Pavel Lobanov. Experts died if they were born

Experts died if they were born
Pavel Lobanov

Publication date: March 10, 2004

Recently, there have been a lot of exclamations and remarks about the “death of the expert community”, its lack of involvement in decision-making processes, etc. Why didn’t anyone predict that Fradkov would become prime minister ?

Discussion of all these issues is important only if you know why the expert community exists at all, what interests it defends and whose money it earns.

In the USSR there was a community of consultants who worked with the authorities and developed new solutions for the authorities. Historically (the author is based on interviews with former Soviet experts), they appeared during the Khrushchev era, when new approaches to solving primarily foreign policy problems were required. A group of consultants was formed under the head of state, who did not have the education necessary for the era. They became something like a collective Delphic oracle under the semi-literate leaders of the proletariat, acting on instinct and not fully understanding what was happening (Andropov: “We (in general, I) do not know the society in which we live”).

Some consultants even managed to become institutionalized and head various institutions ( USA Institute - Arbatov, IMEMO - Primakov).

But when the authorities themselves began to understand what was happening and gained the opportunity to attract employees who possessed analytical data and secret information, they no longer needed oracles. However, the media still needs commentators and people making forecasts - no matter what, in a couple of hours the situation will change anyway.

By the way, the institutionalization scheme began to be especially used in the post-Soviet period, when a person who had worked in the government or administration and had picked up various rumors, stories from the life of Boris Nikolaich, and also snatched some money, suddenly became the director of some center or foundation etc. All of them were supposedly engaged in political research, but in reality they were simply commentators for the media of Gusinsky or Berezovsky. It was necessary to fill out the “RESULTS” program with something; we needed talking heads. These people became Russian political scientists without, in fact, having the necessary education.

In general, the entire Russian expert community can be divided into several parts, structuring it according to several criteria:

1. party political community , which has strong media support only because it can say a lot and well on any problems, give comments on any issue related to politics. It is the relation to politics that is characteristic, since it is useless to ask a “party goer” to give a short-term forecast, for example, about the trend in world prices for copper or the impact of this trend on relations between the USA and Chile... Historically, the party-goer community was formed during the meetings of the Supreme Council in 1989 year, and then concentrated around various oligarchic projects to use Russia, etc. Now the “party people” are very fragmented, fulfilling different orders to voice what needs to be voiced by those who pay the money. But now it is they who occupy the “platform”; through their electronic media one can gain access to the expert network;

2. “old people” - semi-Soviet guys, fragments of the once all-powerful Soviet social science, mostly settled in different institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, from time to time holding various conferences and publishing a collection if they beg for money;

3. “scientists” - a professional, non-luminous group of political scientists who actually collect information, write books and analytical reviews. They don't have time to comment;

4. “officials” - having received the necessary education, this part of society itself has become an expert. And she often comments on herself;

5. “guides” - experts working for grants in the Moscow and St. Petersburg representative offices of Western foundations. Basically, their vote is also bought, they study democracy, which does not exist, and live on this money. Soros , by the way, was the first to understand this after he lost $1 billion in Russia.

How did it happen that no one needs experts? And they themselves are to blame! There was no need to give Putin the best advice in his time in 1999-2001, he should have left a “window” for himself. But they laid down their lives for the good of God, the Tsar and the Fatherland. Like this.

So what to do? First of all, you need to understand that the government is not stupid, it has sources of information, it has its own experts and its own inner circle, which does not include people of “projects”. The last representatives of the bureaucracy, taking advantage of the still formed era of the 90s. expert community, leave their offices.

Secondly, you need to understand that security officers think in their own way, so I recommend that my colleagues reconsider “Seventeen Moments” and draw the appropriate conclusions. Political scientists need to either die or submit to the state, but the latter does not need them. Therefore, it is best to develop untapped areas. A new image is needed: for example, political scientists are doctors, and the state is sick. But when the patient suddenly began to recover, having received a strong injection in the form of a flow of petrodollars, experts can only warn about the consequences. So, in case of a breakdown.