The week that has passed since Vladimir Putin's famous Pikalevo blitzkrieg has shown that there are many workers in the country who want to see the Prime Minister. Also, ways have emerged in which the authorities will try to solve the problems of single-industry towns without sending the Prime Minister on a continuous business trip. This is giving additional powers to governors and information policy.

Yesterday, the Governor of Primorye, Sergei Darkin, signed an agreement with representatives of the owner of the company "Russian Tungsten" (the debt to employees is 6.3 million rubles, residents of the village of Svetlogorye wrote to Putin and threatened to go to the highway), providing for the transfer of fixed assets to lease for five years to whomever the administration of the region indicates. This will be a state-owned enterprise. A little earlier, a commercial bank of Primorye, under the guarantee of the governor, allocated a loan to fully pay off the wage arrears of the employees of "Russian Tungsten". It is unlikely that the state enterprise will be able to establish effective work, but it is obvious that we are seeing a model experience of solving the problem by the governor. Previously, the heads of regions were afraid to take the initiative, fearing, in particular, influential Moscow owners. And now the Governor of the Yaroslavl Region, Sergei Vakhrukov, boasts that he called Oleg Deripaska and reminded him that he owns the Gavrilov-Yamsky Flax Mill, the problems of which would be good to solve. Federalism is developing before our eyes.

The threat of President Medvedev, who promised to fire governors, is also an argument. But firing governors is a labor-intensive issue, since the government is experiencing a serious shortage of personnel (which Medvedev has also repeatedly spoken about). On the other hand, governors objectively have fewer administrative and financial resources than the prime minister. They will not be able to correct the situation in all cases, much less correct it systematically and for a long time. For their actions to be at least somewhat effective, Putin needs to regularly repeat the "treatment" in one region or another.

The public execution of an oligarch (given that the solution to the problem is beneficial to the oligarch) has a great PR effect. In fact, the fact that the Pikalevo story received wide coverage in the media before Putin's visit was used (organized?) by state propagandists to the fullest extent. A logical continuation of such a campaign would be Putin touring the country with the least beloved oligarchs and officials. Oleg Deripaska is not enough for everyone - Anatoly Chubais, Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Zurabov and others will have to be involved. Local actors can also be involved. It is possible, however, that verbal reprimands in front of the camera will cease to be interesting to the viewer and scenes of violence will have to be included in the performance (instead of blood - tomato juice). Such political wrestling would be a success, but it will also get boring. What to do next? Organize public executions?

Seriously speaking, control over information plays a key role in the authorities' tactics to curb protest activity. If the governor fails to solve the problem and the owner is not afraid of calls from Moscow, we are unlikely to see a wide discussion of the case in the central media. After all, even now, along with Pikalevo, Svetlogorye, Baikalsk and Rubtsovsk (the most discussed points of workers' protest), there are places that are almost never written about, but where the situation is similar. The Gavrilov-Yamsky Plant, which Deripaska does not remember, is threatened with closure. In the Voronezh Region, workers of the Semiluki Refractory Plant (the wage arrears are about 30 million rubles) promise to weld the gates of the enterprise shut.

And there are also state-owned enterprises that have the same problems as private ones. There have already been protests by workers at military plants in the Northern Fleet, and wage arrears are also a common occurrence at other state-owned defense enterprises. It is not clear who to threaten and who to execute in these cases.

From the editor: Russian wrestling