council, a conceptual government document was seen - a recently approved anti -crisis program. “It can be treated differently,” Nikolai Kovarsky said The New Times, “but you can put the mercy of Mau that all significant anti-crisis ideas born in the expert community were brought to the country's leadership.”
Experts gather with an average period of once every two weeks at the Academy of Vladimir Mau or at the Institute of Yegor Gaidar: sometimes 30 people come, sometimes 70. According to Kirill Rogov, an IEPP employee, the Council discusses the problems determined by the agenda of the Government Commission Day and the fact that experts themselves consider important. For example, issues of mortgage and housing construction, recapitalization of banks, overcoming a decline in industry. Based on the results of the discussion, the main speaker - a specialist on a specific topic (sometimes together with several colleagues on advice) prepares a written recommendation for the Shuvalov commission, the final edition of which is carried out by MAU and Yudaev.
Nikolai Kovarsky believes: despite the fact that the expert council led by Mau is not structured at a separate institution, in fact, in a crisis, he plays the same role for the government as Inor for the president, the main economic staff. Unless the expert council is more “imprisoned” on specific topical issues.
Two wings of the prime minister are no secret that the government has forces prone to “manual management of the economy”, the banner of which is another first deputy prime minister-Igor Sechin. It is said that Sechin always comes to discuss the issues that he oversees (industry and energy) with a clearly formulated position. Alexander Misharin, a former deputy minister of transport, and now - director of the Department of Industry and Infrastructure of the Government of the Russian Federation, helps him to formulate his position. But what expert groups he relies on, the interlocutors of The New Times do not know for sure. Some of them nod to economists and publicists collected under the auspices of the Forum “Strategy 2020” (Valery Fadeev, Mikhail Leontyev, Mikhail Yuryev, Mikhail Khazin), others hint at “analysts in uniform”, who have a large amount of information, but, for obvious reasons, do not glow anywhere. Sergei Aleksashenko, director of macroeconomic research of the State Unitary Enterprise, spoke most decisively on this occasion: “Analysts are not needed for those who pursue a manual management policy.”
Other interlocutors of The New Times believe that the contradictions between the first two deputy prime ministers are greatly exaggerated. “These are two wings, which nevertheless belong to one“ body ” - Vladimir Putin,” says one of The New Times. “Shuvalov is largely characterized by the same conducting approach, which another Igor Ivanovich (Sechin) realized in the decision to send prosecutors to banks.” The difference, the interlocutor claims, is more likely in the extent and forms of conducting than in fundamental approaches.
Kirill Rogov sees the main problem of the expert community that ideas do not enter the political market (that is, various parties that compete in the political struggle), but to the bureaucratic one. What greatly narrows the field of influence of these ideas, and some of them are completely unclaimed. “In fact, the interaction of the authorities and experts is now being built on the principle: we ourselves know what to do, and you only need to confirm our rightness and warn about the dangers and possible negative consequences of our decisions,” says Rogov.
1 rector of Rash was one of the first to offer the chair of the head of the Kremlin expert administration, but he refused the civil service.