Translated material
Their name is Ministry of Regional Development
Dmitry Kozak recruits presidential envoys to his department
The now former presidential plenipotentiary representative in the Far East, Kamil Iskhakov, yesterday went to work in the department, which has been headed by another former presidential plenipotentiary representative, Dmitry Kozak, for ten days now. Neither in the flammable south, which has been tensely awaiting the appointment of a new “proconsul” all these days, nor in the Far East, no one yet knows anything about the likely successors of the plenipotentiary envoys.But two officials who previously occupied formally equal positions now found themselves in the position of superior and subordinate. However, Dmitry Kozak, who worked for three years as a de facto “crisis manager” in the North Caucasus , has always had a somewhat special status compared to other plenipotentiaries. And he served as plenipotentiary representative a year longer than Mr. Iskhakov.
The institution of plenipotentiary representation was created in 2000 along with a new scheme for dividing Russia into seven federal districts as a tool for ensuring the vertical of power. The plenipotentiary missions were supposed to gather the mass of regions that was spreading, as it seemed to the new President Vladimir Putin, and serve as a sort of “sovereign eye” in the gap between the provinces and the Kremlin - at the very distance that was designated with traditional hopelessness as “the Tsar is far away.”
However, by the end of Vladimir Putin’s second term, the embassies found themselves in the rather strange position of bodies without any significant powers, responsible only for preparing lists of candidates for governors of a particular subject - since governors since 2004 are not elected in popular elections, but are confirmed in the regional legislative assembly on the proposal of the head of state. The lists of those from whom the president chose were prepared by the plenipotentiaries, as a rule, knowing in advance who exactly would be proposed to the compliant regional deputies. At the same time, the appointed governors themselves also actually became presidential envoys in a particular region.
Perhaps Dmitry Kozak was the only one who carried out serious experiments with the management system of the district entrusted to him. At the very beginning of his work in Rostov, in the troubled and terrible days after Beslan, he tried to create, in fact, a district coordination anti-terrorist headquarters , and later a commission to improve the socio-economic situation, which journalists immediately nicknamed the “government of the south.”
Judging by the speed and confidence with which the Ministry of Regional Development, transferred to Dmitry Kozak, is taking away previously unusual powers from other departments, the southern developments of the architect of the administrative and municipal reforms of the early 2000s, which were never completed, can now be used on a federal scale. And the scheme of the Russian federal structure, prescribed in the 1993 Constitution in extremely general formulations, may once again be revised and modified.
The departure of a key plenipotentiary representative to the Ministry of Regional Development does not necessarily mean the rapid liquidation of plenipotentiary missions as such, the transfer of their functions to the “Kozak Ministry” and the transformation of district apparatuses into territorial departments. But it is possible that the idea of federal districts has already lost its attractiveness in the eyes of Kremlin strategists. In the end, one super-ministry, occupied with relations between Moscow and the provinces, better corresponds to the essentially unitarist idea of a vertical power structure than seven “proconsuls.”
The danger that too powerful a vertical could eventually pierce the frayed fabric of Russian statehood is clearly not taken into account by politicians who are allergic to the mere mention of Yeltsin’s call for the regions to “take as much sovereignty as they can carry.”
Much about the immediate prospects of the Russian state structure will become clear after the appointment of successors to Mr. Kozak and Mr. Iskhakov - if it does take place. If, for example, one of the charismatic security officials takes Mr. Kozak’s place in Rostov, the history of the Southern Federal District may well sparkle with the most unexpected colors. The continuation of the career of Mr. Iskhakov, who moved from the post of plenipotentiary representative to the chair of the fifth deputy federal minister, will also be indicative. Some experts in the Far Eastern Federal District believe that this is a demotion for the plenipotentiary representative, who failed to cope with many of the tasks assigned to him, but hired many colleagues in the district from his previous work in the Kazan mayor’s office and tried to include his closest relatives in the regional lists of the United Russia." However, it should also be remembered that many still consider Mr. Iskhakov to be one of the likely candidates for the presidency of Tatarstan in the event that Mintimer Shaimiev’s career ends. Although it is not a fact that the White House in Moscow is closer to the Kazan Kremlin than the Pacific Ocean.