SILOVIKI TAKE REINS IN POST-OLIGARCHY ERA
By Victor Yasmann for RFE/RL
ISN
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Switzerland
Russia’s "siloviki" – the network of former and current state-security
officers – maintain an unprecedented level of control over political
and economic life, and are likely to consolidate that power in the
upcoming elections. From RFE/RL.
The hubbub surrounding Russia’s upcoming Duma elections in December
and the March 2008 presidential election swung into high gear this
month, but the key question is not whether the country will take
a new direction but rather how will the status quo, the existing
arrangement of political forces, be maintained.
Virtually all key positions in Russian political life – in government
and the economy – are controlled by the so-called "siloviki," a blanket
term to describe the network of former and current state-security
officers with personal ties to the Soviet-era KGB and its successor
agencies.
The unexpected replacement of former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov
by former Federal Financial Monitoring Service Director Viktor Zubkov
is the latest consolidation of this group’s grip on power in Russia.
Although Zubkov is not an intelligence officer by background, he
has become one de facto during his years at the Financial Monitoring
Service, and he has intimate knowledge of where the country’s legal
and illegal assets are to be found.
The core of the siloviki group, led by former KGB officer and Federal
Security Service (FSB) Director Vladimir Putin himself, comprises
about 6,000 security-service alumni who entered the corridors of power
during Putin’s first term. Now, as Putin’s second term winds down,
their clout is virtually unassailable. Their locus of power is in
the presidential administration: deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin
cut his teeth in the KGB’s First Main Directorate, which oversaw
foreign intelligence operations and has since been transformed into
the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Fellow deputy chief of staff
Viktor Ivanov worked for the KGB’s main successor organization,
the FSB, which is responsible for counterintelligence operations.
First Deputy Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Sergei
Ivanov is a retired SVR colonel general, and he currently oversees
the military-industrial sector and the high-tech sectors of the
economy. He also supervises the Defense Ministry, which is nominally
run by a civilian, Anatoly Serdyukov.
As might be expected (although not always the case), an FSB colonel
general, Nikolai Patrushev, heads the FSB. In addition, FSB Army
General Rashid Nurgaliyev heads the Interior Ministry, which controls
both ordinary police and some 180,000 internal troops.
Andrei Belyaninov, a colleague of Putin’s from his days as a KGB
agent in Germany in the 1980s, heads the Federal Customs Service,
while FSB Lieutenant General Konstantin Romodanovsky is the director
of the Federal Migration Service. In their current roles, Belyaninov
and Romodanovsky are able to monitor the movement of goods and people
to and from Russia. Former FSB Director Colonel General Valentin
Sobolev is acting secretary of the Russian Security Council.
Siloviki figures also dominate Russia’s relations with neighboring
countries. FSB Army General Nikolai Bordyuzha chairs the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a pro-Russian alliance comprising
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan. SVR Lieutenant General Grigory Rapota presides over the
Eurasian Economic Community, which unites the same countries except
Armenia.
Other key siloviki are Rosoboroneksport head Sergei Chemezov, who
also served in Germany with Putin, and Boris Boyarskov, who heads
the Culture and Mass Communications Ministry agency that supervises
the mass media, telecommunications, and cultural heritage.
Presidential successors Never in Russian or Soviet history has the
political and economic influence of the security organs been as
widespread as it is now. And as the March 2008 presidential election
approaches, three of the four most commonly named potential successors
are siloviki.
Sergei Ivanov is widely viewed as the current front-runner. A close
confidante of Putin’s, he, like the president, began his career in
the Leningrad KGB’s Main Directorate. Ivanov made his debut with
international business and financial elites at the St Petersburg
Economic Forum, where he delivered a forward-looking address laying
out Russia’s course through the year 2020. Ivanov sounded both liberal
and presidential, beginning his speech with a promise that Russia
in 15 years will be a democratic state "based on the rule of law and
respecting the rights of the individual."
