Alexey Chadayev. Seven plus four

Seven plus four
Alexey Chadayev

Publication date: March 11, 2004

1. Putin's elections

Within the next week, there is actually only one question: which box to tick. All the others have already been answered.

Yes, Putin will win quite confidently: his rating dropped slightly throughout the campaign, but never fell any seriously. According to polls - 62 percent, sociologists still predict more than 70.

There will also be an appearance: all the lamentations of the authorities about her probable absence have no basis. According to FOM forecasts, this will be about 60% of voters. Other services show something similar.

70% of the votes with a 60% turnout is less than half of the list of voters: thus, Putin will not be the “president of all Russians” with absolute legitimacy. But the most important thing is not even this: Putin’s trust rating froze at 40% - i.e. almost every second of those who will vote for him on Sunday does not trust him. But they will vote because it is the government, and the people do not want revolutions.

The campaign went badly: explosions, a water park collapse , missiles that didn't take off , a fussily reassigned government with gray personalities and complex structural manipulations. Putin failed to do anything breakthrough or strong, and attempts to do something fateful looked redundant and ridiculous. But the hypothetical competitors completely failed: Glazyev had to fight throughout the elections with his own associates , who were suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to please the Kremlin, and Khakamada - with the laziness, mediocrity and greed of his headquarters. As a result, the second will be the senseless Kharitonov, for whom the disciplined communists will vote - which will give him about 9%. It’s good for Glazyev if he can crawl over the five percent barrier, and Khakamada will fight with the result of the Union of Right Forces in the Duma elections - if it’s more, then it won, if it’s less, it lost. But from a political perspective, even long-term, these are all windmills.

What's the result? As a result, we will wake up on Monday in a different country - perhaps “much more different” than on December 8 last year. What country is it? Electorally weakening, Putin, who has begun to lose his magical rating, who increasingly relies not on the bureaucracy and the balance of behind-the-scenes clans, is turning into a second-term Yeltsin. He is already calling on young promising governors to join the government in the same way for political death - the appointment of the Perm governor Trutnev to the “execution” post of Minister of Natural Resources completely copies the appointment of Nemtsov as first vice in 1997. Prime Minister Fradkov himself, pulled out of nowhere, was taken using the same method that Kiriyenko was taken in January 1998: a low-level and little-known official to solve problems. The only question is what tasks these are.

2. Replacing signs

Kissing, drinking champagne, dancing on tables and shouting “Bitter!” we started three weeks before we went to the registry office - I’m talking about the appointment of the government right before the elections. In principle, there was nothing else left: the way the election campaign was going, the most important thing was to switch the focus of public attention from it somewhere further away. And the trick was quite a success: the entire home-grown establishment enthusiastically began to discuss the great migration - not even of officials, but of the signs on the offices. And at the same time learn the surname “Fradkov”.

What is "Fradkov"? In the single-task logic by which we have appointed prime ministers since the time of Kiriyenko, Fradkov is the minister for accession to the WTO. In the same way, Kasyanov was the minister for settling the external debt, Putin (aka Stepashin) for the 1999 elections, Primakov for taming the Duma after the default , Kiriyenko for the default itself. Progress, of course, is obvious: if six years ago prime ministers were appointed to collapse the debt pyramid along with the exchange rate of the national currency, now - to integrate into world markets; the task is much more positive and optimistic. Maybe this will console someone.

As for the reconstruction of government, there are remnants of a coherent and very reasonable concept. A three-tier structure, where ministries provide overall political leadership, services set rules and frameworks, and agencies perform functions. And, thus, one of the main foundations of corruption is undermined - the combination of functions of determining rules, making decisions and control in one and the same place. In fact, this concept is very similar in methodology to the idea of ​​a three-tier structure of Russian power, which Kozak proposed in the administrative reform project - with the separation of the functions of federal, regional and local authorities. Presumably, the authorship of both projects is approximately the same.

