RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
_________________________________________ ____________________
RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
Vol. 5, No. 5, 4 February 2005
A Weekly Review of News and Analysis of Russian Domestic Politics
************************************************************
HEADLINES:
* RUSSIA ON THE VERGE OF A BREAKDOWN?
* DMITRII ROGOZIN: THE HUNGER ARTIST
* HOLDING PUTIN ACCOUNTABLE
* STRANGE DAYS FOR THE AUDIT CHAMBER
* POLITICAL CALENDAR
************************************************************
POLITICS
RUSSIA ON THE VERGE OF A BREAKDOWN?
By Victor Yasmann
Hard on the heels of a humiliating political defeat in the
presidential election in Ukraine, the Kremlin is now facing another
serious crisis, this one even closer to home. For weeks now, the
country has been wracked by growing social unrest in opposition to
the government’s reform to convert most in-kind social benefits
to cash payments, which has been widely criticized as ill considered
and poorly implemented.
According to media reports, more than two-thirds of the
subjects of the federation have seen protests and demonstrations by
pensioners, the disabled, public-sector workers, and other benefits
recipients. In some cases, protestors blocked highways and rail lines
or took over regional-administration buildings. In many cases, the
protests were apparently spontaneous, but the Communist Party has
claimed to be organizing the demonstrations.
In addition, speaking to journalists in Moscow on 27 January,
Communist Party leader Gennadii Zyuganov said that his party has
collected the 90 Duma deputy signatures required to force the
chamber’s leadership to include a motion of no confidence in the
government in the Duma’s agenda, gazeta.ru and other Russian
media reported. Zyuganov said that in addition to Communist deputies,
the Motherland faction is backing the initiative, as well as 15-18
independent deputies.
Although a no-confidence measure has no chance of passing
without the support of the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party, which
controls a majority of the seats in the chamber, holding such a vote
would put Unified Russia in the awkward position of having openly to
support the unpopular benefits reform, gazeta.ru commented on 27
January.
At a recent meeting of the government’s Council on
Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship, participants concluded that the
main reason for the unrest and for the slowdown in economic growth
generally is a crisis of confidence, a loss of public trust in the
government, “Vremya novostei” reported on 28 January. A similar view
was expressed by Higher Economics School head and former Economy
Minister Yevgenii Yasin, who was quoted by the daily as saying, “We
are seeing a textbook example of how economic growth that seemed to
be working so well can be destroyed.”
Economist and Institute of Globalization Director Mikhail
Delyagin said he thinks the present situation, including the
widespread unrest, is the result of infighting between the so-called
siloviki, or people connected to the security apparatus, and such
liberal ministers as Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin and Economic
Development and Trade Minister German Gref. Delyagin called the
latter “liberal fundamentalists” in a 14 January interview with
RosBalt. Delyagin added that the dismantling of the social safety net
“is not only the result of liberal reforms, but also of the blind
aggression of the silovik oligarchy, an aggression that is spreading
from the business community to society as a whole.” “It is an open
secret that a considerable portion of those agencies that we more and
more often call ‘siloviki’ and less and less often call
‘law enforcement organs’ perceive the citizenry of Russia as
a legitimate target for looting,” Delyagin said.
Delyagin said that the Putin regime has declared war not only
on business and society, but also on the regional elites, which it
has stripped of political influence without giving them anything in
return. “I think the protests which are continuing all over the
country are partly generated by regional administrations, which feel
that they have been robbed by the benefits-reform process,” Delyagin
said. “Since they are afraid to confront Moscow openly, they pretend
that the protests are only the voice of the people and are in no
hurry to silence it.”
National Strategy Institute Director Stanislav Belkovskii
told APN on 27 January that the unrest is evidence of a systemic
crisis confronting the Putin regime. He said the protests demonstrate
how illusory and ephemeral the Russian system of power is, and prove
that the authorities can neither govern the people nor communicate
with them. He added that the regime has already demonstrated this
inability in the cases of the August 2000 sinking of the “Kursk”
nuclear submarine, the October 2003 hostage taking at a Moscow
theater, and the September 2004 hostage drama at a school in Beslan,
North Ossetia. However, he added, the current unrest even more
graphically demonstrates that the Putin regime is not unshakable.
Belkovskii added that the response to the protests proves
that the regime fears only direct actions of this sort. It is not
possible to outmaneuver the country’s oligarchic-bureaucratic
machine, but only to pressure it, Belkovskii said.
