All the Next President’s Men: Dmitry Medvedev’s Civiliki

Graham Stack for Russia Profile

Roll over siloviki, the civiliki are on their way.

Dmitry Medvedev, United Russia and Vladimir Putin’s presidential candidate, is not a member of the dreaded siloviki network. Instead, he is the leading member of the “civiliki,” a network of St. Petersburg civil law scholars whom he has pulled up into high positions in Gazprom and the Russian court system.

One of Sovietologists’ most treasured analytical tools was to spot networks between officials – usually regional networks – and trace their progress across the Soviet political firmament. In post-Soviet Russia, “networkism” is an equally fruitful political resource and analytical tool. London sociologist Alena Ledeneva has described contemporary Russia as a “network society:” Networkism, a more inclusive, sometimes more productive, form of nepotism, determines both individual opportunities and identities.

The classic example of networkism is, of course, the siloviki network attributed to Vladimir Putin, comprising former KGB operatives from St. Petersburg. Sociologist Olga Khryshtanovskaya has described prolifically how the siloviki have been taking over at the top, occupying post after post in the economy and government.

So there was considerable surprise last week when Putin threw his support behind First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev who does not belong to the siloviki. The West sighed with relief, or even disappointment, as Medvedev, whose small stature and large brown eyes give him more of a resemblance to a teddy bear than a Russian bear.

So if Medvedev is not a silovik, who is he? What network does he belong to?

Dmitry Medvedev is a textbook civilian, a civil law scholar who co-authored an award-winning textbook on the Russian civil code that was first published in 1991. His co-authors included Ilya Yeliseyev, Anton Ivanov and Mikhail Krotov, a few threads in the network that has risen in Moscow alongside Medvedev. The anointed successor, Yeliseyev, Ivanov and another friend, Vladimir Alisov, were classmates from 1982 to1987 at the Leningrad State University law department. They formed a band of four, according to fellow students and staff, spending both their study time and free time together. Medvedev, Ivanov and Yeliseyev then continued on to postgraduate study and eventually taught in the department. Krotov, who also lectured in the department, graduated two years earlier.

Another classmate from 1987 was Konstantin Chuichenko, but, instead of going into academia, he chose the more adventurous path of joining the KGB.

The Businessmen

Dmitry Medvedev was named head of the supervisory board of Gazprom in June 2000, immediately after Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as president.

Not surprisingly, considering the number of ex-KGB men moving into leadership roles, the first of Medvedev’s classmates to take a high position at Gazprom was Chuichenko. In March 2001, Chuichenko was appointed head of Gazprom’s legal department, and in April 2002, he became a member of the Gazprom management board. From January 2002 to June 2004, he was chairman of the supervisory board of Gazprom Media, the holding company created to handle assets expropriated from media oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky.

In July 2004, Chuichenko became one of three managing directors of the controversial gas trader RosUkrEnergo, the intermediary for Russia’s sales of Turkmen gas to Ukraine and the center of the “gas wars” scandal in 2006. In March 2005, Chuichenko also was elected to the supervisory board of Sibneft, after Roman Abramovich bought it from Gazprom.

Other Medvedev classmates were quick to follow Chuichenko, taking up positions at Gazprom affiliates. In April 2003, Valeria Adamova, class of ‘87, was named vice-president of the legal department of Gazprom’s chemicals affiliate Sibur. Gazprom was busy reclaiming assets transferred to Sibur under the 1990s-era management, and Adamova played an active role in court cases.

In July 2004, Anton Ivanov, Medvedev’s co-author and close friend was appointed first deputy head of Gazprom Media, a member of the management board, and a member of the board of directors of television stations TNT and NTV.

In 2004, Alisov, the fourth in the group of Medvedev’s friends and classmates, became head of the legal department of Gazprom’s newly-created subsidiary, Gazpromregiongaz, which handles gas distribution in Russia.

