Translated material
Who is an investor, and who is an oligarch?
Galina Kovalskaya
Entrepreneurs set out on a campaign for gubernatorial posts. They are no longer comfortable without them.
Entrepreneurs set out on a campaign for gubernatorial posts. They are no longer comfortable without them.
A businessman who supports a governor running for a new term is called an “investor” or “strategic investor,” but if he acts as an opponent, he is called the offensive word “oligarch.” All three January regional election campaigns - in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (elections in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug were held on January 14), the Tyumen Region (January 14) and the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug (elections scheduled for January 28) - became the arena of struggle between “investors” and “oligarchs”. If we take the Lukoil company, then the Nenets governor Vladimir Butov called the Lukoilites “oligarchs”, the governor of Taimyr Gennady Nedelin, on the contrary, considers them “investors” - the role of “oligarchs” for him, as you might guess, is the owner of “Interrrros” Vladimir Potanin and the general director of the Interros giant Norilsk Nickel, Alexander Khloponin, who is fighting for the post of head of the district. For the ex-governor of Tyumen Leonid Roketsky, the head of Lukoil Vagit Alekperov was not just the embodiment of an “oligarch”, but also the head of the “Caucasian group”, and for Sergei Sobyanin, who replaced him as governor, on the contrary, an “investor”. Three election campaigns in which big Russian business was most directly involved demonstrated the extent to which the attitude of Russian society towards large owners is contradictory. On the one hand, today even avid communists (and the above-mentioned regions are by no means communist) know that investments, which any territory and any production needs like air, come mainly not from the state, but from capitalists. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of fellow citizens like the idea of forcing moneybags to “return at least part of what was stolen to the people.”
In the raw materials regions - and the economies of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Tyumen and Taimyr are entirely based on trade in raw materials - this contradiction is more pronounced than anywhere else. After all, the well-being of all three territories depends mainly on the efficiency of the owner-extractor and on how the rent received from the sale of resources is redistributed. So the task of business structures directly participating in election campaigns is to demonstrate to the population how much they are investing in the region and how, as their profits grow, life in the region will become better and better. At one time, in the oil and gas producing districts there were promises to arrange “life like in Kuwait”; now Alexander Khloponin, at one of his meetings with voters, said that Taimyr could live no worse than Canada. Accordingly, opponents foam at the mouth to prove that the “oligarch” does not care about people at all and his pathetic handouts cannot be compared with the damage caused to the territory and, of course, with the share of rent that is rightfully due to the residents of the district or region (Again The example of Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates is given).
In the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, relatively little oil is produced so far. However, in terms of the volume of explored and discovered reserves, this region is very promising. Former entrepreneur Vladimir Butov, who headed the district a little over four years ago, created the Nenets Oil Company in the hope that it would become the leader in the extraction of raw materials in the district. When Lukoil came to the region in the fall of 1999, Butov received it with hostility and from the very beginning created all sorts of obstacles for it and its other competitor, the Polar Lights enterprise, in obtaining licenses and quotas. The war started by the administration with Lukoil and Siyanie naturally forced the latter to try to replace Butov. At first, the oil workers hoped to nominate Artur Chilingarov, a popular State Duma speaker in the district, as governor - in December 1999, Chilingarov was elected to the Duma with the support of Lukoil, despite Butov’s fierce resistance. However, Chilingarov at the last moment changed his mind about running for governor, which ultimately led to Butov’s impressive victory: his opponents did not have another reputable political figure in their reserves. True, the vice-president of Polar Lights, Alexander Shmakov, wanted to fight with the governor - after some hesitation, Lukoil also supported him, but he no longer had enough time for promotion.
Separatism in the North of Russia
But in the Tyumen region, Lukoil can consider itself a winner. This company, like most of the large businesses present in the region, supported Sergei Sobyanin. The essence of the intrigue of the Tyumen elections is that Sobyanin seemed to represent the Tyumen North, where oil and gas are produced, and ex-governor Leonid Roketsky represented the agrarian south of the region. Sergei Sobyanin is a native of the oil-producing Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, the recent head of the local Legislative Assembly.