Belkovskii said that in October, a member of the Communist
Party of the Russian Federation told him that if Ukrainian
presidential hopeful Viktor Yushchenko could bring at least 100,000
people out onto the streets of Kyiv, the issue of power in Ukraine
would be settled regardless of other factors. Time has shown that he
was right, Belkovskii said, adding that anyone who can bring 300,000
people out onto the streets of Moscow can similarly take power in
Russia. Therefore, he concluded, the street will remain the main tool
of the political struggle in Russia for the next two years.
The government was unprepared for the protests and chose to
treat its own citizens like “cattle,” Belkovskii said. He quoted a
Unified Russia Duma deputy as saying that “the tougher the laws are
that the government adopts, the less people protest against them.”
Belkovskii said the regime placed its stake on public apathy and was
convinced that there would be no massive protests. For this reason,
the government is responsible for the crisis and should be dismissed.
Belkovskii added, though, that President Putin does not
consider the benefits reform itself a mistake. Therefore, Kudrin,
Gref, and Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov will
remain in government in one capacity or another. However, the
president will most likely have to make some sort of gesture to quell
the unrest, and the most likely victim will be the cabinet of Prime
Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
Demonstrators have already been seen carrying signs calling
for Putin to resign and even bearing slogans such as “Putin Is Worse
Than Hitler.” Although Putin often tries to avoid tough personnel
decisions, Belkovskii said, he will need to do something to appease
the public. The most likely scapegoat will be Fradkov, Belkovskii
said, not because of the reform fiasco itself, but because he has
avoided taking public responsibility for the crisis and has thereby
exposed Putin to criticism.
PROFILE
DMITRII ROGOZIN: THE HUNGER ARTIST
By Julie A. Corwin
The hunger strike of five State Duma deputies from the
Motherland faction, which began on 21 January, came to end this week.
The five legislators, including Motherland leader Dmitrii Rogozin,
who were demanding a moratorium on implementation of the law on
converting in-kind benefits to cash payments and the dismissal of
Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov, Finance
Minister Aleksei Kudrin, and Economic Development and Trade Minister
German Gref, decided to transform their struggle from “the passive to
the active stage,” “Izvestiya” reported on 2 February. Lawmaker
Andrei Savelev was hospitalized on 29 January with low blood sugar,
and the party’s presidium was expected to issue an order to the
strikers to give up their protest for the sake of their health at a
presidium session on 3 February.
Typically, hunger strikes attract sympathy for the
participants and their cause, but in the case of the Motherland party
action, a more common reaction – at least among the Russian political
elite — has been derision. State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov labeled
the action “self-promotion.” And Lyudmila Alekseeva, chairwoman of
the Moscow Helsinki Group, found herself agreeing with Gryzlov. She
told politcom.ru on 24 January that public relations was likely at
least one of the motivations for the deputies’ action.
In an interview with Ekho Moskvy on 22 January, Garri
Kasparov, chess champion and Committee-2008 chairman, concluded that
“quite obviously” Rogozin got news from his patrons in the Kremlin —
that is, first deputy head of the presidential administration Igor
Sechin or deputy head of the administration Viktor Ivanov — that
resignations are forthcoming in the government. “One should not doubt
that Rogozin’s strike is a harbinger of changes in the Russian
government,” Kasparov said. “We’ll wait and we can thank Dmitrii
Olegovich [Rogozin] for imparting this information in such a bizarre
way to all those able to compare and contrast his action with the
information he usually receives from his Kremlin patrons.”
Kasparov added that he believes that Kremlin control over
Rogozin is “quite high,” but Rogozin “no doubt has his own game plan.
Sechin’s game is to bet on Rogozin and help him in every way, and
it’s Rogozin’s game, at this stage, to pretend and dream that
one day he will do to his patrons what Putin did to his.”
In an interview with politcom.ru on 24 January, Marat Gelman,
the art gallery owner and campaign consultant who worked on
Motherland’s surprisingly successful campaign during the December
2003 State Duma elections, agreed with Kasparov: “Rogozin has
information that he won’t be on a hunger strike long. But in my
opinion he or his informant is wrong,” Gelman said. Gelman also
commented that since Duma deputies are now devoid of real power, they
are reduced to making symbolic gestures such as hunger strikes. But
as gestures go, Gelman figures that Rogozin’s gambit is a
stronger one than the competition’s: Unified Russia is just
discussing the benefits reform among themselves, he says, while the
Communist party is trying to head spontaneous protests.
