Admitted that it was wrong, but still proud

The editor -in -chief of Kholoda Taisiya Bekbulatova - about Gleb Pavlovsky, a man who "created Putin"

On February 26, Gleb Pavlovsky died - the most famous political strategist in the modern history of Russia. He worked for Yeltsin, and then helped Putin, advised Yanukovych and the daughter of Nazarbayev. In 2011, after the “castling”, Pavlovsky became an opponent of the regime, participated in the election campaign of Mikhail Prokhorov and, without renouncing the title of man who “created Putin”, more than once publicly admitted that he regrets his main “project”. Five years ago, the editor -in -chief of Kholoda, Taisiya Bekbulatova, wrote the “full story of Gleb Pavlovsky” for Medusa, but really this story ended only the day before yesterday.

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As a journalist, I was always fascinated by the figure of Gleb Pavlovsky: as one biography can contain a link in the political affairs in Soviet times and the status of an architect of the Putin regime, and everyday life of a critical speaking head on Echo of Moscow. Working on Pavlovsky’s profile five years ago, I spent many hours with him in his small office in Maly Gnezdnikovsky Lane - and, it seems, understood him a little better.

Pavlovsky grew up in the era of stagnation, which drove the active people crazy, and in the absence of any real policy in the country spent time first in Odessa, and then in Moscow to build utopian ideas and theories about the future of the USSR, weakly related to real life. His views have been transformed many times, and the ideas of reforming the state replaced one another. He behaved desperately boldly, then he cowardly and made a deal with the bodies.

The records of the Pavlovsky of that time cause the effect of recognition: “There are no new ideas; Leaving the country is ashamed; There is nowhere to go. The animal sense of the impasse is a blockage in its own biography. ” In the process of escaping from a close biography, Pavlovsky managed to visit the dissident in Odessa, a carpenter in Moscow, exiled in the Komi Republic. At the same time, in exile, he fell into a state of “sovereign fury”: “He wrote in the Politburo and in the KGB treatises with teachings, how to save the USSR, stubbornly calling it Russia. The local alcoholic is a operator read them and filed them to my business. So we corresponded with history. ” From Komi, Pavlovsky left the hope of becoming an adviser to power and changing it in this way.

His dream came true: a restructuring happened, Yeltsin came to power, and the obvious gift of Pavlovsky to come up with and use political schemes came in handy. Pavlovsky collided with political technology in the early 1990s, participating in the work of the Gaidar Center for Reforms, where, according to him, the “indecent” question was first posed: how to sell the reforms to the “stupid” population so that it does not interfere? The idea to “patronize” the people as an object of Pavlovsky did not push it away, but seemed interesting, because he was sure that most people wanted them to be controlled.

In the 1996 elections, Pavlovsky was engaged in the fact that he created the demonic image of Gennady Zyuganov and his party - which he himself, not without pleasure, later said: "I entered wild excitement by the end of the campaign and, probably, was even psychologically ready to set fire to the Larek and say that the Communists did it." Pavlovsky was delighted with the opportunity to influence the future with the help of political technologies: it was finally a great thing that he wanted to do all his life.

It must be understood, however, that the possibility of changing reality with such wide strokes was due not only to the exceptional abilities of Pavlovsky in political technologies, but also by the era itself: it was a time of freedom and reassembly of the country and society.

On the other hand, it was a time of incredible naivety: Soviet people who came out of the bowels of a planned economy and a rigidly recorded political system were very easy to deceive. Many conditions were made on this naivety. People who believed in an advertisement of miracles on TV and MMM, later just as easily believed in the young and strong leader from the FSB, who would protect the country from terrorists. In this sense, political technologists from the 1990s, some of which were even called brilliant, in many respects were the same beneficiaries of the credulity of the young Russian society. “To sculpt reality” could be almost without effort.

I think Pavlovsky understood this - it is unlikely that in 2012 he hoped that his outstanding abilities would lead Mikhail Prokhorov, in the presidential campaign of which he participated, to power. The doors to power by that time were firmly sealed, and the windows were laid with bricks.

Pavlovsky all his life was as if enchanted by power - and easily tolerated this feeling to people who have the power. At first he did everything to strengthen Yeltsin’s position (although before that he was in opposition to him), then he practically fell in love with Putin, as children are in love with a new doll, and began to associate Russia and its future with him. Pavlovsky was probably sure at that time that he could create from Putin the ruler he dreams of. Probably, in the same attack of excitement as in the 1996 elections, he did not notice - or did not want to notice - that Putin was already a ready -made product, and not a piece of clay, and by his actions Pavlovsky did not change him, but only his image for the public, providing him with a long life in power.

Carried away by the task of preserving Putin at the head of state, Pavlovsky has repeatedly offered the Kremlin ideas and solutions that irrevocably changed the political system of Russia - and not for the best; At the same time, he did it so easily and enthusiastically, as if playing a computer game. That is how the Communist Party turned into a branch of “United Russia”, so the expressions “vertical of power” and “Putin majority” appeared, and the second elections of Putin were held without competition. Pavlovsky, according to his admission, even proposed to introduce a state of emergency in the late 1990s and endow the government with dictatorial powers, and then recommended to demonstratively plant a couple of oligarchs. He liked to feel like a demiurge - even when there was no need to tighten the system.

Then nothing still foreshadowed that on the same day on the Spassky gate he simply would not work for the pass and he would be on the other side of the wall - where the windows are laid with bricks. Once Pavlovsky himself put them there-from the inside.

He put all his talent and extraordinary mind in closing the window and opportunities for others that he himself was waiting for half his life. When we talked in 2018, he admitted that it was wrong - but at the same time almost pride in his voice was heard for those witty decisions that he had repeatedly helped out the Kremlin for 15 years.

I do not know if this has changed when Putin missiles flew into his native Odessa.