In the early 90s, the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets districts acquired the status of independent subjects of the Federation, while remaining part of the Tyumen region. The Nenets Autonomous Okrug (it is both a subject and part of the Arkhangelsk Region) and the Taimyr Autonomous Okrug, which, like Evenkia, is part of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, have a similar status. The theme of the independence of the joint-stock company and its relationship with the “mother” region was heard during all three campaigns. In Tyumen, Roketsky, unlike Sobyanin, acted as a “centralizer,” that is, he advocated increasing the dependence of the districts on the region and increasing the share of rent due to the latter. Naturally, this could not please either the population of the districts or the local elites. Considering that today more people live in resource-rich districts than in the southern part of the region, Sobyanin’s victory was virtually predetermined. In addition, he was openly supported by the head of the federal district, Pyotr Latyshev (Sobyanin ran in the elections from the position of his deputy), and the Kremlin, which until recently demonstrated its sympathy for Roketsky, this time took an “equidistant” position.
In the Taimyr elections, the issue of “separatism” is no less acute than in Tyumen. The Norilsk industrial region, also known as "Big Norilsk" - a city with satellite suburbs, in which RAO Norilsk Nickel is located, is administratively subordinated directly to the Krasnoyarsk Territory. RAO pays taxes to both the region and the district - the latter for the use of land, subsoil, etc. These taxes, which make up the lion's share of the regional and 70 percent of the Taimyr budgets, have become one of Khloponin's main trump cards - they say, think about where you are without Norilsk Nickel? Governor Nedelin is deeply outraged by this formulation of the question: “One might think that this is a merit of the leadership of RAO, and not a duty imposed on him by federal law!” In Krasnoyarsk you hear every now and then: what if Taimyr takes Norilsk for itself? What if after this the district decides to secede altogether? The claims of the general director of RAO to the post of Taimyr governor, naturally, only strengthen such fears. Moreover, in the fall, Norilsk Nickel unveiled a restructuring plan, according to which its assets will be transferred to a subsidiary, Norilsk Mining Company, which is registered not in Krasnoyarsk, like Norilsk Nickel, but in Taimyr. However, Governor Lebed considers all these suspicions to be pure nonsense and defiantly takes Khloponin’s side. (Norilsk Nickel at one time did not support Lebed in the gubernatorial elections, however, having quarreled with the owners of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant, the governor was forced to look for allies in the camp of former enemies. In the end, the general became firmly friends with the actual owners of Norilsk and now at every opportunity sets them as an example to KrAZ and other owners as the most efficient taxpayers.)
Rumors about the possible transfer of the plant “to Taimyr” are also circulating among voters in the district - they, understandably, would only welcome such a turn of events. At Khloponin’s headquarters they remain silent, but when asked directly, they answer that RAO will continue to pay taxes to both the region and the district after the restructuring. In fact, even if they transferred assets to the Norilsk Mining Company and thus received the formal right not to pay taxes in Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk businessmen would hardly take advantage of it. This would cause a terrible scandal, in which neither Khloponin nor Potanin are in any way interested - it’s a joke, to collapse the budget of the largest region! To ward off possible accusations of “separatism,” Khloponin, like Sobyanin in Tyumen, insists on the need to establish ties between the district and the “mother” region: import potatoes and beer from there, and not from abroad, send local youth there to study and etc. It is understood that until now these ties have not developed due to the sluggishness of the former governor.
Master of Taimyr
The election campaign of the general director of Norilsk Nickel is most similar to Luzhkov's - remember, in 1998-1999, even before Putin appeared on the scene, the Moscow mayor decided that he would run for president of Russia. Then his PR people suggested that future voters compare Moscow life (“the result of skillful management”) with all-Russian life (“the result of inept government”). So the Taimyr residents are asked to decide whether they want to live like in the light-filled, well-groomed Norilsk, receive the same salaries as RAO workers - the average, if you count in a circle, is 19 thousand rubles per month. Those who are not associated with the plant can only dream of such money. In addition, local residents know: Norilsk Nickel transports its pensioners to the mainland at the expense of the enterprise and pays its female employees maternity leave not up to three, but up to seven years, and in general, working at the plant is almost as lucky as living in Moscow. Like the Moscow mayor, Khloponin does not neglect “patronage assistance”: in one of the Taimyr villages, Norilsk residents built a hospital, in another they donated a computer class to a school. During the winter holidays, RAO took the village children on vacation - no, not to the south, but to Norilsk, to its dispensary. Children who visited a large, comfortable city for the first time, of course, excitedly told their parents and neighbors about “real life.” The Electoral Commission prohibited the provision of “patronage assistance” for the period of the election campaign, but the plant managed to prove that the winter holidays for children are in no way connected with the elections: they have been organizing it since 1999. By the way, it is quite possible that Norilsk Nickel’s charity initially did not pursue narrow political goals. It’s just that the contrast between the life of the plant’s workers and the rest of Taimyr is so striking that it was impossible to ignore it completely, otherwise an unbearably hostile atmosphere would have developed around - for the same reason, the Moscow authorities from time to time gave gifts to other regions, even when Yuri Mikhailovich did not begin to try on the presidential chair.
