Whack it! It is impossible to mask!

Recently there has been a rising concern among people about analytical publication by a well-known “political- technologist” Pavlosky titled «Negative consequences of the “summer attacks” by opposing minority of the Russian Federation President course». This analytical commentary appears to be an answer to the Council of National Strategy director, Stanislav Belkovsky and his co-chairman Joseph Diskin’s report “The State and the oligarchy” published in June, 2003, which was taken by a concerned public as a signal to further criminal offence charges by the State Prosecutor Office against a number of YUKOS high-rank executives.

The “Novaya Gazeta” took the most active role in opposing Council’s report by declaring that “Authority conspiracy is more dangerous than a conspiracy of oligarchs” and by channeling Pavlovsky’s view and his supporting clans; newspaper hit newsstands under suggestive headlines like “The Family takes junta’s challenge” and “To whack it is impossible to mask” to name a few. Pavlovsky’s analytical commentary is a mere provocation similar to another one back in 1996 carried out in relation to the president Yeltsin, when he was given a choice between the “hawks” Korzhakov and Barsukov, and reformists represented by Choubais. Yeltsin made his choice not in favor of the “hawks” and, thus, became a puppet in hands of reformists. It seems today Pavlovsky attempts to repeat a seven-year old trick because of a despair caused by the “Family’s” inability to control Putin.

The publication appeared in “Novaya Gazeta” as a catalyst of struggle between the clans. Thus, in this context the choice of heading “To whack it is impossible to mask” and the publication’s remark “Due to numerous requests by hardworking collectives of oligarchs, Gleb Pavlovsky’s work is published entirely” are deliberate. Oligarchs became oligarchs in various ways, whereas some hammered together their wealth by banking and financial frauds; others did so in such industries as natural resources. Thus, it is clear that the publication was pushed through by industrial oligarchs.

However, there is a question of HOW to whack and WHAT to mask?

The matter is that all national “elite” clans are aware of the Concept of Public Security (CPS) also known under epic name of «Dead water». Since they could observe the number of the CPS supporters continuously growing, they understand the necessity of developing their own standpoint towards CPS; over wise they will get swept away by oversaturated “flow of followers”. They figured that to prevent “flooding” from happening, they needed to come up with general “obligatory guidelines” and construct their strategy within these guidelines.

When publishing the entire version of Pavlovsky’s commentary, the “Novaya Gazeta” not only accompanied it with the heading “To whack it is impossible to mask”, but also put a subtitle — message

”Before the publication we have placed text of this work on our site. Our readers’ opinions seem to have appeared more precise than comments of well-known political scientists”. — (highlighted bold by us at citing). To illustrate this statement, newspaper also placed a number of readers’ responses from its website. Despite of the overall sense of confusion in these responses, one comment got a quite solid point, which was not only reflective of the others, but also in a way symbolic:

«Voldema
— the scenario of PSY-FACTOR (Pugachev÷Sechin-Ivanov) is a true evidence of Pavlovsky’s inability to create a more powerful information weapon than the Concept of Public Safety which was utilized by these people. Prepare yourselves for more!» — (highlighted bold by us at citing).

Nowadays elites’ dilemma is whether to disclose CPS and sprinkle society with «Dead water» or continue masking it? But dilemma calls for a quick resolution by “all interested sides” because all of them realized inevitable and steadily approaching collapse of the “Family” criminal clan.
We bring to your attention a full version of Pavlovsky’s work with some of our commentaries. We plan to take a more complete analysis of Pavlovsky estimation of the circumstances and whether his resolution recipes are adequate to occurring situation a bit later. For more comprehensive understanding of Pavlovsky’s work we recommend to read V.A.Vasin’s article «“Junta” against Putin», published in «Mera za Meru» on August 30, 2003.

We also did not put a comma in the heading of the article — we put two exclamation marks!!

«ABOUT NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF THE “SUMMER ATTACKS” BY OPPOSING MINORITY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION PRESIDENT COURSE»

Analytical commentary by Gleb Pavlovsky.
September 2, 2003

1.  The summer attack

Within the summer of 2003 political activity of the so-called «S.Pugachev-I.Sechin-V.Ivanov’s group» (further referred to as — the Group) has elevated to a new level from conducting operations mainly in the economic sector to active actions in “reorganization” of the overall Russian economy and politics, including on presidential level.