In 2005, Yeliseyev was appointed deputy chairman of the management board of Gazprombank, Russia’s third largest bank.

Finally in April 2005, Krotov, an acclaimed legal scholar with a number of state awards for jurisprudential excellence, was appointed deputy general director of Gazprom Media, succeeding Ivanov, who had moved on to chair the Supreme Arbitration Court in January.

The civiliki go to court

At the time of his appointment to Russia’s highest commercial court and in light of his judicial experience, he was charged with launching a systematic reform of the commercial court system, and quickly developed a public profile in this capacity through frequent media appearances.

Ivanov appointed Yelena Valyavina, Leningrad law department class of ’88, as his deputy on the court. She had been his first deputy in the St. Petersburg city justice department in the 1990s. Valyavina, like Ivanov, had no experience in court work, and Dmitry Fursov, a Moscow Region court judge with far better qualifications, unsuccessfully protested her appointment in court.

Ivanov then started to bring the next generation of St. Petersburg legal scholars to work for him. Igor Drosdov, class of ‘99, moved from his job as assistant to Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref (who is also a graduate of the Leningrad law department) to head the administration of the Supreme Arbitration Court. Dmitry Pleschkov, another of Ivanov’s Ph.D. students, became head of the court registry.

Nikolai Vinichenko, class of ’87, had risen through the state prosecutor’s office to become state prosecutor for St. Petersburg in 2003. In October 2004, he was appointed director of the Federal Service of Court Bailiffs.

Finally, in November 2005, Krotov moved from Gazprom-Media to become the president’s representative to the Constitutional Court.

True to their roots

The civiliki are as proud of their faculty ties as the siloviki are of their ties to the “corporation.” Asked in 2006 how close he was to his “former colleague” Anton Ivanov, Mihail Krotov replied, “Why former? We both continue to teach. Anton Alexandrovich lectures and I still work with Ph.D. students and post-docs.”

After their move to Moscow, the St. Petersburg civiliki set up shop in the faculty of civil law at the esteemed Higher School of Economics. Ivanov is head of faculty; Drosdov is deputy head. Other faculty members include Yeliseyev, Krotov, and Pleschkov.

Medvedev, receiving an honorary degree from St. Petersburg State University in 2006, promised to return to give a lecture in the same year: “But not about the National Projects or strengthening the Russian state. I’ll lecture to you about Roman law, because Roman law is the foundation of everything else,” he said.

Friends in high places

The civiliki have a number of associate members who have made their way independently to top positions.

Alexander Konovalov, presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District, graduated from the law department of St. Petersburg State University in 1992 and went on to lecture in civil law alongside Ivanov, Krotov and Medvedev while working in the municipal state prosecutor’s department.

From 1997 to 1998, he served as a deputy to Nikolai Vinichenko as a district prosecutor in St. Petersburg, and between 2001 and 2005, he worked as deputy state prosecutor for St. Petersburg.

In 2005, he became the state prosecutor for Bashkortostan, where he investigated the Blagoveschensk police brutality scandal, and won some acclaim from human rights activists. He also investigated the privatization of the region’s oil companies by structures close to the political leadership. In November 2005, he replaced former Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko as presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District.

Minister of Regional Development Dmitry Kozak was a classmate of Mikhail Krotov, graduating from the Leningrad law department in 1985. He worked in the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office and was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg between 1996 and 1999. He is considered a political heavyweight and reformer, someone whom Putin has used to handle emergency situations.

Lovers of law, distrustful of democracy

It is too early to say what impact Medvedev’s civiliki will have on Russian politics. It was only towards the end of Vladimir Putin’s first term that the influence of the siloviki became decisive in Kremlin policies, and it also took Medvedev time before he started to actively promote his own people to Moscow posts.

The first round of reshuffling following the presidential elections in March will show how intent Medvedev is on appointing his classmates to top government positions. The most likely for promotion to the government or Kremlin administration, is Anton Ivanov, who has achieved some public prominence, including TV appearances alongside Vladimir Putin.

