ю. пСЛЪМЖЕБ
вЕАНЙЯЮПШ

WHO BENEFITS FROM ENFORCING POWERFUL STRUCTURES IN RUSSIA?

    The new Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has made up his mind: He is out to consolidate state authority. In the present-day Russia it quickly gives rise to the following question: "Who benefits from enforcing powerful structures in Russia?"
    First of all, the executive branch of the government with its head, the RF President at the top. But it should be kept in mind that the recent reforms of federal relations strengthen not only and not so much the federal executive branch in its struggle against regional authorities as the executives, in general. The strengthening of the executive vertical structure is designed to remove the governors from the Federation Council, to vest the president with the power to dismiss them at his own discretion, to introduce a procedure whereby heads of regional interior departments are appointed without governors' approval, and to set up seven federal districts whose heads will be accountable to the president. Under the new scenario, however, the governors will also have the right to dismiss heads of local administrations, which will make the regional lords all but omnipotent in their regions while the opposition will be simply stifled there.
    This is all the more plausible given that both the Russian president and the governors will get the right to dissolve local legislatures - formally when the latter "violate federal laws and rights and individual freedoms", but it is well know how blurry "rights and freedoms" in Russia are today. There will always be an excuse to dissolve a legislature if need be.
    The new innovations will certainly benefit the law-enforcement agencies and the army as well. Let us have a closer look at the system of federal districts. The fact that the seven federal districts effectively coincide with the boundaries of military districts could be metaphorically interpreted to the effect that each of these territories will have its own armed forces. Other state power agencies are already reforming their structures to fit the division: the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor's Office, the Interior Ministry, and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Therefore, the new territorial formations will have both their own law-enforcement and power structures.
    Federal districts comprising Federation members are not supposed to have representative power bodies at all, which gives the executive an overwhelming preponderance. It is highly indicative that each district is headed by a person who doesn't answer to its residents. The mechanism of his legitimization is undemocratic. So all the levels of power will depend on each other but will not depend on the public.
    It could be stated that the power is being handed to the generals. The majority of the presidential representatives has a military background. The North Caucasus Federal District is headed by the Army General Victor Kazantsev. Pyotr Latyshev, who is in the rank of Police Colonel General, now is ready to head the Ural District from Ekaterinburg. The Central District was entrusted to the Tax police Lieutenant General, Georgy Poltavchenko. The Far East District plenipotentiary, Konstantin Pulikovsky, is also an army general. Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to run the state and society according to martial-law arrangements in peacetime. A mobilization style is appropriate if the state is confronted with very narrow aims and tasks like the task of survival. In peacetime the range of tasks to be dealt with is simply enormous. So appropriate legal, democratic mechanisms need to be put in place.
    The strengthening of powerful structures could be vividly illustrated by the massive, although pinpointed, attack on the oligarchs. At the height of the summer season, law-enforcement agencies in Moscow engaged in feverish activity. Amid the ongoing prosecution of Vladimir Gusinsky, the Prosecutor's Office took issue with Gazprom and Vladimir Potanin (head of Interros). The Audit Chamber urged the Prosecutor's Office to file a suit against the Intergrated Energy System (RAO YeES) while the Tax Police alleged that AvtoVAZ auto maker had manufactured 280,000 cars without showing them in its books. Then most of the accusations proved to be false. But it doesn't bother the law-enforcement agencies. The high profile agencies of this type are often seen as part and parcel of the "strengthening of state power". Most important, in a really democratic country a person can make claims against the state virtually to the same extent as the state can make claims against him, and have his rights granted. As for the crackdown by domestic state structures on individuals (ordinary or tycoons - this doesn't make any difference), the former always gets away scot-free.
    The third winning party after these reforms will be bureaucracy. So the new reform of government adds up to an unprecedented bloating of officialdom. The RF presidential representative in Chukotka has 120(!) staffers. The same goes for each of the 89 Federation members. Now all these structures will stay in place with new district structures, several times as big, built above them. The districts will have their own prosecutor's offices, tax police and tax services, and other ministries and departments. And each with its own staff and property department. Having deprived the governors of their cushy jobs in the Federation Council, Vladimir Putin, at their request, vowed to think of setting up an advisory State Council for them, which will predictably have a staff of its own.
    It is out of the question that the government-sponsored political movement (maybe party?) "Unity" (Yedinstvo) will get its piece of the cake. Although it didn't get the majority of the votes at the elections, but it became the party of power. Some changes of the election laws will make it harder for its opponents to "compete" against them and will provide the "Bear" (2nd official name of this political entity) with a more stable ground in the future. In the most likely scenario, now that the gubernatorial/oligarchic troubles are over, the Duma is going to be the next target while no roundtables will be able to help it. Duma members are expecting an attack on two lines simultaneously: Adoption of the long-overdue law on political parties, which will tighten the procedure for getting into the State Duma, and amendment to the election law providing for a recarving of the current proportional representation system.
    In Russia, custom has ruled the law at all times, especially in recent years. The executive branch regulates custom not by changing laws but be establishing tight control over law-enforcement bodies which, acting on the orders from this ruling authority will or will not apply a law.
    Having taken into consideration all the above mentioned points, we should not forget about one more side that might benefit from enforcing powerful structures in Russia. It is its people, although this issue is controversial. To defend this idea, the following quote of the famous Russian writer of the 20th century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, could be applied: "Considering its size and diversity, the Russian Federation cannot exist without a strong presidential authority. Members of the Parliament have no right to play with the fate of the people in pursuit of their political gains".
    As a conclusion, it should be stated that the people should benefit from enforcing the powerful structures in Russia in the first turn, only then the reforms taking place in our country could be considered fully democratic.

© ю. пСЛЪМЖЕБ, 2000