Translated material
Shortened day
The time for major optimization is coming for the Ministry of Internal Affairs
Tomorrow will be a very important day for the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the decree of President Dmitry Medvedev, signed in February of this year as part of the police reform, a provision on an almost twofold reduction in the number of the central apparatus of the department should come into force on December 1. Until recently, it amounted to almost 20 thousand workers, now it should decrease to less than 10 thousand. This measure was perhaps the most revolutionary in plans to “improve” the Russian police, marking a transition in its work “from quantity to quality.” Back in December 2009, launching the reform of the entire system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the president stated that “the organization of police activity does not meet modern requirements” and that by 2012 its total number should be reduced by 20%.True, whether the first result planned on the path of police reform will be achieved tomorrow is still not clear. There has been talk for a long time about the reductions and accompanying “optimization” of the structure that the Ministry of Internal Affairs should carry out according to the presidential decree. However, this was done in a very “gentle” mode, without strong-willed or principled decisions. Judging by both official and unofficial data, so far there have been no mass layoffs in the Ministry of Internal Affairs; employees of most departments of the ministry continue to work as before. And even the day before the “great optimization” prescribed in the decree, no one could reliably say how much the number of the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had already decreased and whether it would meet the new “standard” on December 1. At the moment, according to available information, neither the new staffing table of the department nor its new structure have been approved.
As a result, on the eve of the entry into force of the provisions of the presidential decree, which were spelled out extremely clearly and clearly, there were no hints that it would be implemented. On the one hand, it is obvious that direct non-compliance with the president’s decree is unlikely to leave him and the Kremlin administration indifferent. Moreover, we are talking about such a painful and pressing problem as police reform, which was launched on the personal initiative of Dmitry Medvedev. On the other hand, the police authorities will, without a doubt, try to “smooth out” the situation, citing certain technical difficulties or other objective circumstances. In the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself, by the way, rumors have already spread that the leadership of the department has either agreed, or is trying to agree, that the decision on the reduction of the central apparatus and the approval of its new structure be postponed to a later date, when the law “On the Police” is adopted RF". (It is expected to come into effect on March 1, 2011.)
However, regardless of how the police authorities get out of this situation, it itself is the first clear sign that the reform of the Russian police has already begun to get bogged down in a bureaucratic “quagmire” from the very first steps. And even such a simple matter as reducing the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs turned out to be associated with problems that are insoluble, at least for the moment. Many observers assumed that this is exactly what would happen immediately after the announcement of the presidential decrees on police reform (see Vremya Novostei, February 19) .
Over the past decade, the police leadership has been able to create a system for organizing their department that is unique in terms of casuistry and bureaucratic resourcefulness. It was formed in 2004, when it was also decided to reduce the management team. Formally, this task was completed. But at the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs “pushed” the idea of creating new units - numerous operational investigative bureaus (ORB), centers, etc., which are not formally part of the central apparatus, but are directly subordinate to it, officially existing under the ministry.
Thanks to this, a two-level structure emerged - the central apparatus of the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself (really not numerous) and the mass of structures attached to it. This division turned out to be formal - employees of both “levels” work in the same ministry buildings (sometimes they can even sit in common offices), receive approximately the same salary and other privileges. But it allowed, without attracting outside attention, to “inflate the staff” several times - several thousand new “rates” were created for the structures “under the Ministry of Internal Affairs”. Moreover, in percentage terms, the number of chiefs and generals increased the most.
However, if someone began to be indignant that in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they say, there were more and more employees, including senseless chiefs and generals, but this did not increase order on the streets and in the police itself, the police leadership always had a ready answer. Such claims were followed by statements that there were not so many employees in the central apparatus - as many as determined by the country's leadership. According to the presidential decree of July 19, 2004, for example, there should have been only 2,970 “units.” The fact that several times more people actually work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs building (due to the structures existing under the ministry) was simply kept silent. As a result, when the start of police reform was announced a year ago, the ministry already had almost 20 thousand employees.
From December 1, this number, according to Dmitry Medvedev’s decree of February 18, 2010, should decrease to 9264. But it turned out to be extremely difficult to simply mechanically cut almost half of the employees in the Ministry of Internal Affairs due to the peculiarities of the same “cunning” structure of the department. In it, the leading role is given to the structures that exist “under” (mainly the ORB), whose employees are engaged in investigating crimes. Each of the ORBs has a clear specialization - in the fight against corruption, crimes in the financial sector, etc., each is supervised by one or another head of the ministry. The latter, in turn, do not form a team of like-minded people, but each individually is, for the most part, independent figures, with connections or patrons in one or another “near-Kremlin” political group (and some are even long-time associates of Vladimir Putin). Accordingly, such a simple, at first glance, matter as “inventing” a new structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in fact, turns into a redistribution of spheres of political influence. In such a situation, each of the police “heavyweights” has his own view on how exactly the “optimization” of the department should take place, and no one wants to sacrifice their sphere, trying to minimize the reduction of “their” subordinates at the expense of “outsiders.”
According to unofficial information, in recent months more than a dozen projects for a new structure have been prepared within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, the police chiefs failed to reach consensus among themselves on most of them. And for those that at least somehow satisfied all the officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or were sent for approval, bypassing the “competitors,” the presidential administration gave a negative conclusion, since, according to available information, they, in fact, either changed little or assumed creating a new “cunning” scheme to replace the old one.
As a result, according to Vremya Novostei, at the moment there is no clear draft for a new “structure” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the department still continues to live in its previous form and even with almost the same “inflated” number. The only achievement in this direction was the liquidation of two departments of the ministry - for ensuring law and order in closed territories and law and order in transport. But this reduction was far from complete, since almost immediately a new division was formed - the Main Directorate for Transport.
As a result, the police reform, which has been ongoing for almost a year, has in fact been limited so far only to the preparation of the law “On the Police of the Russian Federation,” which should replace the current law “On the Police.” What this will change, however, is unclear. Firstly, the new law is fundamentally no different from the old one. Secondly, the trouble with Russian police officers, as all the scandals involving them show, is not at all that they work with bad laws, but that these laws (regardless of their quality) are not always implemented.
But even in this almost stalemate situation, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has not yet lost heart. The ministry’s website has long had a section dedicated to the reform of the department, which is regularly updated with news. The fact that almost all of them are devoted exclusively to the same law “On the Police” does not bother the police officials. Along the way, they have recently launched a PR campaign under the motto “Citizens, trust the police - the future police!”, obviously cherishing the timid hope that, as one of the politicians once suggested, “having renamed themselves, the police, perhaps, will be reborn."