General Satan

Sergei Shoigu became the most influential security official in Russia

The resignation of Anatoly Serdyukov from the post of head of the Ministry of Defense and the appointment of Sergei Shoigu in his place led to the emergence of a new, unusually powerful center of power in the Russian government. General Shoigu is considered a man absolutely loyal to President Vladimir Putin, while being an extremely popular character in Russian political folklore. It is not yet known how successful the transition to the Ministry of Defense will be for Shoigu, but there is no doubt that he is an independent and extremely ambitious figure in the political sense.

Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu is perhaps the most famous Tuvan in Russia. In his small homeland, they even wrote an epic about him, with a very complimentary content: it tells about the Kuzhuget tribe and a child named Sergek (“cheerful”), who, having soared into the sky, returned in the form of “a man in cast iron armor.” After this, the heroes (the main one of whom was Puttug Moge Delegei Eezi, “who owns the world”) said to Sergek: “You will be the savior of our land.” The cult of Shoigu’s personality generally flourishes in Tuva - a street, a collective farm and a mountain peak there are named after Sergei Kuzhugetovich. And 57-year-old Shoigu himself, who comes from a family of a hereditary nomad and Soviet party leader, does not forget his roots.

A native of the city of Chadan, Shoigu, nicknamed Shaitan, moved from Tuva to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where he quickly grew professionally, married successfully and acquired a number of high-ranking supporters. Then he moved to Moscow, created the Ministry of Emergency Situations, but even then he did not break ties with Tuva. In her farewell interview with Novaya Gazeta, Lyudmila Narusova, who represented Tuva in the Federation Council for a long time, argued that it was “the all-powerful Minister Shoigu” who played almost the main role during the 2010 Tuvan referendum , supporting the assignment of the title “president” to the leader of the republic. . Shoigu's sister Larisa represents Tuva in the Duma, and the Minister of Defense himself heads the Tuvan diaspora in Moscow.

Shoigu, however, did not extend his Tuvan connections to the federal level - the creator of the Ministry of Emergency Situations managed to travel around the country and brought down his own team. And there is no merit to the Tuvan homeland that Shoigu eventually grew into an “all-powerful minister” - his wife’s relatives helped him move up the party line; Shoigu met his faithful ally Yuri Vorobyov through the Krasnoyarsk regional committee of the CPSU. In Moscow, Shoigu was completely lucky: having decided for himself that he should unconditionally support Boris Yeltsin in his conflicts with political rivals in 1991 and 1993, Shoigu forever secured the support of the future first president of Russia. In 1999, Shoigu's loyalty was inherited by Vladimir Putin , so that he was again left without an influential patron.

On the basis of the Russian Rescue Corps, a shell organization created in 1991, Shoigu built the RSFSR State Committee for Emergency Situations, which was given control over the civil defense forces with all the weapons, infrastructure and personnel of about 20 thousand people. The new security department came under the personal subordination of Boris Yeltsin, and its powers clearly went beyond the scope of the “rescuers”: Shoigu participated in the resolution of armed conflicts in North and South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Ingushetia.

In November 1994, Shoigu became the Russian Minister of Civil Defense, Emergency Situations and Disaster Relief (he only left this post in the spring of 2012, when he was appointed governor of the Moscow region). Immediately after the reorganization, Shoigu submitted an application to the Russian government with a proposal to introduce general positions in the ministry. For himself, Shoigu even demanded the rank of army general. However, Shoigu’s ardor was pacified, and the former lieutenant was content with the rank of major general. In May 1995, Yeltsin sweetened the pill by promoting Shoigu to lieutenant general.

Shoigu’s unconditional loyalty to Russian presidents eventually brought the main Russian rescuer into politics. Back in 1993, he was included in the preliminary list of Russia's Choice (Yeltsin's party), and during the election campaigns of 1995-1996, Shoigu already actively supported Yeltsin's team. But he really got a taste of politics in 1999, when the Kremlin appointed him leader of Unity, a party project created as a counterweight to Vladimir Putin's opponents in the Duma. was created on the basis of Unity and Fatherland - All Russia Party activities turned out to be so exciting for Shoigu that in 2001, when United Russia , the disappointment of Shoigu, who was forced to cede his brainchild to his enemies, was genuine and was easily captured by photojournalists of the Russian media . General Shoigu turned out to be a politician, if not by profession, then certainly by vocation.

Sergei Shoigu. Photo Kommersant, Dmitry Azarov

Shoigu swallowed the insult, and in 2003 he was already working hard on the image of EdRa, noting, in particular, a proposal to deprive Russians of citizenship who did not participate in the elections three times without good reason. For his loyalty in 2003, Shoigu received another piece of candy from the authorities - the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations was finally awarded the long-awaited military rank of army general. By this time, the formation of the Ministry of Emergency Situations was completed through the absorption of the State Fire Service, so Shoigu returned to his department from the abyss of political struggle as a hardware winner.

Since then, Shoigu has repeatedly taken part in various elections, consistently speaking on the side of Vladimir Putin, but he has not demonstrated much zeal in the political process, in every possible way separating politics from his work in the Ministry of Emergency Situations. It cannot be said, however, that his influence on the political process has weakened in any way since 2003. Supporters and former deputies of Shoigu worked in the Duma, Yuri Vorobyov, who was Shoigu’s deputy for more than ten years, entrenched himself in the Federation Council, and his son Andrei Vorobyov became a key functionary of United Russia in the obedient State Duma (it was he, by the way, who headed the Moscow region after how Shoigu received an appointment to the Ministry of Defense). And although Shoigu’s efforts to prevent disasters were repeatedly criticized for ineffectiveness, and corruption scandals in the department thundered throughout the country, this did not affect the image of Shoigu himself. The trust rating of Russia's main rescuer was not shaken even by the fires of 2010, which the Ministry of Emergency Situations was unable to cope with. Therefore, having become the governor of the Moscow region, Shoigu somehow naturally fit into the image of a regional politician and in six months managed not only to make a number of populist statements (from the demand to move the capital to Siberia to financial claims against Moscow), but also to show the makings of an excellent lobbyist.

For the ambitious Shoigu, the status of a Moscow region leader picking up crumbs from the Moscow table was frankly petty and in some ways even insulting. But with his transfer to the Ministry of Defense, everything falls into place - the former head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations acquired the previously unattainable but secretly cherished status of “meta-general”. The rescuer received direct control of a gigantic department, powers and financial flows unimaginable for the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, while simultaneously maintaining control over the Ministry of Emergency Situations (he jokingly prepared a clamp for his successor ) and the Moscow region through his loyal supporters. Such a personnel somersault indicates that Shoigu managed to secure exceptional support from the Russian President. Until now, no one has received such powers under Vladimir Putin. In a hardware sense, Shoigu now simply has no one to compare with, since not a single politician in Russia has been able to reach such heights while retaining his chair, his team, and the sympathy of ordinary people. And this makes Sergei Shoigu (and with him his supporters) a key player in Russian politics, even if his military post does not imply this.

For 20 years, Sergei Shoigu has demonstrated an exceptional recipe for survival in the Russian power corporation: do your job, be loyal, swallow grievances - and you will receive your general's star. The Tuvan, who so anxiously sought trousers with stripes, climbed to the very top of the Russian hierarchy of security forces. Now only the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief is higher, but until now President Vladimir Putin has given no reason to doubt that he does not intend to share power with anyone.

Anton Klyuchkin

General Satan

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Lenta.ru: In Russia: General Shaitan