Elites did not fit into the “Politburo” – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The communication holding “Minchenko Consulting” held on Friday a round table “Russian Elite: Decision-Making Models Today and Tomorrow”. Its participants stated that the Politburo 2.0 model invented by the holding ten years ago, which had long remained a popular tool for analyzing and evaluating elites, needed to be revised. The pandemic and the radical restriction of access to the first person, the ideological foreign policy and the costs of a special military operation in Ukraine require a reassessment of the existing patterns, but what an alternative model might be, experts are not yet ready to predict.

The creation of the Politburo 2.0 model coincided with the end of the existence of the duumvirate of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev and the regrouping of the elites after the “castling” of 2012, Evgeny Minchenko, president of Minchenko Consulting, reminded the participants of the round table. The changes required an adequate tool for assessing and predicting decisions made by the authorities, and this is how, in fact, Politburo 2.0 appeared – a model that made it possible to take into account the influence of the leaders of elite groups, even if they do not occupy a formal position in power. But now this model is in crisis, Mr. Minchenko admitted: the pandemic and the resulting radical restriction of access to the first person, and now the costs of a special military operation – all this requires a reassessment of the established patterns of elite behavior.

The experts generally agreed with this conclusion, but they did not seem ready to offer an alternative model. “The map begins to obscure the territory” — after the COVID-19 and the start of the special operation, the Politburo 2.0 scheme no longer describes the current situation, admitted Gleb Kuznetsov, a political scientist and head of the EISI expert council.

The time for new models is coming, he believes: “Perhaps it makes sense to move on to the concept of “unknown fathers” (the ruling group in the Strugatsky brothers’ book Inhabited Island.— “b”)”.

Media technologist Gleb Cherkasov did not rule out that the existing Politburo 2.0 model could be preserved, but subject to its modernization. Indeed, even in Soviet times, there was not only the Politburo – there was, for example, also the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which in certain situations played a significant role. Now the role of performers is also growing in Russia, and perhaps this should be taken into account and the system should be supplemented with a new element, Mr. Cherkasov suggested.

According to Sergei Starovoitov, head of the federal expert network “Club of Regions”, it does not matter what the new model will be called, but it must have a utilitarian application. Businessmen, people who are looking for practical solutions, want to understand how the government works and how they can grow in this system of relations, and after the start of the special operation, the paradigm for the development of society has changed, the expert explained. A good example, in his opinion, is the new role model of the former president and prime minister, and now deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev. However, the elites not only create and implement models of social relations, but are also forced to respond to the demands of society, Mr. Starovoitov added: “Now the elites demonstrate militarism in public. Tomorrow, perhaps, they will turn on a different mode. I would not rule out a new trend towards warming relations with the West.”

According to Yevgeny Minchenko, in the near future, any careers in Russia will be rebuilt “through the Donbass.”

At some point, one could observe an overproduction of the human resource, he noted: a huge number of people went through management schools, and it was not very clear where they should go next. “Now everyone is being told: forward to the Donbass, show yourself there,” said Mr. Minchenko. On the other hand, because of the special operation, a large number of people with experience of violence and a request for a “piece of the pie” will appear in Russia, and Donbas veterans can become a political force, he suggested.

Experts are not yet ready to give an accurate forecast regarding the dynamics of the development of elites, even for the short term. What happens over the next one to three years will determine further forks, warned Andrey Degtyarev, a professor at the MGIMO Department of Political Science. In fact, everything will depend on how successful or unsuccessful the special operation in Ukraine will be, summed up Yevgeny Minchenko.

Anastasia Kornya