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Russian Regional Report (Vol. 8, No. 1, 16 January 2003)

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Russian Regional Report (Vol. 8, No. 1, 16 January 2003) A bi-weekly publication jointly produced by the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich (http://www.isn.ethz.ch) and the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at American University, Washington, DC (http://www.American.edu/traccc) TABLE OF CONTENTS The Power Ministries Police, FSB Reforms in the Central Federal District Russian Far East Political Struggle Spurs More Contract Killings Center-Periphery Relations Bashkortostan Adopts New Constitution Under Federal Pressure St. Petersburg Elections Constituent Services Strengthen Incumbents Transparent Budgets Seminar Examines Key Issues in Promoting Oversight Business and Politics Rostov Leadership Consolidates Relations with Business Elite THE POWER MINISTRIES The following article is an extract from a forthcoming book entitled "Putin's Federal Reforms: Success or Failure?" edited by Peter Reddaway and Robert Orttung and scheduled for publication by November 2003 from Rowman & Littlefield. The focus of the book is the seven federal districts Putin established in May 2000. POLICE, FSB REFORMS IN THE CENTRAL FEDERAL DISTRICT By Nikolai Petrov, Center for Political-Geographic Research, Moscow Judging by the career backgrounds of his top assistants, working with Russia's power ministries is Presidential Envoy Georgii Poltavchenko's main priority. Unfortunately for outside observers, however, most of this work goes on behind closed doors and it is possible to judge the measures taken only through small bits and pieces of evidence. It is well known, for example, that the okrug has a Collegium on Cooperation with Law Enforcement Agencies and Power Ministries. Its members include Chairman of the Council of FSB regional branches in the Central Federal Okrug V. Zakharov (who was appointed head of the Moscow city and oblast FSB after the beginning of Putin's federal reforms), okrug MVD head Sergei Shchadrin, okrug Deputy General Procurator N. Makarov, and Justice Ministry okrug branch head I. Ivanov. The media has mentioned the council only a few times, but otherwise there is little publicly-available information about its work. In the summer of 2002, the okrug organized an anti-terrorism commission, which, in addition to representatives of these federal agencies, includes deputy governors representing the regions. In order to better understand the work of the two key power agencies in the central federal district, the MVD and FSB, we examined the Rossiiskaya vlast' web site (vlast.rambler.ru) as it stood at the end of August 2002 and the ITAR-TASS publication Tsentr Rossii 2002: Deistvyyushchie litsa. Unfortunately, even though these two sources provide relatively comprehensive personnel lists, they did not contain entries for all of the offices. Nevertheless, the overall picture is relatively clear. Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The first and most striking feature of the MVD's work was the lack of personnel turnover. Less than one third of the police chiefs in the Central Federal District were appointed during the Putin era and after the most recent gubernatorial elections. The rest had been appointed under Yeltsin, or in the case of Ivanovo, under Gorbachev. Of the five appointed during the Putin era, only two (the most visible since they serve in Moscow and Moscow Oblast) were appointed when Boris Gryzlov was the interior minister and after the amendments to the federal law on the police strengthening the federal government's control were implemented. Former Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo appointed the other three police chiefs named during the Putin era, including the new chief in Tambov, where Putin appointed the former regional MVD chief as the chief federal inspector in the region. In other words, even though Putin made a considerable effort to take the power to appoint and fire regional police chiefs from the governors by amending federal legislation, he has not used this power to put new police chiefs in place. The case of the Moscow city police force may be illustrative of this problem. The federal leadership removed Moscow Police Chief Nikolai Kulikov in the fall of 1999, on the eve of the city's mayoral elections and the State Duma elections. The federal and city government fought more than two years over who should occupy this post. Ultimately, the two sides had to settle on a compromise figure in Lt. Gen. Vladimir Pronin, the former police chief of one of the capital's districts. The objections of a powerful governor (in this case the mayor of Moscow who has gubernatorial status in Russia) blocked the federal leadership from doing what it wanted to do. Beyond the political scandal, Pronin's appointment was unusual because in the past, the Moscow police chief had come from the ministry. Second, police appointments are distinctly tied to the federal and regional