It would be wrong to expect fundamental democratic impulses from the civiliki. Legal scholars are inevitably distrustful of the cut and thrust of democratic politics, as it threatens to impair the “perfection” of draft laws. Noticeably, none of the civiliki, for all their legal expertise, has chosen to engage in legislative politics on either the regional or national level.

Now, with Medvedev assured of complete control of the Duma after United Russia’s landslide victory, the civiliki will have carte blanche to draft legislation according to all the textbook procedures. But can scholarly erudition compensate for a complete absence of political competition in making good laws?

Tver, like the rest of Russia, is happy to vote for Putin

Graham Stack for business new europe
Tver is the region 80 miles to the north of Moscow where the mighty “Mother Volga” has its source. Known as the “meeting of seven seas” because of its strategic location at the heart of Russia’s river network, the city of Tver is part of the Golden Ring of medieval towns that is a treasure trove of Russia’s history.

History apart, today’s Tver is simply a small provincial capital of 400,000, where many inhabitants still have ties to the surrounding villages, but where an increasing number commute to work in Moscow, sometimes returning only for the weekends. The spillover from Moscow’s wealth has raised living standards here, but the proximity of Moscow’s swank also highlights for the people of Tver the huge divides in today’s Russia. So Tver can count as a cross-section of Russian society – with wealth trickling down, but not fast enough to mend the damage that poverty is doing.

All the same, Tver is in festive mood. The neat streets of the city’s historical heart look a treat – with fresh snow on the ground, seasonal illuminations sparkling in the trees lining the pedestrian zones, and Christmas pines standing proudly in the central square. On frosty weekend evenings, the many revelers crunch their way through the snow between the restaurants, bars and clubs that dot this pretty area of town on the right bank of the Volga. The seasonal festivities are not free of politics: in Tver, elections are being held on December 2 not only for the State Duma in Moscow, but also for the city’s mayor, and the impressive early installation of street decorations will reflect well in voters’ eyes on the incumbent mayor, United Russia’s Oleg Lebedev.

Like much of Russia almost all of the passers-by say they voted for the United Russia party, whose electoral list is topped by President Vladimir Putin. With over 70% of the vote counted in Russia’s parliamentary elections, United Russia was well ahead with 63% of the vote. “Putin, of course,” is the answer that falls most frequently.

“He’s done a lot for the country,” says Sergei, 55, a pensioner, who is hurrying with his wife to the polling station. “He doesn’t talk like all the others. Anyone can talk – he gets things done. I like his politics.” Asked if he would vote in the presidential elections for any candidate backed by Putin, Sergei shook his head. “But I would vote for what’s his name, the prime minister, Zubkov, as president. He’s experienced, knows what he’s doing, won’t make mistakes. He’s not that old that his mind’s going weak or anything.”

Svetlana, fashionably dressed, in her 20s, hurries past laughing, but calls over her shoulder: “United Russia, of course.”

Dasha and Sasha, both 18, Sasha starting college, Dasha working in a call centre for consumer credit retail, have voted for the first time. But when asked for whom, they say, presumably diplomatically, “we’ve forgotten.”

Alexandra, 30, an accountant, says she intends to vote “against all.” When informed that the “against all” option has been abolished, she laughs and says, “well then, I suppose, United Russia.”

“Stability” is the most frequent single response from those who voted or intend to vote for United Russia. ‘We need stability,” says Vyacheslav, a type-setter, “for the time being.” Asked if he would vote for Putin at the coming presidential elections, he says “yes, if he stood, but I doubt he will. Otherwise I’ll vote for whoever’s going to carry on from him.”

Dmitry, 27, who, unusually for men in the provinces, sports an earring, says he is “of course” for Putin. “There’s just no one better at the moment.”

