The Presidential Administration is an unusual Russian government body in
that the most important person is not the head of the organisation but
his first deputy. Until 2011 this deputy was the now departed Vladislav Surkov; since 2011 Vyacheslav Volodin has
been in charge. Change of deputy, change of policy, or so it would
seem. Under Surkov, say the experts, Putin would never have flown with the cranes, nor signed controversial laws like the Dima Yakovlev bill.
Vladislav Surkov only became first
deputy to the head of the Presidential Administration in 2008; before
that, from 1999, he was but a lowly Duma deputy. In fact, his influence
on government policy was immeasurably greater than merited by his
official post. Surkov was regularly described as the regime’s ‘grey
cardinal’, or power behind the throne of Russian politics. However, he
was never a grey cardinal to his own boss but to Putin – assistant to
the king directly, rather than the cardinal.
Surkov’s CV is reasonably typical for a Moscow politician,
although he is not a Muscovite by birth. There has, incidentally, been
some ideological wrangling over where exactly he was born. Surkov’s
opponents maintain that his father was Chechen and that he was born in
the aul [village] of Dubai-Yurt; his supporters, or rather information
team, that he was born in the Lipetsk region and any other assertions
are false.
His birthplace may not be clear, but it was in Moscow that
he made his career. In 1987 Surkov became head of the advertising
department of the Research and Development Centre at the District
Committee of the Komsomol, whose head was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. These
bodies were set up during the first years of perestroika: their official
purpose was to support youth initiatives, but they were actually a
school for capitalist networks.
In
the 90s Surkov occupied various high-ranking posts in Khodorkovsky’s
commercial organisations. Then he moved to TV and Russia’s Channel One;
subsequently, in 1999, he became assistant to the head of the
Presidential Administration.
Surkov was one of the
ideologues and organisers of the ‘United Russia’ party. The debate as to
who proposed one of the most successful political projects in today’s
Russia is still running, with some people considering that the part
played by Boris Berezovsky was just as important. But no one questions
that it was Surkov who came up with the term ‘sovereign democracy.’
Surkov was also responsible for many other political
projects and ideas. He thought up several spoiler parties to take votes
away from the opposition – first and foremost the‘Just Russia’ party. He created the youth organisation Nashi,
coordinated provocations against the opposition and is considered to
have been behind the falling-out between various opposition politicians,
including the attack on journalist Oleg Kashin.
When Dmitry Medvedev became president for a 4-year term,
he inherited Surkov and promoted him to first deputy of the
Administration. During this time, Surkov moderated his attitude towards
the opposition, calling the December 2011 demonstrators ‘the best part
of Russian society.’ Was it that Putin was outraged by this, or that
Surkov failed to predict the unimpressive ‘United Russia’ result at the
parliamentary election? For whatever reason, Putin demoted
Surkov from the Kremlin to join Medvedev in the White House. The fall
from grace became complete today, with Surkov’s apparently forced
resignation.
In Surkov’s place as grey cardinal came Vyacheslav
Volodin. Like Surkov, Volodin was born in 1964. The two first deputies
may have quite similar names – Vladislav and Vyacheslav – but they have
very different CVs. In the 90s Surkov was a businessman, a bit of a
chancer in the Moscow business world. Volodin, on the other hand, is a
classic politician from the regions. He is also a businessman of sorts,
but for him the political was always more important than the
commercial.
Volodin was born in Saratov. As a young man he joined the
Communist Party, though he soon managed to forget this ‘youthful
indiscretion.’ In 1990, he was elected deputy to Saratov City Council
and in 6 years he had become Deputy Governor of the Saratov Oblast.
From 1999 his career unfolded in Moscow, as a deputy to the State Duma.
Initially he set up a coalition with Yury Luzhkov and regional leaders
‘Fatherland – All Russia’, and in 2001 he was even head of the faction.
But he very quickly realised that Vladimir Putin and his movement
‘Unity’ were the face of the future: a year after the election his
‘Fatherland – All Russia’ had joined forces with ‘Unity’. This was the
birth of ‘United Russia’ and Volodin joined the party.
More rapid upward movement meant that by 2005 he was
Secretary to the Presidium of the party’s General Council. In 2007 he
was appointed Deputy Chair of the State Duma and in 2010 he joined the
government. From there he was appointed to his current post as first
deputy to the head of the Presidential Administration.
In every job he has taken, Volodin has demonstrated energy
and political intuition. In the 90s he supported additional privileges
for the regions, but he realised in good time that the alliance with
Luzhkov and the heads of the national republics e.g. Tatarstan and
Bashkiria was doomed. It wasn’t just him that went over to the rival
party: he managed to take his whole party with him.
Friends and enemies call him the ‘Petersburger from
Saratov’, in reference to the group of close and loyal confidants that
Putin has promoted from his native St Petersburg. Volodin’s image is
indeed of a collected, disciplined, well-educated politician and
bureaucrat, who stands out well from the politicians of Soviet times and
the Moscow political village of today. Many of his qualities mirror
those of Vladimir Putin, which is why the President appointed him the
helmsman of domestic politics.
