“Political Trumpet” by Georgy Poltavchenko

Putin vigorously removes those governors who seem to him the weakest

Once, Lisa Peskova, the daughter of the presidential press secretary, was tried to be pulled out of sleepy Paris and accustomed to work. Naturally, in the field of PR: it is hereditary in their family. Alas, the young lady, brought to the shipyard, confused shipbuilding with legal proceedings, and she had to be urgently evacuated back to Paris, where she yearns to this day.

Unlike an immature girl, an experienced statesman Georgy Poltavchenko is able to distinguish shipbuilding from legal proceedings, and thanks to this, he will take the position of head of the United Shipbuilding Company, to which he had to be urgently evacuated from the post of governor.

As a matter of fact, Poltavchenko could have been evacuated anywhere. In a normal political system, such a governor would easily lose the election. But in our system of coordinates, until recently, any bear easily won in any regional elections if he was from United Russia. The situation has changed after the recent elections in Primorye, Khabarovsk Territory, Khakassia and Vladimir Region. Putin began vigorously to remove those governors who seemed to him the weakest. And in this situation, it was hard not to notice that in his hometown, a person sitting in the voivodeship was not just weak, but capable of easily creating any problem out of the blue.

In September, Smolny managed to allow rallies against pension reform, although the Kremlin did not support such "liberalism". The governor had to win back, but it was done so rudely that everyone could see the chaos reigning at the top. The "political trumpet" that burst before the rally on the square near the Finland Station became a symbol of the absolute cynicism of the authorities, who not only suppressed the legal right of St. Petersburg residents to protest, but did it in an openly mocking form.

It should be noted that the most striking feature of Putin's current personnel policy is the senseless change of one appointee for another. When the economy was growing, and it seemed that the country was capable of developing under any rule, the governors were sent to the regions according to the tradition "to feed". What was fundamentally important was not whether the “voivode” would be able to raise the region, but which group of interests would “sit down” on financial flows. However, in recent years, when the economy has stagnated, it took the governors to work. Alas, no one could do this, and Putin began to feverishly change the old for the young, believing, apparently, that it would be better this way.

True, there was no young one for St. Petersburg. Perhaps because Alexander Beglov had been in line for the governorship for a long time. And since Putin, in the depths of his soul, cannot but understand that positive changes cannot be expected under the system that he created, it makes no difference whether to put an old acquaintance or a young nominee in Smolny.

A sad trend has emerged in St. Petersburg: each new mayor is worse than the previous one. Not in the sense that he manages the city worse (under the current system, everyone will cope equally poorly), but rather in a personal sense.

Anatoly Sobchak was a bright, talkative politician. Vladimir Yakovlev is a gray business executive, who, however, pretended to take into account the opinion of the townspeople. Valentina Matviyenko positioned herself as the sovereign's servant, for whom only Putin's opinion matters. And Georgy Poltavchenko did not even consider it necessary to position himself, since he hardly understood what it was.

Will Alexander Beglov be able to change the current trend? On the one hand, it is not so difficult to do this after Poltavchenko. It is difficult to come up with a worse mayor than a newly-minted shipbuilder. But, on the other hand, there is nothing in the current political system that would encourage governors to do a good job or at least show their respect to the region.

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