From the editorial office. On November 3, at 73 of his life, one of the largest political figures by the Russian post -tester Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin died. He led the Russian government for the most difficult years, complex from an economic point of view and from the point of view of political. The people Viktor Stepanovich were remembered by their phrase " they wanted the best, but it turned out as always ." Otherwise, it is not perceived with an ironic smile. Today, the country has lost one of the most significant politicians of its recent history. About how important Viktor Stepanovich had for Russia, says Vitaly Leibin, editor -in -chief of the Russian Reporter for the Chittals of the RG.
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No one is trying to dispute the fact that Chernomyrdin is one of the most grandiose figures of his era. Interestingly, he was one of the main figures of the era, including by sanity. It seems that in the 1990s there was an era of young reformers, and it was completely absent. For example, many noted how Gazprom behaved, which was created by him, in the international arena during his premiere. This is the only point at which the foreign policy of the Russian Federation was preserved.
And how he explained the Russian character and the political situation, his famous aphorisms, for example, that “no matter what we build, it is still the CPSU”? Chernomyrdin was an element of the Soviet tradition within the revolutionary era, when all the traditions collapsed. In this sense, he is a huge supporting design in a situation where the whole building fell. And it seems to me that at the moment when he came to the government after Gaidar, many thought that this was the victory of the Red Directorate. But it turned out that all attempts to somehow pack Viktor Stepanovich in some concepts or political factions were small in comparison with his real figure.
One thing is enough that he was one of two people who would have a real political language. He spoke humanly things that even young reformers explained with many Englishisms, economic terms, a highly intellectual, technocratic language, and Chernomyrdin managed to communicate with the people and explain complex things in real Russian , paradoxical, clumsy, but in real Russian . Maybe at that time there was another person who had a high -level political language - this is Zhirinovsky. But still, Zhirinovsky’s language is the language of the clown, who speaks of the truth of life and about the incidents and paradoxes of this life, and Chernomyrdin spoke real political language and was a real politician in a situation where he was in power. And this is much more complicated. It seems to me that there are few people who have a face in our history. And in recent years, his personality has not changed anyway.
The liberal reforms of the nineties were not easy for anyone. Inside the mission, Viktor Stepanovich was not the purpose of the destruction of the system. Because, judging by the speeches of Chubais and Gaidar, nevertheless, in the first place was the goal of destroying the Soviet system. As a result of this, a lot of market relations, for example, were built, but the first goal was destruction. And Viktor Stepanovich, of course, was a man who very quickly realized that the situation had changed, and did not abide either in depression or in resistance to these changes, but tried to establish life in the new conditions. But, of course, this is a person who did not have a goal of destruction, he had a goal of preservation, not even building. To build something new-at that time no one had such a goal. But Chernomyrdin, at least, tried to keep what he could hold. His merit is that Gazprom has been preserved as a single company. If Gazprom were divided, it would be worse than in the oil industry, where it is still logical: different regions of production and other business; The fact that Gazprom remained one was then a huge resource for Putin, both economic and political. And this is a clear example of how Chernomyrdin acted with the household. For him, the subject was not a market and economic relations, but a specific deposit, a specific case. He always soberly looked at the results of his own work, understood how much was destroyed. But in nature, in essence, of course, he was in opposition to destruction, he is still a man of conservation.
The place that Chernomyrdin took during his diplomatic service in Ukraine in a certain sense was, of course, a link, but an understandable link. It was the period of state -state state, the period of the City of Gazprom was also supposed to occur. At first, his participation was surprisingly useful and functional, because the key method of relations with Ukraine in the Russian Federation before that was a way of mutual informal agreements, sometimes corruption with local elites on the division of shadow profits from gas transit. This fact greatly influenced politics in Ukraine. Both Gazprom and its intermediaries were very influential, and the available contacts with Kuchma, and Tymoshenko, and with all the others who participated in this mediation, of course, made Viktor Stepanovich the right negotiator. The result of these negotiations was the achievement of more civilized relations, in particular, in this area and constant growth in influence, until 2004, Russia in Ukraine. It is clear that Gazprom is also involved in European politics in a similar way, but the Ukrainian situation was specific just by the fact that the role of the individual was very great. And such a person as Chernomyrdin, of course, was indispensable in that position. Such a role was meaningless after the Orange Revolution, since the very attempt to build relations between countries on personal relations, all this model failed in the Orange Revolution. Viktor Stepanovich, fortunately, understood it. The way he behaved during the Orange Revolution and after it was a worthy representation of the already state of Russia, and not Gazprom and personal relations . And it seems to me that his Ukrainian aphorism, that where we are not entering, be sure to step on something, was a fixation of a very clear, sound idea of Russia's future. He played his role. It is under his representative office that our relationship has completely changed, and we, apparently, will never go to the agreements of personalities and some corruption schemes, but there will be a rather strict inter-strut system, apparently more clear and even more friendly than before.