Another Dmitry, who graduated as an engineer two years ago, says he is more concerned about local politics, and voted primarily for the incumbent mayor, Oleg Lebedev to be reelected. “He brought order into the town.” Lebedev, although now a United Russia member, is facing strong opposition with media backing that accuses him of flirting with pro-Western liberal politicians such as former PM Mikhail Kasyanov, who was allowed to hold an electoral meeting in Tver.

High over the Volga on a winter’s afternoon, people simply seem happy to have the chance to vote for Putin one last time.

Food inflation feeds doubts

However, not all of those who are in favour of Putin, intend to vote for United Russia. “If everyone votes for United Russia, we’ll just end up with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union again,” says Valentina Ivanova, a pensioner. “The country needs different opinions. I’m a pensioner, so I voted for the pensioners’ party,” meaning the Just Russia party, a pro-Putin left-leaning populist creation of Putin ally Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house.

Yet another Dmitry, a 30-year-old teacher, is undecided about whether to vote United Russia or a leftwing party such as Just Russia or the Communists. “I’m going now to meet my wife, and we’ll decide together who to vote for. Inflation is terrible at the moment. Food’s getting very expensive. And this is the government’s fault.”

The surge in consumer price inflation that began in September is an issue that is already causing some to have their doubts about the country’s political direction – opinion polls show it shaving 6% of United Russia’s rating, the same amount its rating grew by after Putin announced he would top the electoral list. Food price inflation is even higher than statistically recorded inflation, and hits hardest the poorest Russians such as pensioners, who spend more proportionally on food products.

“I don’t like United Russia,” says Vadim, a well-groomed 32-year-old in an expensive-looking leather jacket, who says he is a doctor. “I like Putin, but United Russia don’t do anything – they just make a lot of noise. I’ll vote for the Communist Party, or Just Russia.”

A heavily-built man in his 50s who declined to give his name, said he was not going to vote. “What’s the point? It’s all been decided. I don’t want anything from them, and they don’t want anything from me.”

Sergei, a 35-year-old driver, who at first glance might seem a communist or nationalist voter, poorly dressed and laden down in the cold with two bags full of vegetables from the market, proves to be the most vocal. “I voted SPS,” he states surprisingly, referring to the pro-Western liberal party closely associated with the privatizations of the 1990s, and which received only 3% of the vote in 2004. “Because they’re one’s who got the most mud thrown at them and most harassment. Everyone’s talking about it in Moscow. Nemtsov is okay, what did they need to arrest him for?” Boris Nemtsov, a still youthful Yeltsin-era governor and deputy prime minister now leading the SPS electoral list, was detained in St Petersburg last week after a demonstration by the umbrella opposition movement Other Russia.

“Moscow construction companies are all coming here and taking over the market,” Sergei complains. “But what do we ever get to build in Moscow?”

Church bells chime again in Putin’s parents’ village, but no ringing endorsement of United Russia.

Graham Stack for Russia Profile

You could attribute a genius for satire to Father Andrei Milaev. It is the morning of December 2, the date of national parliamentary elections in Russia, and in the village of Turginovo, about 100 miles north of Moscow, the tolling of the church bells has ceded to Orthodox chanting, and now Father Andrei delivers his sermon.

The text he preaches on is the parable of the rich fool, bent on expanding his barns to secure a giant harvest and future wealth. Vladimir Putin’s party United Russia is likewise set to reap a bumper electoral harvest in the Duma- in the hope of securing Putin’s future influence.

But in Father Andrei’s address that concludes a breathtakingly beautiful service, there is no mention of politics – no encouragement to vote, let alone any endorsement of Putin. Perhaps it is because the congregation is consists only of a few elderly village women, and the sermon about the transience of riches is meant to provide consolation for their poverty.

Perhaps it is because endorsing Putin would be preaching to the converted. For the tiny congregation of Turginovo already has every reason to be thankful towards the Russian president. For all that they are few in number, they now worship in a magnificent 17th parish church, dedicated last month after being rebuilt out of ruins.

