Alexander Kharichev, a close associate of Sergei Kiriyenko—the head of the presidential administration’s domestic policy bloc and director of the Kremlin’s Social Monitoring Department—has written yet another ideological article, titled “The Value-Based and Semantic Frameworks of Social Architecture in the Sociology of Management: Institutional Matrices, Meaning-Making, and Sociocultural Regulation” (the full text is available to the author). Propaganda is oriented around writings of this kind; the ideological and propaganda course “Foundations of Russian Statehood” is partly based on them; and other figures in the presidential administration’s domestic policy bloc, United Russia, and regional bureaucrats build their discourse on them.
The article is written in a pseudo-academic, if not outright academic, style and, unlike Kharichev’s other productions, is peppered with references to respected sociologists and philosophers. Yet there is nothing fundamentally new in its content that distinguishes it from the official’s earlier published texts. It contains the same “service,” the primacy of the public—more accurately, state—good over the individual, and the concept of “social architecture“, a substitute for politics in the form of managed social activity, ranging from regional branding to plebiscites over school budgets.
Still, the text does contain a measure of novelty: Kharichev openly, if not particularly fervently, criticizes corporate methods in public administration. Yet Kiriyenko’s team—and Kharichev as one of its active members—has always practiced the introduction of precisely these methods, from pre-set KPIs for election results to personnel competitions, training programs, and courses. Indeed, working by corporate templates was the hallmark of Sergei Kiriyenko’s bloc that distinguished it from the blocs of his predecessors as first deputy chief of staff for domestic policy, Vladislav Surkov and Vyacheslav Volodin.
“In traditional management paradigms, the regulation of behavior relies on external incentives: directive engineering uses administrative coercion and sanctions, while market managerialism uses financial contracting and utilitarian gain. In both cases, motivation remains entirely dependent on external control or rewards: the subject complies with the rules only insofar as external control or material reward stands behind them,” Kharichev writes.
According to his theory, “market managerialism” neglects “values,” which is why, within its framework, work must constantly be monitored and material incentives offered: “values have been reduced to a superficial marketing brand and an instrument of corporate PR. The fundamental category of the common good has been replaced by a mechanical aggregate of individual consumer demands.”
“Strategic planning has given way to short-term budgetary and electoral cycles,” Kharichev laments. He also takes aim at KPIs, which the official calls “formal indicators elevated to the status of self-sufficient criteria of effectiveness.”
Social architecture, by contrast, rests on values and traditions, thanks to which it “transforms society from an object of external geopolitical manipulation into a sovereign creator of its own historical destiny.”
However much Kharichev criticizes the “corporate-managerial” approach, Kiriyenko’s team—and Kharichev himself as a key member of it—continue to operate precisely by it. KPIs for the State Duma elections and the desired number of participants in the invasion of Ukraine were announced in advance and met (in the case of the voting results, even exceeded). The presidential administration’s domestic policy bloc continues to run its competitions, including for military personnel, and is even expanding them to include higher education at RANEPA. Nor has the team-building for regional and federal officials disappeared; the domestic policy bloc regularly holds it at the Senezh Management Workshop.
Alexander Kharichev’s formal renunciation, as the chief ideologist and mouthpiece of Kiriyenko’s team, of corporate methods in favor of a “value-based” social architecture may signal that the corporate approach has acquired critics within the power vertical. For example, the focus on numbers could be dismissed as formalism, while competitions could be deemed ineffective, since senior posts still go to representatives of influential groups and clans. Kharichev is counterattacking by giving his team’s work a “value-based foundation,” using language that pleases the country’s top leadership. Finally, the article is intended to brand Kiriyenko’s team as ideologues building a new society, rather than mere managers delivering the desired electoral results and personnel work.
Volodin-Style Downsizing
The staffs of the State Duma and the Federation Council are cutting their personnel, just like other federal agencies, regional administrations, and municipal authorities. The reason is transparent and understandable: budgets at every level are running deficits, and layoffs are meant to reduce spending. Even the Moscow city government—the richest and least troubled of Russia’s regions—is cutting officials.
The lower chamber of parliament, whose staff is chaired and controlled by Vyacheslav Volodin, has announced record-level cuts of 15 to 20 percent, while other authorities are targeting reductions of 10−15 percent. Of course, vacant posts will be abolished first and employees of retirement age dismissed—this is the usual script for “optimization” in government bodies. But the scale of the cuts announced by Volodin, who most likely deliberately leaked the information to the Kremlin-loyal RBC, implies that younger staff members may also be shown the door.
A 20 percent cut can be described as one of the State Duma speaker’s PR moves; he understands the laws of public politics well and, above all, understands Vladimir Putin’s demands. Bureaucratic layoffs in a staff are always well received by a significant portion of the population, even though such “optimization” reduces the accessibility of public services and the quality of the remaining officials’ work, who must labor both for themselves and for the guy who was let go. Putin may also welcome such zeal: military spending is the budget’s priority, while the president considers other expenditures non-essential, and government officials are cutting them. Volodin fits into the broader trend—and is getting ahead of it.
The speaker is also tightening formal control over the corps of parliamentary aides employed on the State Duma’s staff. They are now being made to take tests on their knowledge of the Constitution and the country’s key laws. In this way, Volodin demonstrates his power and capabilities to the new parliamentarians, who have already encountered difficulties: their aides must queue for the tests, meaning they cannot yet begin their work. Moreover, through this “restoration of order,” the Duma speaker once again draws the attention of the country’s top leadership. In reality, this Volodin innovation changes little: staff aides to deputies are usually professionals who understand legislation and paperwork. Scandals mostly involve volunteer aides, who can trade access to roundtables and parliamentary events, act as unscrupulous lobbyists, or simply buy an aide’s credentials to make dealing with officials and security-service personnel easier. In this area, Volodin does not risk restoring order (perhaps not yet): resistance from high-status parliamentarians and their influential, authoritative aides could prove too strong.
A Military Senator for a Weakened Governor
The Murmansk regional legislature has unexpectedly appointed Hero of Russia and participant in the invasion of Ukraine Ivan Khrustalev as its representative in the Federation Council. Initially, the regional leadership had been considering sending one of the representatives of local influential groups to the upper chamber. Despite the opportunistic promotion of military figures, regional leaders are reluctant to advance “veterans” to the Senate from their territories’ executive or legislative branches. In the “regional” chamber of the federal parliament, they need people capable of working as lobbyists, not military men who do not know which door to knock on or what to ask for. The Federation Council itself also views participants in the invasion of Ukraine with skepticism.
There are exceptions to this rule: military figures are mainly sent to the Federation Council by weakened governors. For instance, in 2024, Andrei Turchak, the head of the Altai Republic, sent a Hero of Russia to the upper chamber after previously falling out of favor with the federal leadership and losing his post as United Russia’s general secretary. This year, only one military senator made it into the Federation Council through elections: he represents Lipetsk Oblast, which is governed by Igor Artamonov, a former Sberbank executive who has repeatedly found himself at the center of scandals. Murmansk Governor Andrei Chibis benefited from the patronage of Dmitry Kozak, a longtime associate of Putin’s. But Kozak, because of his position on the war in Ukraine, first fell partly out of favor with the president and then chose to resign as deputy chief of staff. By promoting a military figure at the expense of a regional lobbyist, Chibis is demonstrating excessive loyalty and trying to protect his position.