Unfortunately, this somewhat romantic structuralism once again collided with the organic realities of apparatus intrigues, and again it was put on the shield. The old ministers were retained almost everywhere, the signs on their offices were changed (they are now deputies and heads of agencies and services), they were assigned an intermediate level of superiors - just as before with plenipotentiaries in the districts, and once again the number of authorities was increased. They cut 26 structures and created 44 new ones in their place. Like no one was offended. But if this is the “new team” that Putin wanted to present before the elections, then we have known this team for four years already.

The method by which the government was reorganized is somewhat similar to how power roofers ( “werewolves in uniform” ) take over someone else’s business: first they offer protection protection simply for money, then they demand a share in the business, then they introduce their people into the management group and finally they change management, leaving the former owners to work as they worked - but not for themselves, but for a comrade colonel. So the government of the second term is in fact the same Kasyanov government, only with an additional superstructure in the form of Fradkov and the Fradkovs.

3. Technical President

However, the main conclusion from this well-conceived but crookedly executed restructuring is this. President Putin and the system of power he built is capable of solving individual problems, often even very complex ones, but is not able to maintain control over the situation as a whole and give the country a mobilization impulse. Putin, collective Putin, is, according to Kurginyan’s metaphor, a James Bond who loads a task into his memory at the moment he receives the task, one way or another achieves the goals set by management and then completely forgets about it and the problems associated with it. This method was indispensable at a time when Russia faced two or three acute but obvious challenges - the collapse of the country, economic collapse, and a debt trap. But in the current changed situation, when challenges are diffused and complex infrastructure problems need to be solved, linking one with the other, this method has turned into a source of expanded reproduction of ever new threats, and in most cases, from scratch.

This was very clearly visible in the Duma elections. Essentially, only one task was assigned to the apparatus there. This is ensuring the first place for United Russia with a result of at least 20% with a decrease in the representation of communists in the Duma - in order to present positive changes to the country and the world. Nobody even mentioned a constitutional majority - there was no need for it. However, by strictly solving the task at hand using rather familiar methods, they threw out the baby with the bathwater; intellectual parties failed due to their own bungling, "Motherland", made solely and exclusively to split the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, showed the world the eerie face of Rogozinism, in general, the parliament in Russia simply did not exist; and with it - the parties. No one in the Kremlin wanted or expected such a bummer. First of all, Putin himself, after Nord-Ost, became friends with Yavlinsky and now, it seems, out of guilt, employs Yabloko people in various positions. The Duma is now being taught to march in formation and pretend that it does not exist.

The stability of Putin's power, however, does not depend on whether he supports, say, democracy - or not; whether he stifles “freedom of speech” or not, whether he quarrels with the West or not, even whether he is popular in the country or not; all of these are indirect and secondary factors. The main factor in the stability of the regime is whether the regime is capable of meeting the urgent tasks facing the country, its historical challenges - or not. And if as of 1999, 2000, or even last year, this ability as a whole was not in doubt - despite individual breakdowns and failures, they stayed on course - but now it has become clear: they are not holding out. In other words, the “Putin era” has begun to come to an end. And the question about Russia after Putin really arose.

4. Scorched Earth

On Monday we will wake up in a new country - and it will be a very strange country. This will be a country in which legal public politics has died, with all its organizational forms - “left” and “right”, “parties” and “elections”, biased media and public polemics. Instead, there is wide scope for hanging out, free semi-dissident chatter, intellectual pursuits, and engaging in all sorts of useful civil affairs that are not directly related to electoral politics. You can do all this for as long as you like - here haste can, rather, do harm; but it is important not to miss the moment when it is necessary to finish the talking shop and move on to organizational actions.

This will be a country where soft authoritarianism is combined with attempts at liberal reforms carried out by the forces of people who are absolutely not liberal in their thinking and style of behavior. An ice palace where a herd of cows teaches figure skating to people - this will be called “Russian specificity of reforms.” Accordingly, they will study, and get in trouble for themselves, and painfully search for a new support in society - a modernizing force capable of becoming an ally and adviser to the authorities. At the same time, attacks on this government from those who only yesterday participated in Yeltsin’s government will only intensify. But there are no prerequisites for the emergence of such a modernizing force, and they will not appear immediately - simply because the current regime does not know how to work with loyal, but not controlled, political assets: their “friend or foe” signaling system fails, and communication does not work. The main thing they have to do is learn to turn off this system in some cases: sometimes it works, but rarely.

