MAYOR AND GENERALS

POWER

As soon as Luzhkov criticized the capital's policemen at a meeting of the Moscow government, comments and forecasts rained down: relations between the mayor and the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate completely deteriorated, General Pronin was threatened with resignation. But after...

As soon as Luzhkov criticized the capital's policemen at a meeting of the Moscow government, comments and forecasts rained down: relations between the mayor and the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate completely deteriorated, General Pronin was threatened with resignation. But a couple of days later, Luzhkov called these forecasts "complete nonsense." Highly appreciating the work of Pronin as head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, the mayor explained: “We criticized the metropolitan police, but any criticism should not be taken as an offer to an official to leave his post. There are many rumors about the resignation of various officials of the Moscow government. Including the resignation of the mayor. I officially declare that all this is complete nonsense.

Apparently, it is. If each criticism were followed by the resignation of an official, the composition of the capital's government would change monthly. And Luzhkov's team is known for its stability, and if the mayor can be blamed for anything, it's more likely for an overly careful attitude towards personnel.

As for Pronin, it would be nice to start by remembering that he is not directly subordinate to Luzhkov. But this is the formal side of the matter, but the factual one is that from the first day of his work in the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, General Pronin developed business and trusting relations with the Moscow authorities.

It would seem that the mayor dotted all the "i", and one could forget about this pseudo-conflict as an unsuccessful attempt by journalists to pamper the reader with intrigue. But not everything here is so simple. Even the most superficial excursion into history shows that all the information wars against Luzhkov, starting from 1995, were somehow connected with law enforcement agencies. At the same time, the task was always the same - to get them out from under any influence of the mayor, to put their people in high chairs in case it was necessary to start any business that would discredit the mayor. That is a political task.

March 1995 One of the most high-profile crimes at that time was committed in Moscow - the murder of the general director of ORT, Vladislav Listyev. But instead of directing the efforts of law enforcement agencies to find the killer and customers, the Kremlin security forces are organizing a large-scale attack on the Moscow authorities. Let's remember what time it was. The sick president does not control the situation in the country, everything is controlled by Korzhakov and Barsukov. By that time, the chief of the presidential security service, Korzhakov, had already identified Yeltsin's "main enemies", his main rivals in the upcoming presidential elections. The first number on the list is Luzhkov. It doesn't matter that the mayor repeatedly publicly declared his lack of presidential ambitions and support for Yeltsin - Korzhakov, who set out to destroy the "Moscow group", sang completely different songs to the president. As a result, Yeltsin, having arrived at Ostankino and expressed his condolences to Listyev's friends and relatives, also carried out the "mandate" of his security officials - he accused the Moscow authorities of a weak fight against crime and announced the removal from their posts of the head of the Moscow police department Vladimir Pankratov and Moscow prosecutor Gennady Ponomarev .

Of course, this was a blow primarily to Luzhkov. The calculation was made to unbalance the mayor, to force him to make sharp political statements and, consequently, to aggravate his relationship with the president. In part, this calculation was justified - Luzhkov began to protest, he sent letters to the heads of law enforcement agencies and the president, in which he drew attention to the illegality of the personnel decisions made: such issues are not resolved without agreement with the subject of the Federation. Nevertheless, both Pankratov and Ponomarev were removed from their posts. As for the Moscow prosecutor Gennady Ponomarev, he, with his independent character, has long unnerved the federals. His most important "sin" was that he did not fulfill the Kremlin's order at the time - he did not start a criminal case against Alexander Rutskoi. The murder of Listyev became an occasion to deal with the "dumb" prosecutor.

Luzhkov, although he saw that all these decisions undermined the security system in the capital, did not hold a grudge against the president, realizing that the SBP was primarily behind the personnel defeat. Moreover, the mayor did a lot with his campaigning to get Moscow to vote for Yeltsin. Relations then improved, since by that time both Korzhakov and Barsukov had already been expelled from the Kremlin. They improved so much that after the elections Yeltsin offered Luzhkov any position, up to the premier. Luzhkov refused: I am quite satisfied with the post of mayor of Moscow.

Luzhkov had to come to terms with the candidacy of the new head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Nikolai Kulikov. The mayor is not an absurd person, and very quickly he found a common language with the next chief policeman of the capital. However, Kulikov himself was well aware that both the financial and material and technical condition of the entire Moscow police depended not so much on the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but on business, partnerships with the Moscow authorities. But Luzhkov managed to calmly work with the new head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, as the reader probably guesses, until the next presidential election campaign. Luzhkov was once again "appointed" as the main opponent of the Kremlin. And the role of Korzhakov has long been played by Boris Berezovsky, the organizer and inspirer of the second information war against the mayor. Although the doctor of mathematics turned out to be much more sophisticated than the former chief of the Security Service, he began with the same thing - the personnel defeat of the metropolitan police. At the suggestion of the Berezovsky Ministry of Internal Affairs, in October-November 1999, it conducts a frontal check of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate. The result was predictable: Yeltsin ordered Kulikov to retire. With the same violations of the law with which his predecessor was dismissed - without agreement with Moscow as a subject of the Federation.

A new stage of the war between the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Luzhkov begins. The only difference is that the mayor is much more determined this time and does not want to hear about any other candidate. Looking ahead, let's say that Viktor Shvidkin, proposed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the post of head of the Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate, was promoted to acting. more than a year, but never received the blessing of the city authorities. And how effectively he "fulfilled his duties" can be judged by the fact that in just a year all previous successes of N. Kulikov were reduced to zero and, most importantly, a decrease in the crime rate by 20%, which led to another increase in crime in Moscow. Moreover, he can be credited with liquidating the ecological militia (it was restored, however, immediately after Shvidkin's resignation).

I must say that the Ministry of Internal Affairs with enviable persistence tried to remove the prefix "acting" from the position of Shvidkin. Moreover, such a pattern was observed: after each session of “rolling” Shvidkin by the Moscow City Duma, the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched another non-trivial counterattack on the Moscow authorities, thereby igniting the society’s extinct interest in Shvidkin’s tragicomic fate.

The last session took place in February 2001. A few days after the Moscow City Duma did not approve Shvidkin, the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which specialized in anti-Moscow PR campaigns, made another loud revelations. The representative of this department, Major General Mikhail Zotov, then joyfully told reporters about the results of the titanic work of surveyors of the UK. Having passed with a tape measure along some sections of the 109-kilometer MKAD, they found a "shrinkage" of the roadway - 10 cm from each edge. And this, they say, is a multi-million dollar embezzlement. Immediately after General Zotov's revealing statements about the "shrinkage" of the Moscow Ring Road, a specially created commission conducted 40 control measurements of the width of the canvas. In four cases, "shrinkage" from 3 to 5 cm was indeed recorded, the remaining 36 measurements showed that the width of the Moscow Ring Road exceeds the design one. That's all crime. By the way, the notorious “30 Moscow criminal cases” opened several years ago by the Investigative Committee turned out to be just as fake. All of them burst at the initial stage of the investigation.

Does it make sense to stir up this whole story? If we recall the difficult fate of the three former chiefs of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate and how fevered the work of the Moscow police was by permanent personnel reshuffling, then, of course, there is a point. In addition, let's not forget about the pattern: each new attack on Luzhkov began with the beheading of the capital's law enforcement agencies. Who now needs to drive a wedge between the mayor and General Pronin?