Alexey Chadayev. Return

Return
Alexey Chadayev

Publication date: December 3, 2004

The Duma made its signal: the law abolishing the election of governors was adopted in the third and final reading. Now the president will sign the law and it will come into force - in this sense, the reform of the federation can be considered completed. However, in reality, the said reform has not even begun yet. Because probably not a single person in Russia knows where exactly those presidential appointees will come from and who they will be.

That is, it is approximately clear who the president can appoint now. Moscow will be headed, you will laugh, by Yu.M. Luzhkov, St. Petersburg - V.I. Matvienko, Tatarstan - M.Sh. Shaimiev... and further down the list, without stopping in all subjects, all familiar faces. Of course, even that is bread: at least the comedy with the “eternally second” term for long-lived women will become a thing of the past: their evergreen status will be formalized legally and beautifully, without democratic shyness.

And not even because “there are no other personnel.” But because real reform - I repeat once again - did not even begin with the adoption of the law. Because reform is an essential change in the way of life, the way the system operates, and not just “new rules.” That is, in order for the president to have a fundamentally new person in his stash, capable of leading a region the size of a medium-sized European state, it is necessary to create a whole mechanism for growing such a person. And if there is no mechanism, then the already existing recognized leader of the local elites will still have to be hired and appointed by presidential decree: in fact, that is why the Luzhkovs and Shaimievs today are even more uncontested than under the old order of things.

So what does the reform really change? It changes the most important thing - the source of legitimacy of regional power. And, therefore, a system of responsibility within the power hierarchy.

The elected governor had the source of power from the totality of the inhabitants of his region, who handed over this power to him through the procedure of democratic elections. The governor, appointed by the source of legitimacy, has supreme power (personified by the president), and receives his power from him, and not from the residents; and bears its most important responsibility for its region to it.

The question of choosing a liability mechanism is, in essence, a question of who is more able to collect on accounts. And here it stands exactly like this: who in modern Russia is more capable of ensuring the responsibility of the governor: an organized community of citizens of the region or the supreme head of state? In fact, both are incapable. Organized regional communities exist only in small national republics; in most Russian regions they simply do not exist. On the other hand, the president - incl. and “the president as an institution” is also, by definition, unable to ensure such responsibility in 88 regions.

Nevertheless, the president in this capacity is in most cases still somewhat more effective. It may have a much longer feedback time compared to the local community, but it is immeasurably stronger in terms of its ability to put pressure on the regional authorities.

What can citizens do? In conditions of phantom democratic procedures, the absence of parties and the manipulation of elections, they cannot re-elect the “firmly seated” head of the region (go ahead and re-elect the same Luzhkov in Moscow). They, of course, can organize a revolution - they have the right; however, governing the country through regional revolutions that constantly occur here and there is an innovative idea, but still slightly dangerous. They can also appeal to the same supreme power: we hit you with our brow, sir, against the thief of our boss; but even here the sovereign will only throw up his hands: you chose him, it’s up to you to deal with him. Finally, they may simply ignore their power, try not to notice it and not deal with it; in fact, this is how we, for the most part, live now.

In other words, federalism in its “Yeltsin” version led locally not to the flourishing of democracy, but to the flourishing of feudalism and Babai dictatorships - irreplaceable (because there are simply no soft legal mechanisms for their replacement) and at the same time weak, because in reality they are not they are governed because of the expanding protest in the only form possible today - the form of ignorance.

But in general, of course, only the citizens themselves who live in these places can effectively control local authorities. And not individually, but precisely as organized and massive social forces. In fact, Putin’s reform only fixed de jure their real impotence in the vast majority of Russian regions.

And in the place of modern builders of civil society, the main thing that needs to be thought about is not how to fight the unitarization of the country, but how to turn the strengthened supreme power into a tool for solving one’s own problems with the local authorities. In other words, how to build direct communication with the “presidential institution”, over the heads of their local peasants - “a conspiracy of the tsar and the people against the boyars.” And through this process, finally emerge from the darkness.

For example, let’s say, we should build an alternative mechanism for selecting future regional heads for the president.

Actually, this is the only way to refederalize Russia.