The one and a half years of construction work was paid for not by the Russian Orthodox church, but directly by the Kremlin. And feelings of loyalty towards Putin derive not just from his politics and media presence, but because he is a local son. The village of Turginovo was where Putin’s parents grew up as peasants and were married, and where archives trace the Putin family back for over three hundred years.

Now the past is catching up with Turginovo.

“A man came, from St. Petersburg, from the Presidential Affairs Directory, and said he was a friend of the president’s,” remembers Nadezhda Milaeva, the wife of Father Andrei. “He asked if Turginovo had any special wishes, and said there were funds available. He said the president wanted to do something for his parents’ village. We all got together, and decided that the best thing would be for the church to be reconstructed.”

His family’s deep roots in this rural community apparently mean a lot to Putin: “I had never reflected on how stable society used to be. For 300 years, my family lived in the same village and went to the same church,” he told the Valdai Club of foreign Russia experts in October.

His parents’ deep roots in the Russian village have also influenced world affairs: Putin has told how his mother secretly had him baptized as a child, and that the cross handed down from his grandmother was the only object to survive a blaze in his dacha in the 1990s. This story is said to have so moved George W. Bush that it prompted his his famous “I got a sense of his soul” remark at his first meeting with Putin in Llyublyana in 2001.

The grandmother whose cross Putin says he wears was shot by the Germans in Turginovo as a partisan in 1941.

Putin’s parents were married in the church building, in its new function as social centre, in the 1930s. But by that time the church had already been mutilated unrecognisably. Its dome had been torn down and interior gutted. Over the next decades the shell that was left served as the village cinema and social club. During the 1990s it fell into further disrepair.

Now the church is as good as new, its dome glinting, the bell tower providing a stunning view over the settlements grouped around, the broad River Shosha, and the vast forests of a nature reserve. Inside, the icons’ gold gleams brightly in the light of the chandeliers, and the interior smells of fresh paint. Nadezhda even apologises for the church’s immaculate state: “Of course, it lacks the feeling of age at the moment, but time goes quickly,” she laughs.

Foreign bodies

The locals of Turginovo are proud to have such a famous son. But the magnificent church remains something of a foreign body.

It was built not by locals, but, like much of Russia’s construction work, by migrants construction workers from Central Asia. Father Andrei, himself an ethnic Russian returnee from Kazakhstan, when interviewed earlier blamed this on the laziness of the locals.

“You know, the local workers are very conceited, and they argue with the foreman over everything possible. In Soviet times, Orientals did not lose their respect to their seniors. They carry out instructions without contradicting. Without them it would have taken a lot longer than one and a half years to build the church,” is how he explained the church being built by Muslims,” Milaev told russkoe slovo.

“In fact, we only had one brigade of local workers here, of nine men. We paid between 11,000 and 18,0000 rubles. That’s very good money in the villages. But hardly anybody was interested. Some were just drunk, others prize their personal freedom to much to work in a disciplined way, even for good money.”

“Many earn more doing work for or driving dacha owners. But that’s seasonal, temporary work. We offered legal, guaranteed and well-paid work over a period of one and a half years. But neither did they want it, nor could they do it. You need discipline for it, from morning to evening, without dropping out for days of binge drinking. And the locals were simply not ready to change the way of life they grew used to in Soviet times.”
“This will not change over night, this requires long, sustained, painstaking work, directed towards a completely new mentality, attitude to one’s own life, relations to family and neighbours. And the Pokrovsky church can play a role here. This is the only way for a moral healing of Russia.”

But such hopes have been dampened since the opening of the church in October.

“At first, dozens of people came to the services,” Nadzhda recalls. “But the numbers fell, and now only a few still come.”

