Dmitry Medvedev was concerned about the shortage of management personnel. At a special meeting in the Kremlin, he gave an introductory speech in which he acknowledged the lack of a system for training and rotating managers, called for developing criteria for evaluating candidates and institutions for personnel monitoring, as well as creating a database of the best specialists and a "presidential quota" that Medvedev would personally form (for more details, see the articles on pages A1 and A3).

The performance can be assessed in two planes. Medvedev's tactical goal is most likely to strengthen his personal influence on the process of personnel appointments in the highest echelons of power. It is natural for any new leader to want to bring his team of like-minded people, to put proven people in key positions. In fact, on the eve of the presidential inauguration, experts were wondering who Medvedev would bring and whether he would succeed in an independent personnel policy. So far, three months later, the results are not very impressive. The new "Medvedevites" in high positions can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

It is no coincidence that special attention is paid to governors: despite the fact that it is the president who approves candidates for the post of head of the region, the institutional influence on governors from the prime minister has recently increased – a specially created government commission will evaluate their effectiveness. Even threats against negligent governors are heard from Medvedev and Putin in parallel.

But there is a completely obvious strategic problem, which Medvedev diagnosed absolutely correctly: after the rejection of the Soviet system of training management personnel, a new Russian one was not created. As in many other areas of state responsibility, manual control operates here. During the years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, the main criteria for appointment to the post became, in descending order, personal acquaintance with the president, St. Petersburg origin, experience in the special services, recommendations from close friends of the president - and then everything else, including professional competence.

Attempts to expand this personnel reserve have not been radical: there are already many smart young people in non-key positions in government structures, but the glass ceiling for outsiders still exists.

The desire to reform personnel work is not enough. Medvedev's intention to "personally" assess the qualifications of candidates included in the presidential quota actually repeats Putin's scheme, if it does not contradict the very idea of creating an institutional system for training reserves. Even under the Politburo, the personnel selection system was more impersonal.

Mass network structures are needed for the system of personnel reproduction – usually this role is played by parties, which are not ready for such a role in modern Russian conditions. United Russia declares a certain list of promising personnel, but the party itself has long been accused of purely careerist criteria for formation, and the list of its management hopes will suffer the same fate. In the West, management talent is demonstrated by work in party or municipal bureaucratic structures in conditions of real competition, which bears fruit during regular elections.

In today's Russia, the largest resource of personnel for the state is business, but the relationship between it and the government is spoiled. It will require rehabilitation of business, on the one hand, and, as Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Institute of Applied Politics, "monetization of benefits for officials" - on the other: their real salary remains opaque, elite housing, transport, all sorts of payments form its latent part. If it were clearly named, this would partly remove the problem of the difficulty of competition between the state and business for personnel.

The institutes of personnel monitoring named by Medvedev are certainly necessary, as are authoritative schools for training the elite. But young people willingly go to the existing promising universities with an eye on warm positions in the state. The question is how to make their motivation initially constructive.

From the editor: Personnel crisis