Part of the harsh reaction to Motherland’s hunger strike
could reflect the Russian political elite’s attitude toward
Motherland’s leader, Rogozin himself. Like many federal
politicians, Rogozin changes party and coalition membership on an
almost seasonal basis. Rogozin is only 41 years old, but he has
already either been a member of or aligned with a half a dozen
political organizations, including the Union of Revival, the Congress
of Russian Communities (KRO), the Fatherland party, the Yurii
Boldyrev Movement, the Inter-Ethnic Union, the People’s Deputy
Duma faction, and the Motherland-Patriotic Union bloc. And his
break-ups have often been publicly acrimonious.
Rogozin’s first big public fight was with former
presidential candidate Aleksandr Lebed. Lebed was No. 1, and Rogozin
No. 5 on the KRO’s party list for the December 1995 State Duma
election. But relations soured quickly after Lebed became Security
Council secretary in summer 1996, and especially after he negotiated
the Khasavyurt accords that ended the first military conflict in
Chechnya.
By the spring of 1998, Rogozin and the KRO were actively
campaigning against Lebed in the Krasnoyarsk Krai gubernatorial
election. In 1999, Rogozin’s KRO was initially aligned with
Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov’s Fatherland party, but when Luzhkov
chose to join forces with the All-Russia movement, headed by
Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiev and Bashkortostan President
Murtaza Rakhimov, Rogozin dropped out of the alliance. Rogozin made a
number of unflattering remarks to Luzhkov at the time, and Luzhkov
has been unable to forgive him, according to “Profile” on 7 April
2003.
In 2003, Rogozin’s name was proposed during a Unified
Russia party congress, but Luzhkov blocked his membership of the
party, because he “could not forget old offenses,” according to
“Yezhenedelnyi zhurnal” on 15 December 2003. In December 2003,
Rogozin was No. 2 on the party list for the unexpectedly successful
Motherland bloc. However, that alliance began to unravel unusually
quickly. By January 2004, Rogozin and candidate No. 1 on the party
list, Sergei Glazev, were exchanging brick bats in the press, and by
March, Glazev was removed as the bloc’s faction leader.
Rogozin, a native Muscovite, is the son of Oleg
Konstantinovich Rogozin, a military general. Rogozin resisted
following in his father’s footsteps. According to “Profil” and
“Yezhnedelnyi zhurnal,” Rogozin almost entered the acting faculty of
the All-Russia State Institute of Cinematography, having successfully
completely all stages of the application and competition process.
However, at the last minute, he rethought his career plans and
instead joined the international department of the journalism faculty
at Moscow State University (MGU). At MGU, Rogozin participated in
student theater.
Now as a mid-career professional, he finds himself
participating in a theatre of a more modern variety, reality
television. The Motherland deputies’ hunger strike was webcast on
the party’s website (). Computer hackers shut
the site down temporarily, but as of evening of 31 January Moscow
time, the show was back on the air. Rogozin was shown conversing with
his colleagues, hands tucked in his jean pockets, his once-splendid
paunch noticeably less visible underneath his black sweatshirt.
According to “Izvestiya” on 2 February, Rogozin lost 8 kilos. But he
may have gained much more than a slimmer figure: In a monthly ranking
of influential politicians published by “Nezavisimaya gazeta,”
Rogozin jumped from 57th place to 30th.
RFE/RL RUSSIAN SERVICE
HOLDING PUTIN ACCOUNTABLE On 28 January, RFE/RL’s Russian Service
broadcast an exclusive interview with Motherland leader Dmitrii
Rogozin, who spoke by telephone from his office in the State Duma
building where he is participating in a hunger strike against the
government’s benefits-reform plan. The complete interview in
Russian can be seen at
During the interview, Rogozin defended the decision to stage
a hunger strike and said that the current Duma has become “a sort of
farce, in which simply by the command of some director from the
majority faction, plus the well-known Russian hooligan [Liberal
Democratic Party of Russia leader Vladimir] Zhirinovskii who has
stuck himself on to them, [deputies] come and pass whatever decisions
are deemed necessary without any discussion and with the most blatant
violations of the Duma’s regulations.” He specifically criticized
deputies’ rejection of a Motherland-sponsored proposal to give
the floor to human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin to discuss the
benefits crisis.