The economic basis of the group, which originally included Mezhprombank, Rosneft, and, partly, Gazprom, expanded fast and grew stronger due to involvement of medium-size business in transportation, banking, petroleum, coal and other sectors of economy. Occurrence of a new “force center” in opposition to “oligarchs” resulted in consolidation around the new center a significant number of “offended”, but politically active medium-size businessmen.

The circle of the Group supporters continues to expand integrating such known personas as G.Bukaev, V.Ustinov, J.Zaostrovtsev, P.Borodin and others. The Group became more successful in obtaining authority support, including enforcement and security departments as RPC and FSB. However, it is a myth when the Group is being fully equated with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army, FSB, and Prosecutor Office, which is an obvious attempt of political manipulation.

Politically, the Group not only managed to interfere actively with a course of preparation for election campaigns of 2003, including promotion of its political organizations such as “Narodnaya Partia” and become a key player in a number of the most important regional election campaigns (Bashkiria, the Chechen Republic, Moscow), but in many respects it managed to change arrangement of forces in business — elite (exposure of “conspiracy of oligarchs” and “YKOS affair”).

Ideological manifest of the Group rests on the “oligarchs’ conspiracy” report by S.Belkovsky, & I.Diskin. S.Pugachev’s main concept of designing state-oriented capitalism on the basis of simplified for mass consumption orthodox ideology, was expanded by a revolutionary call to amend all business elites in economy sector as well as in politics on regional and federal levels.

It is necessary to point out that all crucial changes, which have occurred in Russian political landscape within the summer and the first half of 2003 are connected to launching a large-scale raid undertaken by the Group. As a result, by the end of the summer the Group has turned into one of the key players, not only working aggressively in both business and politics, but also attempting to alter the Constitution and a political course of the President.

2.  Objectives

It is apparent that a primary goal of the political Group is essential alternation of a political and economic course of development carried out by the President and the Government. This alternation is related to:

First: formation of a new type of the business initiated by the “YUKOS affair”, which is completely loyal to new owners who are determining personnel and economic policies. Disobedience will be suppressed by a major pressure from enforcement and security authorities. Business can remain private, but the role of the state in management of it becomes substantial.

Second: creation of strong state monopolies or holdings with the state participation in a majority of attractive sectors of economy.

Third: economy growth through redistribution of the resources and properties in oil-raw resource sector of economy among others, introduction of “the resource rent”, creation of the state monopolies (including return of the state monopoly on liqueur production) and toughening of the business functioning control.

Forth: sharp increase of a force component in power, transforming “security forces” into the main and, as a matter of fact, the only support unit of the President; initialization of the force intervention in politics, including elections of all levels and private life.

Finally: formation of a new “left — populist” ideological platform leaning on a simplified orthodox ideology, orientation towards «state employees» and “anti-oligarchs” medium and small business. The model of such ideology could be found in political programs of some political parties supported by the Group, particularly in the “Narodnaya Partiya”.

Internal motive for a need of such adjustment in state politics, as the Group insists, rests on their belief in the President’s weakness, his “inconsistency”, “insufficient determination”, gradual “transformation into Gorbachev”. First of all by “weakness” they refer to the President’s mythical unwillingness «to cut the ties with the “Family”», to drop «connections with oligarchs» and «to free national business», behind which they usually mask commercial interests of the Group.

Obviously, if the President further continues to evade supporting the Group’s actions concerning revision of economic and political guidelines, a theme of “Putin’s weakness” and his personal connections with the “Family” and oligarchs might turn into core PR campaign of the Group.

3. Threats of authority

Attainment of the Group’s objectives during this summer political raid transforms it into a systematic opponent of the working authority and the President. The Groups’ actions aimed to forcefully “push out” its business competitors declared to be “oligarchs” are, as a matter of fact — large scale rearrangement in business alongside with attempts to saddle elections process and control regional authority under a motto of «strengthening weak President», which deduce these actions beyond acceptable clash of opinions. It is about formation of a parallel power center with further assumption of some state functions and subsequent transformation into a main center of power.