political calendar. Most of the appointments were made in 1996-1997, after the presidential elections and on the eve or just after the first round of gubernatorial elections. This period was a time when the center was maximally powerful and the governors, in contrast, were weak. Approximately half of the police chiefs serving in August 2002 were appointed at this time. Between then and the next presidential elections, a period when the governors grew stronger and were able to protect their allies, no police appointments took place at all. Third, the "Putin" group of police chiefs differs fundamentally from those appointed during the Yeltsin era. While the regional police chiefs appointed from 1990 to 1997 spent their whole professional life in their native regions, the more recent appointees came from leadership posts from other regions. In Moscow Oblast, the new police chief had previously served as the police chief in Vologda. Additionally, the person appointed to the newly created position of okrug police chief was an outsider, Sergei Shchadrin, who worked the previous two years as the Rostov police chief (he spent most of his 25-year career in his native Ivanovo Oblast, briefly working in Moscow and Pskov, where the governor opposed him). In this sense, it is possible to talk of a transition from the Brezhnev "stagnation era" model of personnel policies, where there was little movement between regions, to a pre-stagnation rotation model, under which personnel rose up the career ladder by moving from region to region. Finally, many of the regional police chiefs serving in the summer of 2002 were reaching the age of 55, not long before established as the threshold for mandatory retirement. The average regional police chief was 52.5 years old and had served 5 years in his post. In some cases, the minister can prolong a police chief's career by a special decision. Through the imposition of this new rule, the personnel system has received an external mechanism for weeding out current police chiefs. Curiously, a fourth of the regional police chiefs in the Central Federal Okrug passed the 55 year-old limit (Kursk, Belgorod, Bryansk, and Tver) by the middle of 2002 and another three reached it at the end of the year or the beginning of 2003. If all of these men are forced to retire, up to half of the police chief positions could be vacant. Thus, the current police chiefs are more likely to be loyal to the minister on whom their job depends than on the governor regardless of whether they are serving in their native region or have come from elsewhere. This analysis shows that Moscow does not have a sufficient reserve of qualified police chiefs it can rely on to replace existing chiefs. Thus, only a modest number of police chiefs have been replaced. Nevertheless, there could be extensive rotations if Moscow decides to force out all of the chiefs who have reached 55. The only question now is whether Moscow will chose to use this opportunity to significantly replace incumbent regional police chiefs with younger officers or seek to increase the loyalty to the center among incumbent regional police chiefs by allowing them to serve past the 55 year age limit and appointing other generals who are quickly approaching that critical line. In either case, on the eve of the 2003-2004 parliamentary and presidential electoral cycle, the center has a powerful lever it can use against the governors. In the past, though, Putin's Kremlin has been unwilling or unable to use the tools available to it. Federal Security Service (FSB). The FSB is a completely different type of institution from the MVD and never came under the same kind of gubernatorial influence that the other power ministries did. Logically then, with the strengthening of the central government, one would not expect to see many personnel changes within FSB ranks. However, in fact, there are intense personnel changes taking place and half of the regional FSB leaders have been replaced since Putin came to power, although for different reasons than those that led to changes in the MVD. Instead of replacing "bad" leaders, the heads of the regional FSB branches are experiencing career growth as a result of the appointment or election of FSB officials to a wide variety of other jobs, from presidential envoy, to chief federal inspector, to governor. Several trends are visible within the FSB beyond the numerous leadership changes. First, the personnel turnover seems more evenly spaced and less politically motivated than with the MVD, especially in the transfer of FSB chiefs to the post of chief federal inspector. Such transitions happened in Belgorod and Ryazan (in Tambov, the former MVD chief was appointed as the chief federal inspector). Nevertheless, there are some connections between FSB appointments and the political calendar, with the election of the heads of the Voronezh and Smolensk FSB chiefs as governors and the removal of the Moscow and Lipetsk FSB chiefs immediately after the gubernatorial elections in those regions.
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