Volodin seems to have realised that one of the reasons why
Putin sidelined Surkov was because he had spoken sympathetically of the
opposition leaders. Volodin had no patrons other than Putin, and is not
intending to look for any. He grasped that Putin had no intention of
striking any deals with the opposition – on the contrary, he wanted to
conquer and crush it.
Observers
noticed that Volodin’s arrival at the Presidential Administration
signalled a completely new attitude in the Kremlin to the leaders of the
opposition. Ex-Finance Minister Kudrin was at the rally
on Sakharov Avenue and regarded by many as a kind of bridge between the
government and the protest leaders. All such bridges have now been
burnt. The Presidential Administration organised a multiplicity of
rallies in favour of Putin’s candidature for the presidency and
manufactured acts of provocation aimed at the opposition. It was Volodin
who came up with the idea of contrasting the poor, loyal provinces with
the ‘well-fed’ Moscow opposition. Surkov had become such an integral
part of the Moscow elite that such a simple idea wouldn’t have occurred
to him.
It would be untrue to assert that Volodin alone was
responsible for Putin’s militant and aggressive style during the
election campaign. But equally Surkov would never have advised his
patron to compare his supporters with an army defending Moscow from an
external enemy, which he did at an election rally. Volodin, who had
approved Putin’s speech, found this comparison acceptable.
Volodin also had a part in Putin’s decision not to permit
even the slightest protest on the day of his inauguration. As a result,
the centre of Moscow was deserted on 7 May: half the metro stations were
closed, with columns of vehicles full of soldiers standing outside
them. The police arrested members of the opposition, even if they were
only sitting in a café, rather than protesting.
Surkov would never have recommended such a marked show of
force. But by that time he was not working in the Administration any
more.
Volodin purged the Administration’s Internal Politics
Section of Surkov’s people fairly quickly and rigorously, replacing them
with his own people. The only one of Surkov’s men left was Radii
Khabirov, who was in charge of Duma deputies and parties, but he had
already started working with Volodin before Surkov’s departure.
Deputies Andrey Isayev and Olga Batalina are two fairly
typical members of the Volodin team. Batalina comes from Saratov and
has been a deputy for some time; Isayev has taken a complex ideological
path from anarchist to rabid conservative. It was they who drew up the
toughest laws and presented them in the Duma: more severe punishments
for involvement in protest rallies, more complicated working conditions
for the NGOs, and censorship in the internet. When the so-called Dima
Yakovlev bill was passed in December 2012, prohibiting US citizens from
adopting Russian children, Batalina publicly criticised the Minister of
Education, who had expressed doubts on the need for such a law.
There are no businessmen or cultural leaders among
Volodin’s inner circle, as there were in Surkov’s day. They have one
thing in common: they are all party functionaries. According to Russian
criminal folklore, the traditional oath of the gangster’s moll is ‘I
swear never to hold anything heavier than a glass in my hand.’ It could
be said of Volodin’s people that over the last 10 years they have never
held anything heavier than a ‘United Russia’ party ticket in their
hands.
Paradoxically, Volodin’s arrival at the Presidential
Administration coincided with the appearance of some opposition figures
on Russian TV screens, though on almost any show they were shouted down
by loyal opponents. Volodin’s task was to show the opposition in the
most unfavourable light possible, proving that enemies of the Kremlin
have no ideas of their own. The government may be bad, but its opponents
are far worse.
Duma deputies, especially those belonging to ‘United
Russia’, are now subject to much tougher controls. During Surkov’s time
they were given hints, quite insistent ones, about how they should vote.
These relatively liberal times are now a thing of the past: ordinary
members of the biggest faction are told straight out what to do and a
vote ‘against’ or an abstention would be the end of their political
career. Many Duma deputies did not, for instance, approve of the
punishment meted out to their colleague Gennady Gudkov – he was expelled
from the Duma – mainly from an instinct for self-preservation. But the
deputies had it spelt out to them: it’s the Presidential Administration
which decides who is to be a deputy and who not.
Under Volodin, however, the governors (heads of the
regions) are having a slightly easier time. They are still required to
guarantee political stability, but no longer have the ways they are to
achieve this dictated to them. Under Surkov, the Administration was
always sending political instructions to the regions; now all that’s
required is the expected result.
Many commentators would no doubt consider that Surkov
would not have permitted some things Putin has undertaken, which are not
just a mistake but frankly comic. The flight with the cranes, for
example: in the autumn of 2012, Putin, disguised as a Siberian white
crane, flew on a hang-glider, acting as the leader for the flock, though
the cranes didn’t actually get to the place where they winter. In just
the same way, Surkov would have put a swift end to the scandalous Dima
Yakovlev bill which caused a brief split in the Russian elite.
It wasn’t in fact Volodin’s idea to let Putin loose with
the cranes. His ideas are so simple as to be quite primitive, aimed at
achieving instant results. As for longer-term outcomes, these interest
neither Volodin nor Putin. With today’s events, the strategic plans so
beloved of Surkov have resolutely disappeared into the past, and the
Kremlin has become little more than a regime of rapid reaction.