In this context there are several zones of threats are being formed:

The first tendency shows escalation of political and organizational chaos. Conflict within top authority splits the President Administration into two camps and leads to misbalance in processes of coordination .This tendency is clearly seen practically at all significant regional elections, first of all in Saint Petersburg, the Chechen republic, Bashkiria, and Moscow. In federal elections to the State Duma it is expressed in aspiration to complicate, and whenever possible to bring down elective strategy of a party “Edinaya Rossia”. In regions, there is a tendency of engaging staff and structures of the Prosecution Office for intervention in disputes of economic matter is also clearly present, forcing sides to address the Group for the «force support».
Second tendency shows attempt to reshuffle resources for the benefit of participants and supporters of the Group covered by a facade of state interests. Actually, in place of destroyed oligarchic system comes a new “force” oligarchy consisting of the Group members and their protégées, focused on usage of state levers and the administrative resource for achievement of selfish gains. Fulfillment of such rearrangement, which only benefits «new oligarchs» will result in recurrence, in its worst, of the old oligarchic system, and will lead to decrease in economic growth.

The third consists of gradual transformation of the Presidential role. During fulfillment of the Group’s strategy arising “force” mechanism of the resources reshuffle will require constant support of the President, encroaching his resource of trust and support of people. Thus, the President will lose freedom of maneuver and will become hostage by the Group’s politics, not only regarding elimination of its competitors, but also practically on all other aspects, from replacing regional elites to unlawful use of power and forces.

Fourth, as a perspective, is related to a political campaign repetition in small and medium-size business circles, promoted by the Group’s propaganda by the examples of “YUOKOS affair” to cause massive revision of resources distribution to its advantage. In other words, it is simply about provoking part of the Russian middle class to form an opposition to other groups and eventually to audit the institute of property. Certain political immaturity of the Russian medium-size business frequently pushes it to support radical political forces, first of all — national-extremists. Clearly, the Group, whose purpose is to transform itself into new oligarchs — supervisors of the President, is not capable of handling the anti-system energy awoken by it; however, it will aspire to use it in the “anti-oligarch” struggle. This will result in increase of extreme positions in politics on the eve of the presidential elections and calls for “radical reform of the state” based on extremist and unconstitutional platform.

4. Conclusions

At the end of the summer 2003, present authority has faced a new system opposition which has actually created parallel power center and is trying to carry out alteration of the Presidential course from within, leaning on support of some “enforcement” structures of the state under the guise to support the “weak” President. The main purpose of a new system opposition is implementation of resource redistribution to its benefit and attainment of profound change of elites at federal and regional levels. Additional purpose is formation of a new state ideology, which could help “new oligarchy” stay in power. The role of the President in case of success of such strategy will be shown to a compelled support of “new oligarchy”, in other words, a role of a hostage.

Attempts to engage the State Prosecution Office into political games are extremely dangerous. The insufficiency of a new resource of “the Kremlin minority” to obtain support from people, as a result of its attacks “on capital”; new resource redistribution and destruction of a political balance will increase the possibility of splitting society. This is a direct discredit of authority and its democratic constitutional legitimacy.

In case of the Group’s success, the entire message given to the Federal Assembly by the President, in which he put forward the program of growth of Gross National Product and using it as a basis to overcome poverty and to strength unity and safety of Russia will be under a threat, not to mention the entire peaceful consolidation of a society. The country will again return to the times of instability and chaos in 90’s.

It is crucial to point out main internal contradiction of the Group, which has been composed of two opposite ideological positions: state-bureaucratic — and mercenary self-interest perspectives. It is exactly the attempt to mix these incompatible motivations that resulted in the above described political distortions. I.Sechin, as the curator of a document circulation and the office of the President, and V.Ivanov, as the curator of a personnel selection, always asserted a personnel transparency of V.Putin’s team and Administration decisions, eliminating doubtful personnel offers and lobbyists papers. Having been formed by V.Ivanov and I.Sechin as a structure for maintaining Presidential team, it was meant to further expand beyond the framework of competence and ethics of public service. Having got under control of financial speculators, the Group has turned into the Pugachev-Veremeenkov-Bogdanchikov privatized venture, controlled from the outside, meanwhile, opening a window for interception of government levers, new oligarchic ambitions for opportunists, who are hiding their interests behind the name of a President.

In this context, a simple resolution of this situation seems to be a return of Administration employees to their direct duties while staying away from doubtful connections and oligarchic projecting.

Prepared by Pavlovsky,
29.08.03