By the time this issue of Vlast reaches the reader, Vladimir Putin will have already resigned. Seeing off the first Russian prime minister to become president, we decided to remind readers what kind of head of government he was.

The prime minister in modern Russia faces, in essence, only three main tasks: managing the budget, negotiating with foreign creditors and developing a macroeconomic program. Let's look at how Putin dealt with each of them in order.

Budget. Putin began managing the budget with the main thing. Not by increasing revenue collection and reducing government spending, but by paying money to government employees.
First of all, at the beginning of September last year, Putin announced that he would pay daily from 800 to 1000 rubles to contract soldiers and officers who are fighting in Chechnya. This money is actually paid, without any delays and in full. Every month, up to 800 million rubles are spent on this. Quite a lot. But the military are happy, and there was even a competition among officers for business trips to Chechnya.

Then - already in November - Putin ordered Viktor Khristenko to force governors to pay off their more than seven billion debt to doctors and teachers by April 15. Additional billions were immediately found in the federal budget for this essentially pre-election goal and were immediately sent to the regions.
But that was only half the battle. After all, as you know, governors strive to spend federal funds for other purposes. For example, give them to miners in order to then give miners' salaries to teachers (these salaries often differ little in size) and so on in a circle. Viktor Khristenko, under the direct influence of Putin, showed firmness towards governors that was unusual for him before. The Deputy Prime Minister made weekly inquiries about who spent the loans and transfers allocated to them and where. Those found guilty of misappropriation were immediately called to the carpet before Khristenko, and if this did not help, then to Putin himself. In addition, Putin himself traveled to the regions and figured out on the spot how budget debts were repaid to teachers and doctors. The result is obvious. Of course, it was not possible to pay off all the debts by the appointed date. It doesn't happen that way. But Khristenko promised that the issue would be closed by the inauguration. And this is perhaps the only unconditional success of Putin the Prime Minister.

Creditors. Putin was not so lucky in negotiations with foreign creditors. While his immediate predecessor Stepashin reaped Primakov’s laurels and received the first tranche of the $4.6 billion stabilization loan, Putin has still not received a cent from the fund. Of course, this is not only his fault with his unpopular war in Chechnya in the West, but also all his predecessors, as well as the money laundering scandal through the Bank of New York. However, the second tranche in the amount of $640 million could have been received even when the BoNY scandal was just beginning. To do this, the office of the presidential representative for relations with the IMF, Mikhail Zadornov, and the government office had to send a letter to Washington on time, that is, in early September, on the fulfillment of a number of the fund’s requirements. But Putin didn’t care about this. Most likely, at that time he simply did not know what the terms of cooperation with the IMF were.
But Putin does not like to be anyone's debtor. That is why he so praised Mikhail Kasyanov, who in February achieved the writing off of more than a third of Soviet debts to the London Club. From $32 billion, the debt has decreased to $21.3 billion, and the peaks in payments during Putin's first and possible second presidential terms have been sharply flattened. And the fact that after this write-off the country will have to return as much as $40 billion to creditors over thirty years, and the peaks in payments will again appear in the middle of the next decade, is no longer so important. After all, this will happen under a different president.

Macroeconomics. In the field of macroeconomics, Putin the Prime Minister preferred global strategy to tactics. Back in November last year, extremely unhappy that no one in his government could tell him what would happen to Russia in five, ten, fifteen years, Putin created the Center for Strategic Research and sent German Gref there. True, the Gref center was created for Putin the President, but the center’s specialists gave their first recommendations to Putin the Prime Minister. It turned out that the center was not created in vain. The advisers managed to keep Prime Minister Putin from at least two serious mistakes. Thus, they categorically opposed the introduction of 100 percent sales of export earnings, already publicly approved by Putin, which was proposed by Viktor Gerashchenko, and also achieved the withdrawal from the Duma of the government draft amendments to the law on foreign trade regulation, introducing a system of compulsory state registration of participants in foreign trade activities.

Putin can rightfully tell his successor as prime minister that he is leaving him with a growing economy (4% GDP growth this year and 5-6% in the future), a strengthening ruble and repaid debts to state employees. Almost 90 billion rubles were collected in budget revenues in April. The primary surplus reached an unprecedented figure in the history of Russia - 6.4% of GDP, and the overall surplus - 3.4%. But only a year ago, Yevgeny Primakov persuaded the IMF to reduce our target for the primary surplus from 3% to 2%.

But it is unclear whether this growth will continue with the next prime minister. The fact is that Putin has no special merit in all this. Filling the budget with “real” money is not the result of coordinated actions of Putin’s subordinates, but a consequence of the unbridled rise in oil prices at the beginning of this year and the efficiency of Viktor Gerashchenko, who quickly printed more than 150 billion rubles, backed by petrodollars.
At any moment, the Russian economy, completely dependent on the export of strategic raw materials and almost devoid of investment, may again collapse into the pit of another crisis. In the latest report of the European Commission, growth in Russia, inexplicable to its experts, was called “cyclical.” There are no objective prerequisites for stable economic growth—structural restructuring of the economy, increased investment and income of the population—in Russia yet. And Putin, when he was prime minister, did almost nothing for real growth. But this was not his direct task. His task, which he accomplished brilliantly, was to move from the prime minister's chair to the presidential chair. Now he can order the prime minister and the head of the Center for Strategic Research to ensure everything necessary for stable economic development for at least two presidential terms.

KONSTANTIN SMIRNOV

Prime Minister Putin has done nothing to promote real economic growth. But he brilliantly coped with another task - he moved from the prime minister's chair to the presidential one.

Magazine "Kommersant Vlast" No. 18 dated 05/09/2000, page 14

Authors:

Konstantin Smirnov

Dismissed by his own election