Rogozin also criticized the “officious” state media, “even
the formerly independent NTV television,” for waging a conspiracy of
silence about the Motherland hunger strike. He said that false
statements purportedly from the hunger strikers have been circulated
in the Duma and posted on the Internet, and he accused Unified Russia
of complicity in this campaign.
Rogozin also categorically denounced a letter that was
recently sent by 20 Duma deputies, including several from the
Motherland faction, that urged the Prosecutor-General’s Office to
investigate Jewish organizations on suspicion that they foment ethnic
and religious strife.
Although Motherland has always marketed itself as a
pro-presidential, nationalist-leaning party, Rogozin called on
President Vladimir Putin to take responsibility for the benefits
crisis. “We demand that the president make his deeds match his words
and, finally, become a governmental leader,” Rogozin said, “instead
of just appearing on television and saying what people expect.” “We
believe that [the president] bears total responsibility for
everything that is happening in the country,” he added. (Robert
Coalson)
POLITICS
STRANGE DAYS FOR THE AUDIT CHAMBER
By Robert Coalson
Although President Vladimir Putin re-nominated Sergei
Stepashin to his post as Audit Chamber chairman on 27 January, the
political elites in Russia were caught off-guard when Stepashin told
a meeting of the Duma’s Motherland faction on 18 January that he
had submitted his resignation.
Stepashin, whose term was scheduled to end in April 2006,
said that he considered it his duty to tender his resignation in
keeping with the spirit of a new law on the formation of the Audit
Chamber, which stipulates that the president nominates that
body’s chairman and that the Duma confirm the nomination.
Until Putin reaffirmed his support for Stepashin, there was a
frenzy of discussion about what Stepashin’s move might mean. Most
analysts saw it as a clear appeal for a vote of confidence from
Putin, although some doubted whether that nod would come. Dmitrii
Oreshkin of the Merkator analytical group told “Novye izvestiya” on
19 January that some within the administration might try to take
advantage of Stepashin’s move because the chief auditor “is a man
with unsatisfied political ambitions who is not caught up in any
compromising games.”
The announcement of Stepashin’s resignation was given
additional political gravitas by the fact that the Duma has now three
times postponed hearing his potentially scandalous report on his
chamber’s review of 1990s-era privatizations. On 12 January, Duma
Speaker Boris Gryzlov announced that the report would not be put on
the Duma’s agenda because changes in the legislature’s rules
had made it unclear what “format” was appropriate for Stepashin’s
appearance. “Tribuna” noted on 12 January that Stepashin had already
appeared in the Duma chamber on 8 December 2004 to present the report
but deputies refused to give him the floor. A few analysts, including
Lydia Andrusenko, writing in “Politicheskii zhurnal,” No. 2,
speculated that Stepashin’s resignation was a protest to the
Kremlin against possible moves to quash the report.
However, at the 18 January Motherland faction meeting,
Stepashin told deputies that the Duma’s leadership had scheduled
his report for sometime “in March or April in the context of a report
on the work of the Audit Chamber.” He added that he has already
submitted the report to both legislative chambers, Putin, and the
Prosecutor-General’s Office.
“Kommersant-Daily” on 17 January reported that it had
obtained a copy of Stepashin’s report and that it was
characterized mostly by ambiguous conclusions and statements that
could be variously interpreted. However, the daily, which is owned by
avowed Kremlin foe and former oligarch Boris Berezovskii, wrote that
the document could serve “as the basis for the mass reexamination of
privatization results” and that “the authorities don’t seem to be
in any hurry to play this card.” Some analysts have raised the
concern that the report could signal a qualitative change in the
state’s assault of private enterprise, inasmuch as the Yukos
affair and other high-profile cases to date have centered on the
issue of minimizing tax obligations rather than on the core issue of
property ownership.
The daily reported that the report repeats longstanding
general criticisms of privatization, including that it was conducted
without a complete legal foundation; that the State Property
Committee frequently failed to register its instructions with the
Justice Ministry, making them technically void; and that most tenders
were insufficiently competitive and transparent. The report also
reportedly includes general conclusions such as that privatization
failed to achieve such stated goals as boosting industrial production
and economic growth. The report concludes vaguely but menacingly that
“it is essential to establish through the courts the violated rights
of the legal property owner, that is, the state,” the daily reported.
