Vladimir Putin appointed Artyom Zhoga, the former Chairman of the People’s Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), as his plenipotentiary envoy to the Ural Federal District. He replaced Vladimir Yakushev, a member of Sergey Sobyanin’s team, who became head of the «United Russia» party’s general council and was appointed first deputy chairman of the Federation Council. Zhoga’s transfer to a new job is presented as the most obvious illustration of the career opportunities open to military personnel within the country’s power vertical. This promotion is one of the main projects of the political bloc of the presidential administration led by Sergey Kiriyenko. With this initiative, Kiriyenko is killing two birds with one stone: he wants to please Putin and attract new volunteers to the front.
In fact, the promotion of the military is more of a PR project than a real initiative. Hundreds of thousands of people are currently fighting at the front, and only a handful get jobs at the federal level, and perhaps, a few dozens of military officers receive regional appointments. More often than not, it turns out that these new appointees were already part of the power vertical as bureaucrats or MPs. Zhoga’s appointment to a relatively high position in the formal nomenclature is meant to show that the system is alive and well. However, as in many other cases, this is more of a PR stunt within the overall project. Firstly, the power vertical tries to leave as little ground as possible (i.e. jobs that carry political clout) to outsiders, and only gives military positions where real influence is rather limited. The job of plenipotentiary envoy is a good case in point. When the post was created in the early 2000s, plenipotentiaries had quite a lot of power. They were the eyes and ears of the young and very popular president Putin. Examples of political heavyweights from Putin’s early entourage who served in this position early on include Ilya Klebanov or federal-level politicians such as Sergey Kiriyenko. They were able to put pressure on old-school governors who had strong ties to local elites. Kiriyenko and Klebanov used these opportunities, while Pyotr Latyshev, Putin’s earlier plenipotentiary envoys to the Ural Federal District in 2000−2008, a former law enforcement officer, was a man of calm, serenity and conflict avoidance. By the mid-2010s, most of the governors were already «Varangians» — the Kremlin-selected carpetbaggers with no connection to the region yet linked to large federal groups.
The envoys’ influence over them was rather limited: the head of the region could always turn to his or her patron, who could protect them from an overly zealous presidential envoy. In recent years, the job of the plenipotentiary envoy has been used to get rid of federal or even regional officials. For example, the former governor of the Kaliningrad region, Nikolay Tsukanov, worked in the Ural district, and the former head of the annexed Sevastopol, Sergey Menyailo, was appointed to the Siberian Federal District. There is one super-influential figure among the envoys, Yuri Trutnev, but he has the primary status of deputy prime minister, with the Ministry of Far Eastern and Arctic Affairs under his command. When we speak of Zhoga and the Urals district, another figure immediately comes to mind — Igor Kholmanskikh, a mid-level manager at Uralvagonzavod machine-building company. In 2012, at the height of the protests in Moscow and other major cities against electoral fraud, Kholmanskikh addressed Putin during the so-called «Direct Line with Putin», an annual televised question-and-answer session with the president, and suggested that he «and his boys» could «come to Moscow and deal with the protesters». The appointment of the pseudo-worker Kholmanskikh as a plenipotentiary envoy was a kind of reward for his loyalty. At the time, the political bloc of the presidential administration led by Vyacheslav Volodin, promoted the concept of «popular front leaders», and Kholmanskikh fit the bill perfectly. However, his work in the plenipotentiary’s office did not become a springboard for him, and after his resignation he was virtually forgotten.
As the newly minted plenipotentiary envoy Artyom Zhoga is about to land in a rather special Federal District; in fact, it is the domain of Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. All the regions of the district, except for the Chelyabinsk Region, are headed by people from the Tyumen city management team. Sobyanin was governor of the Tyumen region before his career took off at the federal level, where he was able to appoint successors to his former post. Former envoy Yakushev belongs to the same group; he could be called a senior comrade among Sobyanin’s governors. Zhoga will have to deal with a group of regional leaders with a super-powerful patron. He will not be able to impose his opinions and vision on this group for fear of igniting a conflict that will not end favourably for him, as Zhoga is an outsider to the group of Russian elites.
The national daily Kommersant quotes its sources that have already stated that one of the aims of Zhoga’s appointment is to prevent a conflict between him and the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin. In the past, conflicts between prominent chairpersons and regional leaders were a common phenomenon: parliamentary speakers were perceived as potential rivals by the governors, appointed by the Kremlin. As a result, chairpersons were often sent into honourable exile to the Federation Council or the State Duma. So far, Zhoga’s new appointement can be seen as a form of such exile. It is likely that his conflicts with Pushilin have already begun: Artyom Zhoga formally nominated Putin to run for a new term and became co-chairman of his official headquarters, which means that he has taken a symbolic place in the political system.
Thus, the promotion of the former chairperson of the DPR parliament and the former commander of the local Sparta battalion was the sum total of several factors. First, the political bloc of the presidential administration needs to promote the military as part of its PR project. Secondly, Zhoga was removed from his home region, probably in an attempt to deny him a political future there. The system has given him a position of limited influence as a regional envoy in a Federal District controlled by a group of one of Putin’s most powerful bureaucrats, Sergey Sobyanin. This opportunistic appointment is reminiscent of the promotion of Igor Kholmanskikh, and it is very likely that Zhoga will suffer a similar fate.
