Party "United Russia": raids, showdowns, groupings
Chernomyrdin's immortal "whatever organization we create, it turns out to be the CPSU" - "United Russia" proves in practice
All week before the United Russia congress, analysts and the media wondered whether Putin would become Secretary General or not, whether he would join the party or not, whether he needed it to acquire the status of a national leader, or so well (about why the outgoing president needs the post of Secretary General, see page 14).
Meanwhile, the very word "party" means a meeting of representatives of society, and therefore, by definition, it cannot be closed from this very society. On the contrary, secrecy is the root feature of the bureaucracy.
The goal of any party is to unite people around an idea for the sake of bringing it to life. United Russia is not a party in this sense either. It has neither ideas nor ideology (read more about this on page 10) - it is united only by interests, and narrowly focused interests: to take a place in the state hierarchy. The struggle within United Russia, the echoes of which get into the media, also has nothing to do with the struggle of ideas - this is an undercover battle of the same power clans that control power in the country. And the names of the leaders of this or that faction appearing - all the names of state officials: Sechin, Surkov, Luzhkov (for more details, see page 5). It is no coincidence that the array of legislation adopted over the past 8 years is aimed solely at creating armor protection for the ruling clans - protection from voters, from citizens, from society (p. 12). In fact, this party of power was created as an instrument of the struggle of one bureaucratic clan against another, about which its founding fathers speak quite frankly today (p. 16). Indeed, history repeats itself twice: once as a tragedy, the other as a farce. We've been through tragedy before. It's time for a farce.
Anatomy of power. The eternal struggle - this is how the life of United Russia can be characterized. The New Times explored what happens behind the scenes of the party in power, where state television cameras do not look, and what the elected do not tell voters about
Vladimir Zalessky
United Russia, from the very moment of its formation, was doomed to the struggle of groups. Now it is somehow difficult to imagine that the politicians, now supporting the power vertical with all their might, poured compromising material on each other to bitterness in 1999 and in the first few months of the work of the State Duma of the third convocation. Groups of influence in the ruling party, United Russia, formed in 2001, formed naturally as a continuation of the Unity and Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) pre-election blocs that united them, stuffed according to the principle of “each creature in pairs.”
But if the absolutely artificially formed “Unity” turned out to be a set of amorphous politicians, then “Fatherland” united, first of all, supporters of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the governor’s opposition, which put a lot of effort into fighting the aged Boris Yeltsin and his entourage. It was no coincidence that it soon turned out that after the merger of the two former antagonists, it was the people of Luzhkov and his allies, the head of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and the Bashkir president Murtaza Rakhimov, who seized most of the commanding heights in the ruling party. Then such people as Vyacheslav Volodin (then leader of the Duma faction of the OVR), Oleg Morozov (deputy from Tatarstan since 1993), Andrey Isaev (one of the leaders of Fatherland in 1999) advanced to the leadership of United Russia. “There is nothing surprising in this, Luzhkov’s people were intellectually stronger than the hastily put together Unity, where they literally took those who fell into their hands,” says Alexei Mitrofanov, a long-liver of Russian politics and ex-State Duma deputy.
From Luzhkov to Sechin
However, the Kremlin could not allow the people of the Moscow mayor, who in the fall of 1999 threatened Boris Yeltsin and his entourage that they would face the fate of Ceausescu, 1 take power over the party, which the Kremlin considered its brainchild. As a result, Alexander Bespalov, a former intelligence officer, was delegated to the leadership of the United Russia party, who simultaneously took the post of head of the party's general council and head of its executive committee. However, Bespalov soon joined the ranks of supporters of the deputy head of the presidential administration, Igor Sechin, in the Kremlin, and as a manager he was seriously criticized by the party's chief ideologue, Vladislav Surkov. “Surkov regularly smashed Bespalov to smithereens at internal meetings, Bespalov could not even really object,” recalls one of the employees of the party executive committee in 2002-2003.
Six months before United Russia's triumphant 2003 campaign, the leadership of the party changed. For several days, the Kremlin seriously considered Dmitry Rogozin as a candidate for the post of head of the General Council of United Russia, but his candidacy was sharply rejected, in particular, by the then Minister of Internal Affairs and one of the leaders of the party, Boris Gryzlov. The story with Rogozin ended in embarrassment, and completely different people were delegated to the leadership - Valery Bogomolov and Yuri Volkov. Vladimir Putin personally approved the footage. Both Bogomolov and Volkov were professional security officers, and Bogomolov was a personal friend of Putin, with whom they crossed paths while still in service in Germany. Thus, a group close to the Kremlin's security forces, primarily to Igor Sechin, has sharply strengthened in the United Russia.
But at the same time, another center of influence was born in United Russia. The Kremlin finally made a strategic decision to make Boris Gryzlov the political leader of the party. Gryzlov was a figure convenient for everyone, loyal, lacking initiative and executive. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs headed the Supreme Council of the United Russia and, like any leader, began to acquire his own team.