The “Kommersant-Daily” article reports that the main
ambiguity in the possible repercussions of the report lies in the
fact that it does not really examine specific privatization cases in
detail. It surveys the oil and energy sectors, according to the
daily, and lingers on Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Governor Roman
Abramovich’s Sibneft. It also covers the tobacco industry and
other sectors, but mostly in order to demonstrate various
privatization-related schemes that allegedly harmed the state’s
interests rather than to point fingers at particular companies or
individuals.
KM.ru speculated on 21 January that the Kremlin is benefiting
from the uncertainty over Stepashin’s report, which the news
agency described as “a bomb hanging over” the oligarchs. On the other
hand, National Strategy Council General Director Valerii Khomyakov
told “Nezavisimaya gazeta” on 20 January that “clearly, some points
in the report may not have pleased the Kremlin-linked oligarchs very
much.” Despite Stepashin’s renomination, the fate of the
privatization report remains unclear.
Putin met with Stepashin on 24 January and listened to his
report on the Audit Chamber’s plans for 2005. At that meeting,
Stepashin announced that the chamber would “move away from petty
topics” and instead study larger matters such as the overall
effectiveness of government spending. On 21 January, Federation
Council Chairman Sergei Mironov told ABN that Stepashin deserves to
keep his post, noting that Stepashin is a “gosudarstvennik,” or a
person who believes in a strong state, and “that is very important.”
Stepashin told reporters on 27 January, the day of his renomination,
that the government will not pursue a policy of “deprivatization,”
and he shifted the focus of his criticisms from privatization issues
to concerns about the management of state property.
Former Duma Deputy Yurii Boldyrev, who helped write the
original law on the Audit Chamber, told derrick.ru, the official
website of the Union of Oil and Gas Equipment Producers, on 25
January that the most important thing is neither Stepashin nor even
the privatization report, but the fate of the Audit Chamber itself,
which has gone largely unremarked. He said that the new law that
allows the president to nominate the Audit Chamber’s chairman
spells the end of its independence and turns it into “a fifth wheel”
in the structure of the government. “The Audit Chamber made sense
when it operated independently of the president and made public
things he wanted to cover up,” Boldyrev said.
POLITICAL CALENDAR
2-3 February: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit Azerbaijan
to discuss visit to Moscow of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
later the same month
4-11 February: 60th anniversary of the Yalta Conference, at which
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin discussed plans for post-
war Europe
6 February: Second round of voting in the gubernatorial election
in Nenets Autonomous Okrug
12 February: Communist Party to organize a day of national protest
against the government’s benefits reform
16 February: Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement intended
to curb the emissions of gases widely believed to contribute
to global warming, comes into effect following its ratification by
the Russian Federation
18 February: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to travel to Tbilisi
20 February: New patriotic television channel organized by the
Russian Defense Ministry to begin broadcasting
24 February: President Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush to
hold a summit in Bratislava, Slovakia
March: Terms of Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous Okrug Governor Yurii
Neelov, Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous Okrug Governor Aleksandr
Filipenko, Jewish Autonomous Okrug Governor Nikolai Volkov, and
Primorskii Krai Governor Sergei Darkin to expire
March: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to visit Japan to discuss
Russian-Japanese summit scheduled to be held in Tokyo in April,
according to many media reports
March: EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner to
visit Moscow
6 March: Parliamentary elections in Moldova
20 March: Legislative elections in Voronezh Oblast
April: Terms of Tula Oblast Governor Vasilii Starodubtsev, Saratov
Oblast Governor Dmitrii Ayatskov, and Amur Oblast Governor Leonid
Korotkov to expire
April: Russian Soyuz spacecraft to bring new crew to the
International Space Station
17 April: Krasnoyarsk Krai to hold a referendum on the question of
merging the krai with the Taimyr and Evenk autonomous okrugs
9 May: Commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of World
War II
2006: Russia to host a G-8 summit
1 January 2006: Date by which all political parties must conform to
law on political parties, which requires at least 50,000 members and
branches in one-half of all federation subjects, or either reregister
as public organizations or be dissolved.
*********************************************************
Copyright (c) 2005. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.
The “RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly” is prepared by Robert Coalson
on the basis of a variety of sources. It is distributed every
Wednesday.
Direct comments to Robert Coalson at coalsonr@rferl.org.
For information on reprints, see:
Back issues are online at