All power to the clans

The communications holding Minchenko Consulting presented the report “Vladimir Putin’s Big Government and the Politburo 2.0” . Based on the results of a survey of 60 experts, the authors of the reports came to the conclusion that “Russian government is a conglomerate of clans and groups that compete with each other for resources.”

All clans are grouped around the eight most influential people close to President Vladimir Putin: Deputy Prime Minister and head of Rosneft Igor Sechin, the tandem of Gennady Timchenko and Yuri Kovalchuk, who have their own interests in the fuel and energy complex, General Director of Russian Technologies Sergei Chemezov, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, former vice -Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Vyacheslav Volodin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In this system, Putin himself is assigned the role of arbiter in resolving controversial issues between clans. In addition, there are areas of Putin’s direct control, namely: “issues of long-term gas contracts, management of the gas industry and Gazprom itself, as well as control over systemically important banks (VEB, VTB, Sberbank).”

At the moment, the ruling elite, according to the authors of the report, in addition to management tasks, is “focused on ensuring its stability over a long period of time” by converting power into property and transferring this property by inheritance, as well as weeding out undesirable members of the elite and encouraging desirable ones .

PublicPost spoke with the author of the report, Evgeniy Minchenko.

- Who are your experts?

- These are people who enter the Russian political elite. This is big business and officials, and those who are surrounded by the so-called members and candidates for members of the Politburo.

- What is the fundamental novelty of the report?

- The novelty of the report is determined by the fundamental novelty of the situation.

- Why did you conduct this research? Who ordered the report?

- This is the model that we use for our internal analytics when developing certain projects. We just decided to make some of our internal analytics public.

- The report states that “the system should periodically create incentives to redistribute benefits in favor of successful and distinguished members.” And you highlight three projects on the basis of which this total redistribution of benefits will take place, namely “new privatization”, “Greater Moscow” and “Development of Siberia and the Far East”. What's the main thing? Where are contradictions possible?

- The struggle will be for the privatization of assets to the right people and at a comfortable price. Now groups are accumulating resources; there are companies that already have a cache and have serious resources to participate in the new privatization. Well, for example, the quiet and inconspicuous Surgutneftegaz, which has accumulated serious money. Prokhorov can act quite seriously as an ally of one or another nomenklatura group. Sechin is now trying to accumulate money from Rosneftegaz to purchase new assets for this company. Accordingly, Dvorkovich is fighting against him as one of the representatives of the Medvedev group.

- How will this affect the country’s political course? Previously, there was often talk about the split of the elite into those who advocate liberal reforms and those who hold more conservative views?

- What split? What do you? Yes, there was some kind of game. Well, for example, there are groups that are doing well with media resources, and there are those that have no media resources at all. For example, the group of Sechin or Chemezov. Naturally, those groups that have media resources are interested in public discussion on certain issues that interest them. Or, for example, there are groups that are aimed at stability, an inertial scenario. And someone needs, for example, a conflict with the West in order to be able to offer their unique services as a mediator in achieving new agreements and compromise. But such that there is a split in the elites, so that someone wants to radically change something? There is no such thing. In general, most of the elites are focused on more or less gradual changes.

- Does the report talk about an increase in the effectiveness of mass and media campaigns? What do you mean?

- This growth has already occurred. This means that conflicts between certain groups of the Politburo will increasingly spill over into the public sphere. We see this already now in the example of the confrontation around the fuel and energy complex group, when certain moves are leaked to the public. On the one hand there is Sechin, on the other there is the anti-Sechin coalition, the flagship of which today is Dvorkovich.

And these campaigns are massive because they are associated with bringing people out into the streets, with the active involvement of society in the discussion using the mass media.

- As one of the tasks of the existing elite, do you highlight the preservation of this elite’s positions in the long term, largely through the transfer of property by inheritance, the creation of some semblance of an aristocracy? How will this happen?

- They are already doing this. Just look at how many children of our business elite, as well as the bureaucratic and security elite, head certain large companies and become presidents of state banks. The process is underway.

- What about the legalization of foreign property?

- This is the problem so far. The main tool here is the exchange of assets, but so far few have managed to successfully carry out these transactions. The deal between Rosneft and BP was torpedoed, joint ventures between Rosneft and Total and ExxonMobil took place, but this is not an exchange of assets, that is the fundamental difference. Legitimation can only happen when foreign companies, preferably high-status ones, become co-shareholders, but this has not happened yet, and this is the point of vulnerability of the current ruling elite.

- Are representatives of the elite guided only by their personal interests when making decisions, ignoring state and public interests? Is society only a resource for them?

- It's all complicated. I think that one way or another, these people, for the most part, have their own ideas about the public good. Putin has the same thing, but, obviously, for Kudrin, the social effect of his activities has been very important lately. If we continue the logical chain: they handed everything over to the children, that is, the children will be part of the ruling elite, that is, they cannot care what country the children live in. I am a very practical person, philosophy is not my business, so I cannot say anything about the moral side of the issue.