Translated material
Protection of idiocratic principles
The Public Chamber of the Russian Federation to guard obscurantism and presidential grants
Peter Sarukhanov / "New Gazeta"
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Idiocracy is a concept that describes a society in which decisions are made by low -qualified specialists, which often has negative consequences for society.
Many readers, having familiarized themselves with the subtitle of this article and seeing in it the phrase “Public Chamber of the Russian Federation”, probably remembered this body for the first time in several years and were extremely surprised. At least the fact that it still exists and even creates informational reasons worthy of media coverage.
However, on the status of an unintelligible, forever sleeping institute, the Public Chamber was doomed from the very moment of his birth in 2005, when it was presented to reporters of the deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov as her personal project.
During the briefing, with all his inherent “sericardinal” frankness, he said that he personally selected members of the first composition of the chamber, that, in essence, there would be no serious powers (and even more so the levers of control of the authorities), and the guarantees of the effective work of the body are that “if the recommendations of members of the chamber are quite intrusive, then they will have to execute them.”
But even this uncomfortable obsession is nowhere to be taken from the Public Chamber, since the president claims a quarter of its members, and candidates for the remaining places are nominated by organizations and regional chambers loyal Kremlin.
“The purpose of the creation of OP is to first divide public organizations on“ useful ”and“ harmful ”,“ sheep ”and“ goats ”. And then, using the “right” social activists included in the ward, to organize their support for official policy, ”the famous Russian human rights defenders said in the open letter of the OP project in 2005.
And for this purpose, in contrast to the “protection of democratic principles” and “rights and freedoms of citizens”, which was stated in the Federal Law , the body really successfully copes to this day.
The Presidential Administration managed to create a fully controlled mulia of civil society, imitating violent activities and the debate of the parties, but at the same time not a step away from the General Line of the party. In the most literal interpretation of this expression: in 2016, OP, formed to “coordinate” the interests of citizens and public associations, openly supported the primaries of “United Russia” and its participants. And in 2023, OP members were gratitude to Vladimir Putin for his attitude with the understanding of “what is happening” and falling for such a fundamental position for international sanctions.
If something has always allocated OP against the backdrop of the rest, meaningless-service Kremlin projects like the same Surkovsky movement “ours” (with which the chamber was quite close in the 2000s), it is traditionally the “star” composition of the organ. It was originally conceived as a kind of advisory elite club, almost indispensable advice, in which Russians should sit “who have special merits to the state and society”. Moreover, extremely disinterested-after all, it does not imply any privileges or even a salary of a member of a member of the O Jure.
But “special merits” for getting into the ward, of course, are not enough, since the main criterion for passing an administrative filter for candidates is not even taking into account the unambiguous revelations of Surkov about “compatibility with colleagues” - we can call their trustworthiness. So it was in 2005 with Alina Kabaeva, Pavel Gusev and Leonid Roshal in the first composition, and this continues in 2024-with Sergey Karyakin, Peter Lundstrm, Sergey Lukyanenko and other sympathetic “what is happening” by citizens in the eighth composition.
What do they all do there?
A significant part of the members is absolutely nothing that two ex-secretages of the body complained about at once. It does not have any discipline, and the procedure for exclusion from the OP is used only in special cases .
“OP is built on the basis of personal motivation, and therefore the main way ( to make members of the OP do something. - Ed. ) Is, of course, to interest them ... to involve them in an interesting job,” reasoned the head of the body Valery Fadeev.
And with motivational support, the presidential administration just arrived in time, in only 2023 alone, allocating grants for 125 billion rubles. for the implementation of state projects.
“There is the possibility of receiving grants. Formally, a member of the OP does not receive a salary, but their grant applications will certainly be executed in the first place. That is, through grants, loyalty will still be paid, ”said the former member of the OP, journalist Maxim Shevchenko in 2020.
Let's try to trace through the extremely little -known case how exactly does the serving mechanism work in OP, and at the same time we will extract the “ideological genesis” of the chamber, upon closer examination, causing a desire to appropriate the famous Chekhov number.
Reproduction of loyalism
Not so long ago, resonance provoked a record of hearings in the OP on the topic “System of measures to prevent and suppress the propaganda of LGBT* in the teenage and youth environment”, or rather, the thesis voiced by participants in the discussion. The two -hour video was probably the most radical, revisionist, pseudo -scientific and conspiracy cliches regarding any aspects of the world order formulated by Russian propaganda over the past 10 years. Subjective sample:
In 1991, Russia “experienced a shock”, after which only now she began to recover.
From the educational system, it is necessary to completely eradicate the terms “gender” and “tolerance”.
The Russian 1990s were marked by the moral, ideological and moral “failure”, and members of the OP are “part of that force” that is trying to restore the “progressive development” of the Russian Federation in the spiritual sphere.
Homosexuality is a disease, the exclusion of its WHO from the ICD-10 in 1990 is a mistake.
Tiktok should block for Russian users content on LGBT Tematics.
“Over these 30 years”, Russia has lost the “specialists market” who worked with ideology problems, and now the market “grains” is restored.
Western quotas for the presence in the films of “undurated” social groups are madness, but in the Russian Federation “it is necessary to develop a unified policy for the maintenance of all types of media” and cinema in accordance with “traditional spiritual and moral values”.
The ban on the “LGBT movement” in Russia is a “form of moral self-defense of society”, since it is related to Satanism, hedonism, fascism, detonavitism and the movement of Columbine*.