“We work with children in the village school,” she says, “there is a St. George’s Union group.” St. George’s Union is a church-sponsored organization where children get involved socially in helping old people and invalids. “But hardly any of them come to the service,” complains Nadezhda. The only children present are their own. Her teenage son assists in the service and is a proficient bell ringer. “He practices everyday on his computer,” says Nadezhda proudly.

The newly-constructed church, in dislodging the youth club, has instead perhaps made the village even less attractive to young people.

Another false dawn for Turginovo was the news that the settlement was finally going to be connected to the gas network.

Villagers’ initial joy turned to bitterness when it transpired that it would cost households 30-70,000 rubles to be connected to the newly-laid pipes.

“That’s simply far too much for old people,” says Olga. Olga and her husband Yury, youthful pensioners, come from Moscow and own a modest dacha in the adjacent village of Pomimovo. “Many of the old people are forced to leave their houses in winter to stay with families in the cities due to the difficulties of heating,” says Olga. “But they can’t afford that amount out of their pensions.”

Prestigious neighbourhood

The cost of a gas connection is, however, a trifle for the wealthy dacha owners from Moscow who have started to settle here.

Ironically, considering Father Andrei’s sermon on the rich fool, Turginovo is changing precisely because of the influx of rich Moscovites. They are attracted by the proximity to Moscow, the splendid church, the hunting opportunities provided by the nature reserve, the beautiful banks of the Volga tributary Shosha, – and, above all, the prestige of having a dacha in the village where Vladimir Putin came from – and where he might yet drop by.

In the neighbouring village of Pomimovo, the cottage where Putin’s mother grew up, a simple box-like structure, has been put into shape with a lick of paint. “There were people living there,” says Yury, whose dacha is situated opposite, “but they were offered another place and they agreed to move. The nature reserve bought the cottage, and did it up, just in case Putin drops by.”

Of the thirty odd houses lining the village road, half of them are newly built brick structures, or are still under construction. Here as well, the construction work is being carried out by migrant workers from Central Asia.

Yury is from an industrial area of Moscow, and, no rich businessman, he built his dacha with his own hands ten years ago, long before the boom started. “Nobody had even heard of this guy Putin ten years ago. It was a big surprise when it turned out his family were from this village.”

“At that time, prices were very cheap out here, because it was considered so far from Moscow. Now it is not considered so far, if you’re driving a powerful foreign car you can do it in two hours. Now even a wooden house can cost up to a million rubles,” he says.

“People come here for the hunting in the nature reserve,” he says. “Kremlin bosses used to hunt here – Brezhnev and Kruschev, especially.”

“Our neighbour remembers sledging with Putin’s father as boys,” says Olga, explaining that the old man spent winter with his family in nearby Tver. “Of course, there’s a lot of exaggeration and invention in the tales people tell. They say, for instance, that Putin’s aunt still lives here in the next village. But nobody knows her. And journalists make up things themselves,” she laughs. “They wrote that we had a cat called Vova [a pet name for Vladimir]. They just made that up!”

Yury says there are no real conflicts between the new dacha owners and the villagers. “Why should there be?” The value of Yury’s property has only to gain from the new prestige the area enjoys.

So will the village vote en masse for Putin’s United Russia party? Yury won’t be drawn. “People will vote as they choose to. After all, it’s not like the Soviet Union, we have a lot of parties now.”

It is not just one-way traffic between Moscow and Turginovo. On the bus out, a young village man, Igor, in his early twenties, is starting on his journey back to Moscow where he works as a heating engineer. “I visit Mum at the weekends,” he explains. He hopes to get back in time to vote.

But Igor’s evident local pride does not extend to politics. “Most people will vote for Putin, of course. The people really love him.”

“But I’m planning to vote for Zhirinovsky today,” he tells me. Zhirinovsky, the infamous and clownish leader of the nationalist Liberal Democrats, recently toured the region by train. “Only he hasn’t a chance of ever becoming president,” Igor admits regretfully. “He’s just overshadowed by Putin.”