Finally, this will be a country paying its bills and dealing with the consequences of the mess of the 90s. What we saw with Transvaal. Is Putin to blame for Transvaal? Is it just because he never dared to put on the list of those very “tasks” the sacred cause - the cleansing of Luzhkov. But indirectly, the Transvaal hit Putin, and quite painfully. And then - more.

5. "Right"

If the country has its own tasks for these four years, the authorities have their own, then the “right” have their own, again, they are separate. In 2007, they will face their third attempt to socialize and formalize their existence as a long-term systemic and influential political force. Moreover, the first two attempts failed rather painfully - I’m talking about defeats in 1995 and 2003.

What is important about these defeats? In 1993, the “Choice of Russia” movement came to the Duma - motley, chaotic, poorly controlled, where there was a pair of every creature and which, by and large, did not have any organizational forms. But it nevertheless gained such a percentage of votes that it will no longer be possible to repeat it.

Immediately after the elections, the process of organizational and managerial structuring of this free-spirited rally began. The “Democratic Choice of Russia” party was created, a lot of hardware work was carried out, regional branches were created, the headquarters began to work... and as a result, the Far Eastern Republic, from which in the process of party building a lot of small, dwarf organizations broke away (such as Khakamada’s “Common Cause”) , did not pass the five percent barrier.

In 1998, after the default, the gathering of a democratic coalition began, which was called “Just Cause”. In addition to the Far Eastern Revolution, it included 12 organizations, including the pocket parties of Nemtsov, B. Fedorov and Khakamada. In 1999, after Kiriyenko joined, “Right Cause” began to be called the “Union of Right Forces”. The controllability of that “union” was also absolutely zero, each leader sang his own song, in each region there were conflicts and splits that made up the plot of the local tabloid press, and the management of the campaign was carried out by PR people who were more concerned with budgets than with running the campaign. And yet, all this brethren, on Putin’s tail, triumphantly returned to parliament - after which they immediately re-energized tough party building. This work was generally completed by the spring of last year, and then they, before anyone else, opened the election campaign with an action about military reform. The result is even less than that of DVR-95.

Yes, there were a thousand reasons for all this - both external and internal. But one thing is obvious: the right is supported by free, self-sufficient and independent people who do not tolerate being driven into the liberal CPSU. They need pluralism, and first of all - at the level of different positions and different leaders, who often do not agree with each other on anything, but understand that they speak the same language. The rightists today are those who have four opinions for every three people, whether this is good or bad; and for whom the values ​​of freedom and personal responsibility are absolute. And they expect from “their” political force, first of all, that it be a platform, a Noah’s ark on which the place of every creature is located, and not a corporation with options and dismissal for disagreement with the general line. And this is a reality that Chubais’s “effective managers” who have now come to power in the Union of Right Forces have not yet understood. Their logic is the same as before the elections: “we exist, but you can’t get away from us” - the logic is offensive and extremely ineffective.

Chubais proclaimed “7 + 7” - overcoming the seven percent barrier in 2007. This means that the Union of Right Forces is already drawing up plans for a “grand democratic coalition”, drawn up on approximately the same principle as the Union of Right Forces-99 - the old Far Eastern Party plus “stars” from “new” organizations plus money and support from the authorities. The stars took the hint and rushed into party building - Ryzhkov announced the initiative of the Liberal Club, Khakamada - the new party "Free Russia" . This is their resource for future trade with Chubais.

Meanwhile, the main question - in fact, common both for the right and for Russia - is not how to consolidate and choose one person; This is something we can do at the very least. The main question is how to create organizational mechanisms that would insure against leaderism and apparatus party building, how to preserve that atmosphere of intellectual and political freedom that occurs at first in all coalitions and goes out as soon as clerks from the central office get down to business. And how to combine this freedom with the capacity of the organization, with its ability to work in a consolidated manner for a common result?