Gennady Nedelin is forced to build his campaign on claims against the current owners of Norilsk Nickel: the number of workers at the plant has been reduced by almost a third, and “almost all” social services have been dropped. In fact, the main part of the social system - housing on the balance sheet of the plant - is still financed by Norilsk Nickel: it’s just that no one else is able to support it. But Norilsk Nickel actually got rid of the state farm. (Under Soviet rule, when no one counted money for energy, many northern enterprises started greenhouse farms, which was completely ruinous in market conditions.) However, the point is not how fair the current governor’s accusations are. Khloponin's strength as the leader of Norilsk Nickel and Nedelin's weakness primarily lies in the fact that, whether Norilsk Nickel is bad or good, it is the only one in Taimyr. Even if he is listed a hundred times under the administrative subordination of Krasnoyarsk, without him there would be no Taimyr Okrug, and no one except indigenous hunters and fishermen would settle in this pitch-black Arctic, where life is exorbitantly expensive and the climate is harmful to health. There would be no capital of the district, no port of Dudinka, no northern supplies - nothing. Nedelin is right: there is no Khloponin merit in this. It’s just that this objective circumstance makes the owners of Norilsk Nickel the actual owners of the region. And no matter who is named governor, it will remain so. The best confirmation of this is the following fact: 2000 - the first year when, at the call of the governor, Norilsk Nickel helped carry out the northern delivery - was also the first year in modern history when fuel arrived on time and in sufficient quantities.
According to Krasnoyarsk observers, the conflict between the current Taimyr governor and the management of Norilsk Nickel began with the fact that Nedelin refused to follow the “advice” of entrepreneurs: he did not want to change the structure of budget expenditures. Nedelin actually confirms this, indignantly telling voters that “the oligarchs are trying to replace the tax inspectorate” and “without any right they are demanding a report from the governor.” But voters for the most part do not seem to share his outrage. Since Soviet times, it has become the custom that the party and Soviet authorities are in command in Krasnoyarsk, and in Taimyr the tsar and god are the director of the plant. Nedelin scares his fellow citizens that if Khloponin wins, Norilsk Nickel will become the absolute owner of the region. And now who is the sovereign master? A simple example: environmental control over the activities of enterprises is carried out by regional committees. However, they do not have enough budgetary funds for normal operation, and environmental structures exist, legally, at the expense of fines from violators. If the enterprise is the only one, it turns out that environmental supervision lives on its money.
The Taimyr situation is unique in many respects: in Russia there are many city-forming enterprises, but region-forming enterprises can no longer be found. The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug also has a sovereign owner, but Gazprom is still not a completely private business. In the Tyumen region, where life also revolves around the exploration and production of hydrocarbons, there are, as in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (not to be confused with the Yamalo-Nenets!), several companies competing with each other. It will be another matter if Butov manages to expel Lukoil and other rivals from the Nenets Okrug. And yet, with all the exclusivity of Khloponin’s experience, it fits into a certain trend that emerged at the end of last year, when Roman Abramovich was elected governor of Chukotka. He had his own motives, Khloponin had his own, Shmakov from Polar Lights had his own, Borovsky, the general director of Irkutskenergo, had his own, who at the end of December headed the Legislative Assembly of the Irkutsk Region (there is talk that he now intends to run for governor) . But the fact remains that the leaders of big business have personally become involved in the struggle for power in the regions. Apparently, this is the reaction of investors/oligarchs to the presidential declarations about a “strong state”, “vertical of power”, and, of course, to the hunt that the authorities have opened for individual large businessmen. By the way, Khloponin announced his intention to run for office just when attacks on Potanin began (he was demanded to “return $140 million to the state for the illegal privatization of the plant”) and debates in the Duma regarding the cancellation of the results of the privatization of Norilsk Nickel.
Everything changes. Until recently, you had to be friends with the authorities, and having good money, it was easy to “privatize” them. Now an administrative post seems to be a more reliable security than capital. It is not true that business goes to power. He was in power. But now large businessmen feel confident only if they are personally integrated into the “vertical”. Skillful and tenacious people even in Soviet times sensed with their noses which career at the moment promised greater benefits - party or industrial.
In the recent elections, the powerful Lukoil opposed the Nenets governor Vladimir Butov. However, he did not have a solid political figure in reserve. As a result, Butov was re-elected for another term and can now safely ride a snowmobile. (Photo: Vladimr Velengurin )