Quiet Talker

The first serious resignation occurred in the Medvedev government

On October 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree dismissing Regional Development Minister Oleg Govorun. The resignation at the same time turned out to be both incomprehensible (Govorun headed the ministry only in May and did not have time to do anything in his new post), and scandalous: within several weeks, reports about it were officially refuted, and Govorun, all according to the same official data , was on sick leave. According to the unofficial version, the official himself did not want to work in Medvedev’s government after criticism from Putin.

On September 26, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that rumors about Govorun’s resignation are similar to a newspaper duck. Three weeks later - on October 16 - the press secretary's opinion had not changed: he still noted in conversations with the press that the presidential administration had not received a decree on the dismissal of the minister. And already on the morning of October 17, it turned out that the order was not only received, but also signed, and Putin even managed to choose a new minister - he was the former governor of the Kostroma region, Igor Slyunyaev . What happened to Govorun and why didn’t he work well with the country’s leaders?

Man from the Shadows

In May 2012, the composition of the government was greatly updated - Dmitry Medvedev promised to introduce new people into the country's leadership, and Vladimir Putin decided not to part with a number of ministers he loved and took them with him to the presidential administration. One of the “newcomers” in the White House turned out to be Oleg Govorun, for whom the ministerial chair, apparently, became the crown of a long career in the apparatus.

Until 2011, Govorun was an extremely non-public person - he worked in various positions in the presidential administration for more than 10 years. A little over a year ago, Medvedev unexpectedly introduced Govorun as the new presidential plenipotentiary representative in the Central Federal District. This place went to him in connection with the departure of Georgy Poltavchenko to the governorship of St. Petersburg , and it is not surprising that soon Govorun began to repeat the path of this official: according to Vedomosti, the new plenipotentiary was eventually supposed to go to lead the Yaroslavl region.

Who is Igor Slyunyaev

Igor Slyunyaev began working in the government with the seemingly exotic Ministry for Cooperation with Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1996. Since then, he has been involved in regional politics a lot - for example, he was a representative of the Altai Territory in the Federation Council. From 2007 to 2012, Slyunyaev was the governor of the Kostroma region. In the 2011 elections in the Kostroma region, United Russia received less than 31 percent of the votes, after which Slyunyaev left his post at the beginning of 2012. His early resignation allowed the government to appoint Sergei Sitnikov as governor rather than hold elections in the region.

However, Medvedev considered that nine months of work in the post of overseeing the entire Central Federal District was enough for Govorun to gain experience and take a new position - Minister of Regional Development. This ministry, on the one hand, is responsible for many things in the government: for construction, territorial planning, large investment projects, federal target programs, distribution of money between the regional and federal budgets, - on the other hand, for nothing specific, because part of the functions of the ministry lies on the Ministry of Economic Development, partly on the leadership of specific regions, who know their needs better than any Moscow official.

Therefore, it is not surprising that several months before the May transfer of power from Medvedev to Putin, rumors began to circulate about the possible abolition of the ministry: instead, officials, as the Vedomosti newspaper wrote, wanted to create a separate ministry for housing and communal services and construction, and transfer part of the functions of the Ministry of Regional Development to the Ministry of Economic Development.

It is unknown who ultimately defended the previous configuration and why officials did not like the proposal for the Ministry of Construction - the media did not write about it, and the new prime minister himself did not speak in detail about the design features of his government.

Criticism of Putin

From Govorun’s activities as minister, it was not clear whether this department would be any different from the Ministry of Regional Development under the former head of the department, Viktor Basargin . Little has been heard about him at all - in recent months the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Labor have come to the fore, arguing both about the essence of the pension reform and about the budget for the next year.

Govorun’s few interviews with Russian media also did not answer the question about the role of the ministry in Medvedev’s government. According to them, however, one got the impression that Oleg Govorun came to power not to invent, but first of all to fulfill - in any case, clauses like “carrying out the instructions of the president”, “in pursuance of the instructions of the president”, “requires [...] additional discussion with the presidential administration" appear suspiciously often in his speeches.

It was all the more surprising that it was the president who, unexpectedly for everyone, on September 18 publicly criticized Oleg Govorun, Dmitry Livanov from the Ministry of Education and Science and Maxim Topilin from the Ministry of Labor (all from among the “newcomers” of the government). Putin said all three had done a poor job of ensuring the budget reflected his campaign promises and asked that they be reprimanded. Footage of the dissatisfied president was immediately shown on central television channels, so that the entire country, which previously did not know Govorun, Livanov and Topilin either by name or by sight, believed that these three were the worst performers in the government. At the same time, the fact that the budget is primarily the patrimony of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development, and various kinds of political decisions are made rather by deputy prime ministers, has somehow disappeared into the shadows. But for some reason Putin did not scold them.

And from that moment something strange began: while Livanov and Topilin dutifully received their reprimands, Govorun almost immediately went on sick leave. Already on the evening of September 25, Forbes, citing anonymous sources, reported that the head of the Ministry of Regional Development was offended by what he believed was an undeserved administrative penalty and wrote a letter of resignation.

One month late

Officials at various levels have repeatedly denied the fact that the application was submitted. Nevertheless, rumors about his imminent resignation continued to circulate - Govorun still did not show up for work, which could mean either his serious illness (but then it would have become known in advance) or his reluctance to lead the ministry.

On September 28, Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on the resignation of Govorun’s deputy, Anatoly Popov. There was a great temptation to assume that it was he who became the victim of Putin’s criticism, and Govorun would soon return to his previous position, but another half month passed, and the official was still on sick leave, avoided communicating with journalists and did not bring any clarity to the situation regarding his future fate .

As a result, on October 16, the Vedomosti newspaper, citing anonymous sources, wrote that Govorun had been fired after all. According to her, Putin, when reprimanding the minister, actually scolded him not for the budget, but for eliminating the consequences of the flood in Krymsk, but then the story turns out even stranger: publicly the president talks about one reason for the reprimand, but insiders talk about something completely different .

One way or another, rumors of resignation were once again denied by Dmitry Peskov, and sources from other media began to assure that the minister really wants to resign, but other officials are trying to keep him in this position almost by force. By October 17, apparently, it became clear that Govorun would no longer work in his new place, and the Kremlin issued an official press release about his dismissal.

Business media mainly try to present this whole story as a personal conflict: one punished, the other was offended. For example, is convinced of long-time chronicler of Putin’s life Andrei Kolesnikov from Kommersant this, who even compared Govorun with the former head of the presidential administration Alexander Voloshin , who resigned from his post after the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky .

Such explanations seem a little illogical: a good ten years spent in the presidential administration should have taught Oleg Govorun, if not obedience, then at least the ability to follow the rules of the game of Vladimir Putin. These rules often consist in the fact that public bullying is needed mainly to attract attention to a socially significant issue or to increase the rating of the president himself. As a rule, such a beating does not lead to any career consequences for the “offender.”

Strange in this story are the attempts of the government and the Kremlin to pretend that Govorun remains in his position as if nothing had happened. The resignation of any minister a few months after his appointment will inevitably be interpreted as a weakness of the government and, indirectly, of the prime minister, even if he had nothing to do with it. However, if the same resignation stretches out for almost a month and is accompanied by information leaks, omissions, and denials, then not only the government, but the entire leadership of the country as a whole looks weak: it turns out that one minister who was offended by the president was able to paralyze the work of an entire department for several weeks, and the authorities do not have the strength to either quickly fire him or persuade him to stay.

Alexander Polivanov

Lenta.ru: In Russia: Quiet Govorun