Lifting clan

There are enough relatives, friends, classmates and colleagues in the government and in general in the Russian elite, but is this the only way to determine a place in the social elevator?

The government has been formed, but the discussion about how the appointments are connected with the interests of this or that "Kremlin tower" continues. It's not that these arguments have no grounds at all. Clanism, corporatism and nepotism are firmly integrated in our decision-making system, including personnel decisions. But at the same time, one should not go to the other extreme and say that applicants for key positions in the government did not have any other competitive advantages, except for affiliation with one or another group of influence. Rather, this is a certain candidate minimum, without which they were not allowed to be selected for positions at all. In a situation where each of someone's relative, classmate or colleague, the final choice willy-nilly is influenced by objective merits.

Here, for example, Yevgeny Dietrich, who moved to the chair of the Minister of Transport. Can it be denied that the two most high-profile cases in which he dealt with as deputy minister are related to the interests of the Rotenberg family? Of course, it is impossible, because this is the Platon system and the road part of the Crimean bridge. But the facts cannot be denied: the bridge was commissioned ahead of schedule, the president has already swept across it and ordinary motorists are driving, and Platon is working, and social tensions around it were extinguished with less political costs than, for example, in the case of those near Moscow garbage riots.

Or the new Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Dmitry Kobylkin. Do you have any questions for him? There is, and Novaya Gazeta in particular - we talked about the participation of a person who looks like the governor of Yamal in the forbidden Arctic fishing. (Details are in No. 17 of February 17, 2017).

Is it possible to argue that Kobylkin is connected with Novatek, and therefore with Gennady Timchenko, an old acquaintance of the President? Well, what is there to argue about, he officially worked in this company, and during his governorship, Yamal was and remained a key region for Novatek. But does this mean that Kobylkin was an ineffective governor and did not deserve to be appointed to the government? Here you have to look at things. And things are such that Kobylkin and his former employers from Novatek built and launched the Yamal LNG plant for the production of liquefied natural gas, without any government support and without missing deadlines. The port of Sabetta was also built on Yamal, and this is a very important element of such a state megaproject as the Northern Sea Route. It is also planned to build a bridge across the Ob, which will connect the Yamal Peninsula with the mainland.

In general, Kobylkin knows what large-scale infrastructure projects are. In addition, being historically closer to Timchenko and Mikhelson, he learned to find a balance between the key players in the oil and gas sector. After all, Gazprom, Rosneft, and Lukoil are actively working in the region. Therefore, the likelihood that he will be far from the worst minister is high.

Finally, Dmitry Patrushev, whose appointment as Minister of Agriculture caused the most heated discussion, including in Novaya Gazeta. The case when you do not need to guess which of the country's leaders he is close to. And in this situation, the most difficult thing is to impartially evaluate the results of the work of Patrushev Jr. at the head of Rosselkhozbank. Especially when the state regularly allocates money for its additional capitalization. And it has been since the time when the bank was headed by Dmitry Nikolayevich.

But the lion's share of state support went to cover reserves for problem loans issued by the former management of the financial institution. That is, if Patrushev leaves the bank, as it is believed, not in a brilliant state, it is not because he “ruined” it.

There are other interesting statistics that are not directly related to financial performance. According to Vedomosti, under Patrushev, one and a half thousand criminal cases were initiated, of which 68 were against bank employees, the rest against unscrupulous clients.

Here one could be ironic that the son went to his father, but, for example, Sberbank, which is headed by the unconditional liberal Gref, is no less active in protecting his rights with the involvement of security officials.

Finally, one cannot discount the sanctions that have cut off the bank from Western funding. Here, state support was objectively required, and, by the way, under Patrushev, the bank's turn to the domestic market, to attract deposits from citizens, was generally completed.

In principle, after such a minister as Tkachev, the figure of Patrushev, who has already encountered inefficiency and theft in the agrarian sector at his previous job, does not look so out of place. As well as the decision to classify part of the information about the activities of the Russian Agricultural Bank after the next round of Western sanctions. By the way, the British Parliament announced its intention not only to fight "dirty money from Russia", but also to limit investments in the sovereign debt of the Russian Federation if the securities are placed by banks that have fallen under the sanctions.

The bench is really not too long to count on the arrival of managers with a sterile background to key positions.

Domestic thought works according to the well-known principle of "effective management": "We have no other writers for you." What are - about those and write.

P.S.

The editorial board of Novaya is open to different points of view and assessments