Premature government

The current cabinet of ministers will live for 8 months

Eight month government. How does the cabinet of ministers work in Russia, which knows for sure that it will soon resign

Andrey Lavrov, Konstantin Smirnov
Gazeta edition for The New Times

The government must work in such a way that my possible arrival at the White House seems like a holiday,” Vladimir Putin warned members of Viktor Zubkov’s cabinet before the New Year. On December 27, immediately after the government meeting, Putin came to the White House not only to congratulate the ministers on the holidays, but also to confirm his intentions to head the government after the inauguration of the new president. Of course, there is no 100% guarantee that Putin will keep his promise. However, it is clear that in any case the Zubkov government is placed in extremely harsh conditions. It must provide maximum results and work to the last, knowing the exact date of resignation. At the same time, Prime Minister Zubkov already knows not only that he (unlike some of his subordinates) will leave his current post in May this year, but, as they say in his entourage, he knows exactly his future place of work.

provisional government

However, all ministers and the prime minister himself have an incentive to work hard: Vladimir Putin promised that the staffing of his cabinet would depend on how officials perform during the transition period. The working conditions are difficult, but it is pointless to grumble: back on September 12, 2007, when Zubkov's predecessor Mikhail Fradkov resigned, it was clear that his successor was the prime minister of the transitional period. In other words, the head of the interim government.

Public discussions, first by Zubkov himself on September 14 in the State Duma, and then by Vladimir Putin on September 15 in Bocharov Creek about the possibility (with good work) to nominate a new prime minister for president even then looked like a smokescreen for Putin’s more cunning political maneuver. The speeches of the President and the Prime Minister were painfully similar, as if they were written by the same speechwriter.

Zubkov's government was initially given 8 months. There is not much to do during this time - the ministers move from cabinet to cabinet for too long and the signs with their positions change. However, during this period, a kind of peaceful revolution was to take place. President Putin must leave without leaving: choose a successor and keep the levers of government in his hands. For everything to go smoothly, Zubkov's cabinet must solve two key tasks: actually "bribe" the electorate, consisting of pensioners and state employees, and rally the nomenklatura elite even more closely around Putin. The first task has already been half-fulfilled by Zubkov's cabinet: on December 2, United Russia won a constitutional majority in the State Duma.

Zubkov, as a former director of a state farm and a recent head of financial intelligence, knows how to allocate money from the budget without loss and bring it to the end consumer. It is impossible not to recall the catchphrase from the movie "The President and His Granddaughter": "This is budget money: take it, do not be afraid."

Belodomov quartet

The direct executors of Zubkov's will were not representatives of the Ministry of Finance, but three new ministers: Dmitry Kozak (head of the Ministry of Regional Development), Tatyana Golikova (head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development) and Elvira Nabiullina (head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade). Their quartet worked with the simplicity that was still characteristic of the Soviet party and economic apparatus: field trips, public floggings, exiles to objects.

Anton Drozdov, director of the financial and economic department of the government apparatus, was the first to be handed out. In September he was sent into exile for two weeks on the island of Sakhalin in the city of Nevelsk, which suffered from an earthquake in August. Zubkov publicly demanded that he ensure the transfer of 6 billion budget rubles from the cash desk of the Ministry of Finance to the cash desk of the local administration. Drozdov successfully completed the task and, as Zubkov later told in a narrow circle, thanked the prime minister for the invaluable experience of direct financing.

Zubkov liked the exile practice. He still jokes (with a small amount of jokes), calming the complaining governors: "Shall you send money or officials?"

Like a true party worker of the era of historical materialism, Zubkov himself loves to go to places, to the fields, to ask ordinary workers what they lack for complete happiness. It turned out that there are not enough dentures, sweets and just money. Right there, like a real director of a state farm, he solves these problems on the ground. He ordered a tractor driver from the Penza region to put in dentures, raise the salary of kindergarten teachers in Astrakhan, and he distributed sweets to the children himself. Thanks to television, these pictures of direct assistance to the electorate became known throughout the country and could not but affect the election results. It is no coincidence that polls by the Levada Center showed that confidence in Zubkov's government is higher than in Fradkov's cabinet. In addition, unlike his predecessor, Zubkov reads all speeches from a piece of paper, which cannot but please older viewers.

Putin's real plan

Having won part of the electorate, Zubkov must now hand it over to Dmitry Medvedev, the presidential candidate of Vladimir Putin and United Russia. As a result, social promises are now publicly made only by the First Deputy Prime Minister. Zubkov, on the other hand, should be even more strict in monitoring the speed of transferring budget money to social institutions. For example, the government should provide a 14% increase in pensions and salaries for state employees from February 1 this year. All this must be done manually.

However, Zubkov is not faced with the task of fundamentally reforming the system of remuneration for state employees or carrying out a new stage of pension reform - this will be done by the new president and prime minister. In this sense, Zubkov is the first truly technical prime minister. True, Zubkov will have to work on some of the strategic groundwork made under Fradkov. In February, the government is due to approve the concept of the country's development until 2020, which Putin considers his real plan. That is why he demanded from the developers of this document specific mechanisms to achieve the global goal - bringing Russia to the 5th place in terms of GDP by 2020 (1st place in Europe). However, we emphasize once again that forecasters from the department of Elvira Nabiullina are closely engaged in this task, while Zubkov needs to follow the technical points - the coordination of the positions of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and specialists from the sectoral ministries. Ultimately, the second line of Zubkov's interim government is to ensure Dmitry Medvedev's victory on March 2 in the first round, proving to voters that the course towards a new social development is real. Solving the problem of rallying the nomenklatura around the figure of Vladimir Putin is much more difficult. However, Zubkov will have to solve it at least partially. He must fill state corporations with money, which in the future will become alternate airfields for the closest circle of the current president. As ex-premier Mikhail Fradkov noted at one time, “the salaries there are high and there is no need to steal anything.” The operation to fill state corporations and development institutions with money went quickly. The Ministry of Finance expected to transfer money in 2008, but huge amounts (more than 500 billion rubles) were allocated ahead of schedule - in December 2007. Now Zubkov, in his usual manner, is demanding good ideas from the heads of these state corporations and Minister of Education and Science Andrei Fursenko so that they can be financed. And then, as Zubkov recently put it, "there is money, but no ideas."

Manual control

Such manual technical control is sufficient to solve the tasks. However, this was not enough to preserve the main achievement of Putin's rule - macroeconomic stability. It was not possible to keep prices within the planned 8% - inflation has crept close to 12%, and according to expert estimates, goods that are in demand among low-income segments of the population have risen in price by an average of 18%. For the first 14 days of January, inflation was 1.4%, which is an alarming signal. Almost everyone admits that the inflation plan for 2008 will also not be fulfilled. Zubkov, by virtue of his experience, is trying to solve the problem with administrative measures. It is interesting that these methods find a favorable response in the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, the traditional headquarters of liberal reformers. Food prices are being frozen, marginal trade margins are being introduced, and retail chains have been told to enter into agreements to freeze and even cut prices on some products. The Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade are developing a law on trade, which could put an end to the development of free retail trade (namely, it has recently been the main engine of GDP growth).

As a result of this manual control of Zubkov's cabinet, the victorious electorate this spring may face two problems that have not been entwined since 1991: runaway prices and shortages. However, this problem can be solved if oil prices rise to $200 per barrel.