Children are involved in the "LGBT movement" through the anime and the Furri subculture.
The state needs to form an order for the production of ideologically verified toys: "Our nesting dolls are at the very end of any shopping center."
Over 120 minutes of timing of the replicas of a similar genre separated from each other by appeals to fake quotes of Western politicians and free thoughts about the Anglo -Saxons, according to my estimates, about 650 were made - the most colorful of them - extremely neatly reflecting the general “discourse” OP and the competence of its members in the issues discussed by them - I This one seemed:
“We seem to be alone in the struggle for our spiritual values ... About two weeks ago, international competitions were held in Belarus, and Gender was present on the podium. And the Belarusians reacted calmly to this. ”
Whose Belarusians calmly reacted to which, in recent months, Belarus did not accept international sports competitions, especially with the “presence of genders” in recent months. In the same way as the International Olympic Committee did not approve the recommendations according to which 20% of athletes in the team “should be genders” (this is not a reservation, the speaker confidently repeated this design several times in a row). Just like Teresa May never said that "Russia showed outrageous rebellion."
A person responsible for the spread of frank misinformation, the regular mention of the above non -existent facts, quotes and statistics, as well as (based on at least from the passage about “genders”) not having the slightest idea of the topic that the discussion is dedicated, is its moderator. The chairman of the Commission of the OP of the Russian Federation on security, which occupies several more similar positions in the deliberative bodies with various government services, a graduate of the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR Mikhail Anichkin .
You are unlikely to ever hear about him, however, this person is a personally illustration of what kind of principle the OP works and why this organization cannot be effective in serving the interests of civil society, if you do not understand exclusively employees of the presidential administration.
Most of the public mentions are associated with round tables in OP, in which he takes an active part from the moment of his election as a member of the chamber in 2017. The agenda of all such events is similar: calls for media recognition by “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations” in the name of “spiritual security”, counteracting the threats of “fake information on the network” and other repressive initiatives. The thesis analysis of speakers at such hearings will lead to a result already demonstrated above on the example of the “presence of genders”,
And perhaps it would even be permissible to laugh at this if, as Vladimir Putin put it , the projects implemented by the OP did not “affect the lives of 15 million citizens of the country.”
Let us return to the biographical certificate of Anichkina and, skipping numerous positions in the councils of government departments, we will find that Mikhail is also the chairman of the Presidium of the Keepers of Russia movement and the President of the Board of Private Enterprises in the Security Field of the Commonwealth Peacemaker. Actually, the relatively rational significance of the round tables described above is that, according to their result, OP sends the ministries, regional public chambers and authorities recommendations, and also initiates its own projects and concludes agreements with NGOs.
For example, in 2022, OP for “interaction during a single voting day” announced cooperation with a number of organizations, including with the Anichkinsky “Commonwealth” Peacemaker, and at the end of 2023, the “Keepers of Russia” were a grant by 1.85 million rubles, while the “Guardians of Russia”. on the shooting of the Patriotic Film. And these facts worthy of mention not even as evidence of an obvious conflict of interests, but rather as a marker of deep conceptual viciousness of the OP.
There are approximately half of such “Mikhailov Anchkins” associated with ultrapatriotic, ideologically verified by NGOs (the other half are public persons responsible for the image of the organ). These are the very organizations that were filtered by the authorities with the help of OP as “useful sheep”, their activities are aimed at promoting the official agenda and servicing its interests, but not public.
For this kind of NPO, the most prosperous scenario of development in modern Russia is a successful nomination of his representative in the OP, which will provide the organization of administrative favor, priority grant support and potential involvement in large projects. As happened in the case of Anichkin and the Peacemaker. It is obvious that now the trajectory of such a path lies through the correspondence of the NPO with the ideological postulates of the Kremlin - such as, for example, with a pitching of multimedia projects “Institute for the Development of the Internet” or a nomination for the Award of the Society “Knowledge”. This is a general trend in state policy, and the chamber here is no exception.
Exclusively here is that the members of the OP and the “court” NPOs concentrated around it (which, under the federal law, put forward 43 representatives to the body)
A colossal stimulus forms intensively relay the narratives of the Kremlin propaganda, because the whole system is accountable and fed from the Kremlin, and not from civil society.
After all, it is not it, but the Fund of Presidential Grants (by the way, also closely related to OP) distributes financial support, on which the well -being of members of the chamber directly depends. Therefore, the Russian LGBT community, “foreign aggress” and “unwanted” media are a threat to “spiritual values” and objects of repression, and “new territories” and employees of law enforcement agencies are “socially significant interests of citizens of the Russian Federation”. And all these citizens are employed in Old Square.
The pronounced ideological and administrative affiliation of the body, which was created as a mediator for the coordination of the aspirations of society, power and NPO is absurd, but is inevitable when trying to "build" in the vertical that can be attached only to horizontal connections. " This vertical naturally overgrown with officialdom, Kremlin grants and a “traditional-spiritual-moral” agenda, which is trying to impose on the entire society through his activities and reports “On the state of civil society”.
In such a situation, it is important not to forget that dozens of NGOs that were dispersed and recognized by the “foreign agents” did not participate in the preparation of such documents, and the interests of the people whose protection they encountered repression were cynically ignored. Unlike the interests of the pupil of the Higher School of the KGB, who does not suspect the difference between the concepts of “gender” and “transgender”, but the recommendations on the issues of politics regarding Quir-human issues that are taken to send to the ministries.