Change of guard

From the editorial office. Tonight, the inauguration of the mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin will take place tonight. A number of high guests are expected at the event - President of the Russian Federation, Mitri Medvedev, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill and others. But Yuri Luzhkov personally will not be able to congratulate the successor - he gives a lecture on “Development of Moscow and the Renaissance of Russia” at the International University. Therefore, the event will be held without it. On the day of the inauguration of the new mayor, the Russian magazine discusses with the waste of Sobyanin and his statements about the priority areas of activity of the city hall.

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So, a new mayor comes to Moscow. Commentators are now wondering whose candidate in the ruling tandem is Sergey Sobyanin, and how his rule of government will differ from the style of his predecessor. The conversations that the appointment of Sobyanin is Putin’s victory and the correct sign that in 2012 it was Vladimir Vladimirovich who will run for presidents that do not seem to me founding. There are no real contradictions between Putin and Medvedev. And their team is actually unified. The same Sobyanin was both the head of the Putin administration, and the chief of the Medvedev’s campaign headquarters, and in this regard, can be considered a person of both tandemocrats.

Luzhkovsky successor Sergei Sobyanin-flesh from the flesh of the Putin-Medvedevo vertical of power. It is no coincidence that he was one of the first among the governors to support the cancellation of the elections of the heads of regions after the events in Beslan. Sobyanin was tested by democratic elections, running for the post of governor of the Tyumen region, but then he won only thanks to the intensive use of the administrative resource, both the Kremlin and the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Districts, where most Tyumen voters lived. When he was his mayor, Kogalym Sobyanin turned the city of Lukoil oil workers into a kind of totalitarianism reserve, where it was ordered to forget about democratic freedoms in exchange for social guarantees, that is, approximately according to the Luzhkovsky scheme. With the advent of the Governor's chair, Sergei Semenovich publicly doubted the very possibility of the existence of a free press and quickly brought the whole opposition to the nail.

We can say that in Moscow, in this regard, Sobyanin comes to prepared soil . Luzhkov successfully cleaned both the opposition and the press, which he taught to the idea that the mayor could not be criticized in any case. Nevertheless, some of the concessions of the opposition, apparently, will have to do the new mayor. Already Vladislav Surkov spoke about the possibility of allowing the opposition to rally on October 31 on Triumphal Square. Such concessions, if they follow, are likely to be due to the fact that, on the one hand, Luzhkov’s dismissal with a strict formulation requires to hang as many sins as possible, including the tight acceleration of opposition rallies. On the other hand, such concessions can hope for the first time to save the mayor of hard criticism. But it is difficult to doubt that these concessions will only be temporary.

Sobyanin will surely preserve the authoritarian style of the reign of Luzhkov, but it is unlikely to be, like a predecessor, a populist. He is known as one of the most closed people in the current government, which practically does not give an interview, and the press, as it seems, is disliked. He will probably not try to lead a line in Moscow, different from the line of the federal center, and, most likely, will not specifically look for popularity among Muscovites. His status of the appointed mayor does not require this. Sobyanin, in all likelihood, will take a number of steps opposite to what the predecessor did. We can expect the cessation of the destruction of historical Moscow (although it is necessary to admit bitterly that after Luzhkov there was already little surviving here), more active attempts to solve the transport problem of the capital. Obviously, the new mayor will also have to really fight corruption for some time, if only in order to justify the dismissal of the former mayor in the eyes of the public and cleanse the Moscow market from Luzhkov’s family, freeing a bread place for new players. Sobyanin was almost the only governor who was not drawn by a corruption train, that in modern Russia there are already many. So he has a reputation for the role of a fiery fighter with corruption, it seems to be suitable. But we just need to remember the wife of a new mayor who owned a road-building company (suddenly flattered to the laurels of Baturina?), And of her cousin, who inherited Sobyanin in the post of mayor of Kogalym and having long-term relations with Lukoil. Yes, and the fight against corruption in Moscow will have its own limits and is unlikely to reach the criminal prosecution of the former mayor (if he, of course, does not start in his games in politics at all). In the meantime, the Luzhkov couple prefers to sit in Austria, given that Sobyanin has the experience of breaking the former corruption schemes in Tyumen. But whether Sobyanin will repeat the path of Luzhkov over time, will now depend not only on the moral choice of Sergei Semenovich, but also on the Kremlin, who is now unlikely to allow the Moscow authorities to be too mired in corruption.

Will Sobyanin only as an administrator or try, like Luzhkov, to play a political role? Probably, at the post of Moscow mayor Sobyanin, Sobyanin will be only a competent, but not a bright administrator-technocrat, showing complete loyalty to the president and prime minister. How much Sobyanin will last in the chair of the Moscow mayor, whether he, like Luzhkov, will create his era in the life of the capital - will show the future. But if he resolves the problem of Moscow “traffic jams”, stops “point” development and reduce the corruption component in the cost of Moscow housing and services, Muscovites will be grateful to him.