My recipe remains the same: in the political “real” there is no need for ideological parties structurally organized as parties. We must learn from “United Russia” - a class order of bureaucracy that did without slogans at all (except for the slogan “together with the president”) and practically without a headquarters, but managed to signal the nettle seed to stand under the banners with the bear. An open platform, factions and clubs with different ideas and leaders, working not with adherents of some individual ideas, be it the idea of ​​democracy or the free market, but with the entire “own” social group - and a common list for the Duma elections. If a party is needed here, it is only as a license for political activity, a formal instrument that gives the right to participate in democratic procedures.

6. Motor for the body with steering wheel and brakes

Why do we need the right at all? I mean, not for yourself, your loved ones, but for someone else - the authorities, the country, the voters? Nobody needs them in a human rights capacity - people prefer to resolve issues with offenders and with the authorities without excessive publicity. Even more so as communicators with the West: the West is more willing to communicate with strong authorities than with smart and English-speaking, but extremely uninfluential liberals. As defenders of democratic procedures - and even more so: in their current form, no one has learned to take them seriously.

The only real meaning of their existence in politics is that they are sources of modernization impulse, progressives, encouraging the country to reform and development. Everyone is ready to accept them in this capacity - people, the authorities, and even obvious opponents. However, the function of progressors requires constantly being the smartest, most competent and responsible, the most advanced in the pre-Bolshevik sense of the word. And first of all, to find in society those social groups that are most interested in modernization and can be its social base.

Accordingly, the number one task for the right is to develop and offer society a new modernization strategy (or better yet, two or three to choose from) instead of the one that was proposed and accepted for implementation back in “perestroika”, and today, according to Yegor Gaidar, already has exhausted itself. Task number two is the search and mobilization of those social groups that are able to distinguish the "nuclear electorate" of the new modernization party-as the Soviet scientific and technical and less humanitarian intelligentsia did in the late 80s. These are much more important tasks than organizational bustle, shuffling the column of leaders and a fight for control over their piece of "clearing".

7. Here and now

To go or not to go? - This seems to be the only serious alternative to the weekend. For or against Putin? It is also important, but far from so far - even for Princeps itself.

Actually, it is almost impossible to vote for Putin on Sunday. Without any politics; Just because he did nothing to earn someone's support as a presidential candidate. He behaves as if he had been re -elected long ago, and the elections are empty and formality that takes time and forces. Regardless of political layouts, to leave his square empty makes elementary self -esteem.

On the other hand, the radical opposition in the spirit of Ivan Rybkin looks funny and ridiculous today. Putin is a popular leader recognized by people, the legal president and not the worst ruler, no matter what. And if it is impossible today to support Putin -politician, then this does not mean that you do not have to be loyal Putin - the legitimate chapter of Russia.

The benefit of demonstrating such loyalty is quite simple: for this you need to come to the polls on Sunday. Having recognized the legality of the procedure itself and participating in it.

Where to put a checkmark? Yes, almost any square, except the fourth from above, is not important. “Against all”, Khakamad, Glazyev, Kharitonov, even Malyshkin - all these are acceptable options, since in fact they are nothing more than euphemisms of Dorrotion to Putin. Dorrotion, we note, completely legal, leaving space for further constructive participation in the political life of Russia, without a desperate revolutionary and marginalia.

However, Putin is no longer a spectroting principle of Russian politics: it was like this from December 19, 1999 to December 7, 2003, but now the situation has now changed the slogan "Together with the President" and the slogan "Russia without Putin" not they carry no sense; There are much more general questions on the horizon, such as the choice between the Autarchist and globalization models of modernization, between the import -substituting and export -oriented growth of the economy, between the National State in the current borders and the struggle for the return of the territories of the Soviet empire ... None of these issues are Putin in Putin Give a state to give an answer, even if he wants: he is too "technical" president for this.