Checkists Come to Culture
Strange as it may seem, another appointment that did not make as many headlines as Zhoga’s, and was far more mundane, seems more interesting and revealing. Vladimir Bocharnikov, not the best-known and most public of all PA officials, was appointed head of the Presidential Department for State Humanitarian Policy. Previously, Bocharnikov worked in the Kremlin’s Presidential Civil Service, Personnel and Anti-Corruption Directorate and the Presidential Directorate for Interregional Relations and Cultural Contacts with Foreign Countries. Both departments are usually staffed by people with links to the intelligence services. Putin and his inner circle — all former Chekists and intelligence officers — are not prepared to hand over key personnel and international issues to civilians. Most likely, Bocharnikov is also linked to the security services. Putin created the Department for State Humanitarian Policy back in June, with Vladimir Medinsky, a presidential aide and former culture minister, as its direct supervisor and head.
Previously, the Kremlin’s Directorate for Social Projects (DSP), supervised by First Deputy Chief of Staff and head of the political bloc Sergey Kiriyenko, was responsible for culture. The Directorate has long been headed by Kiriyenko’s closest aide, Sergey Novikov. His duties include working with young people and liaising with cultural figures (from pop singers to classical institutions). Novikov, who has a background in journalism, has recently been described as Russia’s chief censor. His subordinates compile lists of «banned artists» but can suddenly show mercy of the «banned» publicly support the war or visit occupied and annexed territories of Ukraine with their shows. For Sergey Novikov himself, work in the DSP seems attractive and valuable precisely because of its «cultural» component; the civil servant, who directs opera productions in his spare time, sees himself as part of the artistic bohemian world and enjoys working with fellow bohemians.
The creation of a new department with the word «culture» in its name significantly reduced the formal and informal powers of the DSP in this area. Sergey Novikov would at the very least have to deal with Medinsky and the head of the new structure under him, and at most he would have to phase out his activities altogether and concentrate on youth policy and support for public organisations loyal to the authorities. In fact, this is what the DSP was doing before Kiriyenko’s team came to the presidential administration The new department partly overlaps with the remit of another representative of the political bloc of the presidential administration and a close associate of Kiriyenko’s: Alexander Kharichev, head of the Directorate for Social Processes Monitoring and Analysis. This department is responsible, among other things, for developing ideological and quasi-ideological discourses. Presidential Department for State Humanitarian Policy will be tasked with developing proposals for Putin «on the development of spiritual and moral values», which is also an ideology of sorts.
Of course, Kharichev’s Directorate has much more formal authority in this matter along ideological lines, but given Medinsky’s energy and his passion for public politics, these boundaries would clearly overlap. This would have happened if the new department were headed by someone close to Medinsky. The aides themselves have rather limited functionality and mandate (their main asset is access to the president), but the directorates under their command have clear powers and budgets. Having secured a job for ‘his’ candidate at the head of the Directorate, Vladimir Medinsky would have gained a valuable tool for consolidating influence in the power apparatus. But this did not happen. The Directorate for the supervision of culture and ideology will be headed by a bureaucrat with a Chekist background and no previous involvement in cultural or ideological issues. He will be accountable primarily to the country’s top leadership rather than to a formal curator. Bocharnikov’s background suggests that the new structure will be highly bureaucratic. We can expect increased censorship and the most unpleasant, ridiculous initiatives. Experienced bureaucrats and Chekists are very good at anticipating and fulfilling the coming ideological trends, the future directions of the system and the desires of the bosses. Paradoxically, Medinsky and Novikov have their own views and ideas, both have at least some knowledge of contemporary culture and some ideological training, and they have to take them into account, at least by contradiction. They try to be part of the cultural world. Bocharnikov is a stranger to this world, he does not understand how the sphere of culture and ideology works, and therefore he will simplify his work as much as possible. With such a head, the new department will resemble the censorship of Nicholas I, which employed bureaucrats like Vladimir Bocharnikov as censors. Guided by the simple principle of «let’s ban it just to be on the safe side», they tried to censor everything that seemed suspicious to them.
The arrival of Chekist bureaucrats in the cultural and humanitarian spheres, which were previously considered sensitive, is a new round in the evolution (or, rather, degradation) of Putin’s power vertical. In the beginning, the power verticale knew how to delegate authority on a professional basis, and familiarity with the curatorial field of the new appointee was the main requirement (along with loyalty). The curators of politics, culture and education were a kind of moderators, liaisons between the Kremlin and the sphere under their supervision. They spoke the same language with the authorities, politicians, cultural figures and so on. Bocharnikov speaks only one language, that of bureaucracy. His appointment shows that Putin no longer needs moderators, but managers, executors of his will, plain and simple. It is likely that the next appointments, for example to the curators of the political bloc, will be made in the same way: people with experience in politics and political technology will be replaced by bureaucrats in uniform. Such personnel decisions facilitate the transmission of orders from top to bottom: bureaucrats do not discuss the orders of their superiors, but simply carry them out. But the straightening of the vertical makes it more fragile, and it will continue to become disconnected from society.