Another often-mentioned possible successor is Deputy Prime Minister
Sergei Naryshkin. According to some reports (including Kommersant in
February), Naryshkin studied in the same group as Putin at the KGB’s
foreign intelligence training center. In the 1980s, he served at the
Soviet Embassy in Brussels, possibly as a KGB agent. In February,
Putin placed Naryshkin in charge of foreign trade and relations with
the CIS. He also heads the board of directors of the Channel One
state television network. Because of his last name – the Naryshkins
are an old noble family that included the mother of Peter the Great –
he is often associated with the growing cachet of monarchist sentiment
in Russia.
The third silovik-connected potential presidential successor is
Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin. During the Soviet era,
Yakunin worked abroad for the Committee on Foreign Trade Relations
and the Soviet mission to the United Nations, both of which were
fronts for KGB foreign intelligence operations.
Interestingly, during this period he was awarded a state order of
military merit, which is normally awarded only for combat service.
Yakunin heads the board of trustees of the St Andrews Foundation,
a powerful patriotic organization set up in 1992 to promote the
restoration of national values.
Under Yakunin, the foundation has launched several high-profile
projects, including the repatriation and reburial of two anticommunist
heroes – White Guard General Anton Denikin and philosopher Ivan Ilin.
Yakunin also heads the Center of National Military Glory. The media
often refer to this body as "the order of Russian Orthodox Chekists"
because its boards also include Ivanov, FSB Colonel General Viktor
Cherkesov (who heads the Federal Antinarcotics Committee), and FSB
Major General Georgy Poltavchenko (who is Putin’s envoy to the Central
Federal District).
Economic power The true extent of the siloviki community is difficult
to know for certain because many people cooperated with the KGB
covertly during Soviet times and lustration in Russia has been
staunchly resisted. The media occasionally reported, for instance, that
former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who worked abroad for Soviet
foreign-trade organizations in the 1980s, had links to the KGB. At
least one of his sons is known to be an FSB officer. Likewise, there
have been persistent media reports that Russian Orthodox Patriarch
Aleksy II cooperated with the KGB while a priest in Estonia. The
Orthodox Church denies these reports.
As the siloviki clan has tightened its grip politically, it has
also made vast inroads into the Russian economy, spearheading the
accelerating expansion of the state sector and the formation of new
state corporations. They have played key roles in the renationalization
of the Russian oil industry; since 2001, about 44 percent of the oil
sector has returned to state ownership. Much of the process has been
quiet, but it came to international attention with the crackdown
and destruction of oil major Yukos beginning in 2004. The primary
beneficiary of the dismantling of Yukos was Rosneft – whose board is
headed by deputy presidential chief of staff and silovik clan leader
Igor Sechin. Rosneft is now Russia’s biggest oil company, with a
capitalization of US$78 billion and annual production of about 100
million tonnes.
Renationalization in the oil sector continues apace, with former
Russneft head Mikhail Gutseriyev becoming the latest victim. He has
been forced to flee the country to avoid arrest, and the assets of
Russneft, Russia’s seventh-largest oil company, have been frozen by
a court order. A poll of leading political and economic experts by
the Moscow Institute of Situation Analysis in April concluded that
the political influence of the richest businesspeople is "negligibly
small" compared to that of the siloviki.
The next, more ambitious step in the silovik concentration of economic
power is the creation of state-controlled megacorporations that would
dominate key sectors of the economy by combining the major companies
within them. The goal seems to be a form of authoritarian capitalism
such as can be found in some Southeast Asian countries.
In May, the Kremlin created the United Aviation Corporation, which
combines leading civilian and military aircraft producers such as MiG,
Sukhoi and Tupolev. United Aviation is headed by Sergei Ivanov.
Two months later, the Kremlin followed up with the United
Shipbuilding Company that combines all Russia’s civilian and naval
shipbuilders. United Shipbuilding is headed by Naryshkin.
Similar state-driven consolidation is afoot in the banking sector
as well. After a series of merging acquisitions, state-controlled
Vneshtorgbank (VTB) has emerged as the first major Russian player on
global financial markets. Two of the bank’s vice presidents – former
FSB Economics Department head Yury Zaostrovtsev and Dmitry Patrushev,
son of the current FSB director – tie this financial giant firmly to
the silovik group.
Such megacorporations are expected to swallow up Russia’s defense,
nuclear, and automaking sectors in the near future, and it is a safe
bet siloviki will be found to head all of them.