Contractions under the rug
In 2005, Vladislav Surkov finally managed to deal a crushing blow to the positions of United Russia from the Sechin group. And Gryzlov already had some weight of his own in the party. In order to achieve the resignation of Bogomolov and Volkov, an alliance of Luzhkov, Shoigu and Gryzlov was formed in the party at the suggestion of Surkov. The formal reason for the dismissal was the rather mediocre results of regional elections, from the Kremlin's point of view, in which the average result of the party in power did not exceed 30%, and in some places United Russia lost altogether. As a result, Vyacheslav Volodin, who was considered close to Luzhkov, became the new secretary of the party's general council, and the main financial and economic body of the party, the executive committee, went to Andrei Vorobyov, the son of Deputy Shoigu Yuri Vorobyov. The Surkovs, as party functionaries admit in a conversation with The New Times, today constitute one of the two main groups in the party. The second is Boris Gryzlov's group. Many former members of the Fatherland joined the ranks of the “Surkovites”: in addition to Volodin, these are the first vice-speaker of the State Duma Oleg Morozov, a member of the presidium of the General Council Andrei Isaev, Andrei Vorobyov, secretary for youth policy Andrei Turchak and lower rank functionaries. A separate pole is the group of Boris Gryzlov, in which a well-informed source of The New Times in the party counted about 50 people. Everyone recognizes Gryzlov's right-hand man as the head of the Duma public relations department, Yuri Shuvalov, who heads the party club, the Center for Social Conservative Policy (read more about party clubs and ideologists on page 10).
“There is nothing surprising in the rise of Gryzlov, this is natural, since he is the leader of the party, and the party has really become very strong as a political player in recent years,” political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko, whose International Institute of Political Expertise has repeatedly studied influence groups, admits in an interview with The New Times. in the ruling party. Minchenko confirms that the political structure of the party is grouped around two cores. At the same time, he adds, there are a huge number of small groups in the party, many of which arise ad hoc or are limited to people from one region. “Gryzlov was strengthened by his tactical alliance with Sechin, which is no secret to anyone in the party. Gryzlov needed him to distance himself from Surkov, ”says, in turn, a former employee of the central executive committee of the party.
However, in the context of the change of power in the Kremlin, the political prospects of supporters of this group turned out to be very vague. It is no coincidence that rumors about Gryzlov's transition to the post of Deputy Prime Minister in the future government of Vladimir Putin have become more frequent.
What's the price
In addition to the two main groups in the party, there are less influential forces that should not be discounted. First of all, it is Shoigu's group, which has recently grown stronger, which is united by people from the Ministry of Emergency Situations. This includes not only the head of the executive committee, Vorobyov, but also, for example, the deputy chairman of the State Duma, Nadezhda Gerasimova, the first deputy chairman of the Duma committee on legislation, Alexander Moskalets, and some other party members. However, one of the "United Russia" in a conversation with The New Times ironically called the political ambitions of this group "passive". Andrei Vorobyov is called a possible replacement for Volodin as head of the Presidium of the General Council of United Russia. Supporters of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov remain another very large group. True, as The New Times already wrote (in No. 5 of February 4, 2008), the “Luzhkovites” suffered a decisive defeat in the party at the beginning of this year. Such loyal associates of the Moscow mayor as Konstantin Zatulin, Andrei Kokoshin, Artur Chilingarov, Ekaterina Lakhova, who headed the Duma committees in the previous State Duma, and even held the posts of deputy chairmen, were left without portfolios in the new composition of the chamber. Other members of the Moscow mayor's political team have long chosen more powerful allies in the Kremlin. The weakening of Luzhkov's team is associated with the almost predetermined departure of the mayor from the capital in the near future. There are still many functionaries at the top of United Russia who are close to the head of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiev. In many ways, with their help, Shaimiev managed to lobby for a unique for Putin's Russia agreement on the delimitation of powers with Tatarstan, which was not allowed to other regions. All governors try to have their own groups of influence, even former communists like Nikolai Maksyuta, head of the administration in Volgograd. But their interests, as a rule, do not go beyond the entrusted area. Finally, people from various corporations also play an important role in the party. For example, Gazprom, whose representative Valery Yazev is a member of the Presidium of the General Council and is also Deputy Chairman of the State Duma. The head of Russian Technologies, Sergei Chemezov, who has a group of influence in the State Duma and is a member of the Supreme Council of the party in power, also has his leverage. Oil workers are also trying to have their own groups in the party: Lukoil boasts the most significant lobby.
Stranger. Among yours?
Studying influence groups in United Russia, The New Times noticed that almost none of the party functionaries can be attributed to the team of people of President-elect Dmitry Medvedev. Of course, all members of the party in power unconditionally support Putin's successor, but none of them are connected with the new president either by personal loyalty, or by long years of service, or even by the Ozero cooperative. The only exception is, perhaps, the former Minister of Justice Pavel Krasheninnikov, who headed the system of public receptions of the Kremlin presidential candidate during the election campaign. So far, Medvedev seems like a stranger to United Russia. Which does not add weight to the elected president in the Kremlin. However, let's wait and see.
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1 The last head of communist Romania was shot with his wife in 1989.
