by Andrew Monaghan

Who rules Russia in the shadow of Putin

Vladimir Putin is the focus of attention in Russian politics. He is the setter of policy guidelines the final decision-maker, and the manager of factional conflicts.

For a clearer insight into how Russian politics works, however, this focus on President Putin is too narrow. It overemphasizes the dependence of the system on one man, and draws attention away from the roles played by other senior figures and the emergence of new people.

Three groups in particular need to be examined to see the exercise of leadership in its wider context: those who are 'trusted comrades'; those who are 'executives'; and those 'on the way up', who are being tested for high office.

Putin's core leadership team is formed of a dozen people, many of whom have worked with him since the early 1990s. At the heart of this team are four men whom Putin has named as 'trusted comrades'. All were born or educated in St Petersburg and have long experience across a range of senior official positions.

They include Dmitri Medvedev, 47, Russia's Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, 60, a former defence minister, who is head of the Presidential Administration, and former intelligence chief Nikolai Patrushev, 61, secretary of the Security Council, a body responsible for the development of Russian strategic and policy planning.

The fourth, economist Alexei Kudrin, 52, was removed from his position as Finance Minister in 2011, but remains close to Putin, apparently providing informal advice. One feature of the Russian political landscape, therefore, is the longevity of figures at its centre.

Beneath this core team, there have been subtle changes in the power structure recently. Most attention has been on how authorities responded to the protests in late 2011 and early 2012 at irregularities in the legislative and parliamentary elections.

In fact, the leadership team began these changes earlier, in response to the poor performance of the United Russia party in the regional elections of spring 2011, by trying to reinvigorate the 'vertical of power', Putin's concept of centralized authority in the Kremlin.

A number of officials were dispatched to the regions to act as 'federal locomotives', to reinforce local party structures and improve the implementation of executive orders.

Igor Sechin is perhaps the most important member of this group, which might be called the 'executives'. Sechin, 52, was dispatched to lead the United Russia party list in Stavropol in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in December 2011. He now serves as chief executive of Rosneft, the state oil company, but he has a much wider -- and evolving -- role in Russian politics.

Putin believes he is a professional and effective operator, and so he is now at the heart of the Kremlin's two main policy offensives since the elections as Putin faces the challenges of domestic protest and a weakening economy. He is involved in the campaign to ensure that Putin's orders are carried out, known as 'enhancing the effectiveness of the implementation of instructions', and he has a leading role in the anti-corruption campaign, particularly in investigating state companies.

The key figure in that campaign is another 'executive', Alexander Bastrykin, 60, also a St Petersburger, and former classmate of Putin in the Leningrad State University's law faculty. He heads the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, an agency reporting directly to the President which has authority to open investigations into those who have been granted immunity in the past, including senior officials. This makes it one of the most important bodies in Russian politics.

Another aspect of this reinvigoration is the slow rotation of senior figures since late 2011, illustrated by the appointment of Vyacheslav Volodin to deputy head of the presidential administration, with responsibility for domestic political affairs. This is a more important position than it sounds, with Volodin, 49, responsible for the regional elections later this year. A former deputy governor of Saratov region, he has a reputation for a robust approach.

Promotion to the leadership is often a slow process: it is rare that a new face simply emerges. The third group, often overlooked by commentators, are the people being tried out for high office. Those who join the team are carefully selected, and often tested before further promotion -- and those appointed have proved themselves to be loyal and effective operators in party and regional administrations.

A good example is Dmitri Rogozin, 49, previously the head of a nationalistic political party, then a combative Russian ambassador to NATO, and now returned to the government in Moscow as Deputy Prime Minister.

Similarly, Alexander Khloponin, 48, formerly an effective governor of the Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia who is now presidential envoy to the North Caucasus federal region and Deputy Prime Minister.

Someone to watch for the future might be the 43-year-old Andrei Vorobyov. He joined government from the business world in 2000 and rose to senior positions in United Russia. In 2012, Putin appointed him acting governor of the Moscow region. Regional elections in September will give him the chance to prove himself.

The internal workings of Russian politics are complex and murky, dominated by patronage and opaque informal networks and shrouded in a fog of speculation.

Orthodoxy holds that there is stasis in the Kremlin. On the one hand, this inertia is seen to be generational -- 'Generation Putin', the last of the Soviets. But undercurrents of change exist, and more attention should be paid to the way the leadership shapes the evolution of the team, both in terms of how to enhance authority and effectiveness, and by bringing in younger personnel at lower levels. It is from here that, in time, replacements are most likely to come, even, in the end, for Putin.

Departures from the ruling group are comparatively rare given the overall stability, but they may become more frequent as the team evolves and dispenses with those who have outlived their usefulness.

This is perhaps the way to interpret the resignation in May of Vladislav Surkov, a long-term member of the 'executive officer' group who was the architect of the institutions of Russia's 'sovereign democracy' in the early 2000s.

Trying to predict Russian politics with any degree of precision is a fool's errand. But those who watch Russia may benefit by turning their attention from the departures towards those who replace them. New figures, even in the opposition, do not just emerge in Russia, but have lengthy biographies behind them.

Attention to these backstories -- knowing who has been effective, what they have done, and who they have worked with -- will help understanding of how Russian politics is evolving.

Andrew Monaghan is a Research Fellow at the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme

 

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Article: Copyright ©, Tribune Media Services.

"Russia: The Kremlin is Not Just a One-Man Band"