Dmitry Shusharin. Stylists and squabbles

Stylists and squabbles
Dmitry Shusharin

Publication date: July 14, 2000

The main political events of the week are ahead. These, of course, are final television programs . It is there that the country's leading politicians, who are also TV presenters - here's a pun - will explain who is to blame, what to do and how much.

It was not me who classified these very talented and passionate people as politicians, but all sorts of experts who always include them in various rating lists. This in itself is indicative - public opinion does not draw the line between a media mogul, an apparatchik, a public politician and a political showman. Is this adequate to reality? Well, first of all, this is already a reality in itself. And secondly... Secondly, in this case it can no longer be.

So the country froze in anticipation of the weekend. Familiar shaved, mustachioed, bearded faces will appear on the screen and they will present everything to the country in colors. In the meantime, let's try to look at the past week without their help - with our own eyes.

* * *

“They have broken the chain” is a rude, non-parliamentary expression. Let's agree on what broke through. Moreover, many broke through. It broke through so much that the shadow of 1993 (our century, not the eighteenth, not the French) again became, again, pardon the pun, a reality. The governors started, the military continued.

The governor, who is a former military man, made a special effort. In his first political advent, he fought with “the boys in pink pants” - it is clear that Gaidar and kids like Chubais evoked in him associations with Timur and his team . Now the Kursk governor is fighting against “boys with slingshots” - apparently, Gref reminds him of Mishka-Kvakin, who is encroaching on the famous (really cool) Kursk Antonovka.

Jokes are jokes, but there may be consequences. The governors gave free rein to verbal aggression, made publicly acceptable expressions like “put the president in his place” and cut something else off. And, in fact, there is nothing to be surprised that at the end of the week the behind-the-scenes fight between the Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of Defense became a public squabble. After all, if some can do it, then why can’t others? This is what happened in 1993, when the heads of various departments, primarily the security forces, quarreled. There was a war of all against all.

There is, however, one encouraging difference. The tone of the week was set by Mikhail Kasyanov’s rather harsh statement about the government’s uncompromising position on tax bills, which the Duma members did not torpedo (there is such a cliche), but gently sank. Not completely, but buoyancy is lost.

However, taxes are still in the background. But all week, right up to about two o'clock on Friday, the Duma members and senators agreed on something. And they didn’t agree, of course. Now the shadow of the veto looms ahead.

Meanwhile, the political component of the reform, which is, of course, of paramount importance, overshadowed all week what the prime minister spoke so sharply and decisively on Sunday. And that is most closely connected with the position of still senators. Radical tax reform is intended to radically change the relationship between various levels and branches of government, and the relationship between the citizen and the state. There is little left - to do something with the Duma members, who little by little, step by step, are deciding on this reform of the original radicalism.

Well, this is a matter of the near future. For now, Duma members have to rally against the governors in order to avoid a war on two fronts. The President and the government seem to have succeeded. At the same time, the executive branch began to work out those mechanisms for redistributing taxes that do not require the intervention of legislators. Thus, revenues from Gazprom will now be distributed among different regions, and not go to Moscow alone. Technologies are being developed.

* * *

But enough about money and squabbles - let's talk about high things. I really want to serve various outstanding stylists. Here Maxim Sokolov in Izvestia took it and said : The president’s message was written in cloth and heavy language, meanwhile de Gaulle had no shame in using the services of Malraux. And in general, it’s not a message that is needed, but a manifesto.

Maxim Sokolov is right about the manifesto: the president can, has the right, and sometimes even has to. But only a direct appeal from the president to the people is a last resort, when it’s time to put into action what has been inherent in modern political culture from previous times. After all, the Fifth Republic absorbed and transformed much of the political culture of absolutism and empire. And the modern Russian state, the youth of which the president spoke about last week, is the heir not to Soviet statehood, but to the one that existed before 1917.

And in modern Russian statehood, the presidency is an institutionalized form of power, which can sometimes take on a non-institutionalized character. This was autocracy, the potential of which, of course, is in the institution of the presidency.

Is it good or bad? In my opinion, this is normal and historically determined. And it can be politically justified.

I don’t know whether Maxim Sokolov hinted that he could provide Vladimir Putin with the same services that Andre Malraux provided to Charles de Gaulle. It’s obvious that as a stylist Sokolov is head and shoulders above Malraux, so it wouldn’t have been much of an honor. But simpler stylists actively offer themselves.

This is Chikin and Prokhanov , who directly called on the priest to listen only to them. Like, if something happens, they will protect him from all sorts of liberal bastards. And they are guided by the same thing as Sokolov - an understanding or feeling of the extra-institutional potential of the presidency.

However, the actualization of these potentials is always a last resort, always an emergency, when the country really needs stylists.

Somehow I don’t want such a stylistic turn. It would be more normal if everything was a little grayer, more procedural and consistent. So far everything is going this way, although the generals and marshals, like Panikovsky and Balaganov, call passers-by as witnesses and shout that Bender appointed them.

This is completely useless. This is the case when publicity and openness of a discussion can turn against the guarantees of publicity and openness. Squabbling is a deputy's business, not a general's at all.

And not royal.