Bryan MacDonald has covered PM Mikhail Mishustin’s new Cabinet in detail at his RT blog, so I’ll avoid repeating the listings there and widely available elsewhere.
Despite the heavy import of Putin’s proposed Constitutional changes, the actual change in the Cabinet has been negligible. Sergey Shoigu, Sergey Lavrov (contra initial rumors), and Vladimir Kolokoltsev (see my translation of an interview with him several years back) remain in Defense, Foreign, and Interior Ministries, respectively. So no change in the three most important “power” positions in the Cabinet after the PM.
Anton Siluanov stays as Finance Minister, even if replaced as First Deputy PM by Andrey Belousov. The latter is harder on Russia’s comprador oligarchs, constantly coming up with proposals to tax them more. But he is no Sergey Glazyev, who is a genuine Soviet nationalist. Reminder that monetarist hardliner Elvira Nabiullina remains chairwoman of the Russian Central Bank.
And as I have also pointed out, Mikhail Mishustin is himself – in addition to being a wise investor who appears to have honestly become a millionaire in the 2000s, and a skilled technocrat – an economic liberal. He rationalized the land registry system in Russia before taking up his long stint as head of the Federal Tax Service, and in a recent interview he came out against abolishing the flat income tax in favor of progressive taxation on the grounds that the latter are “inefficient” and irrelevant in Russia’s context.
So I don’t know in what world this is some kind of handover of power from “Atlanticists” to “Sovereignists” as some have described it.
It’s not the converse, either. Two notable people who left include Vladimir Medinsky and Olga Vasilyeva, the Culture and Education Ministers, respectively. (As well as the hapless and scandal-wracked Deputy PM and former Sports Minister, Vitaly Mutko). They are outspoken, in the case of the former often comically so, conservatives. Contra Bryan MacDonald, they are not nationalists; they don’t call themselves such, neither do actual Russian nationalists. Even so, Medinsky – who has also had his share of scandals, including a plagiarized PhD dissertation – is being replaced by a direct protege, Olga Lyubimova (right)*. Who had been responsible for doling out money to pro-Orthodox films. Meanwhile, Medinsky himself becomes Putin’s cultural advisor, so it’s hardly a major demotion.
Vasilyeva’s replacement is Sergey Kravtsov. He is not a conservative hardliner like his predecessor (though nor is he a liberal), but what he does have is some major real world successes, having played a central role in suppressing cheating in the Unified State Exam, closed 1,500 higher education institutions that functioned as degree mills, and – as will surely be welcomed by many readers of his blog – has pushed Russia to play a more active role in international standardized tests such as TIMSS/PIRLS, PIAAC, ICCS, and PISA.
So no major change in the center of gravity towards “liberalism” (or whatever) either.
Here’s a simpler explanation – who stayed, and who went, was significantly dependent on their actual… performance. There are two polls I could find on this topic, though unfortunately both are a bit dated. They are a FOM poll from June 2018 (at the beginning of Medvedev’s Second Cabinet) that asks people whether the Minister in question did a good job or not; and a series of VCIOM polls asking people to give each Minister a score out of 5, although unfortunately that series only runs up to 2017.
Nonetheless, assuming that the relative assessment scores/rankings haven’t changed cardinally since then, and assuming that popularity in opinion polls proxies performance…
People who stayed:
- Defense Minister Shoigu: 50% positive, 2% negative = +48% (FOM); 4.58 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Foreign Minister Lavrov: 44% positive, 3% negative = +41% (FOM); 4.65 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Interior Minister Kolokoltsev: 6% positive, 5% negative = +1% (FOM); 3.59 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Energy Minister Alexander Novak: 4% positive, 4% negative = +0% (FOM); 3.68 (latest VCIOM poll)
Demoted:
- Finance Minister Anton Siluanov: 4% positive, 9% negative = -5% (FOM); 2.99 (latest VCIOM poll)
People who left:
- Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova: 5% positive, 13% negative = -8% (FOM); 3.22 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Education Minister Olga Vasilyeva: 4% positive, 8% negative = -4% (FOM); 3.31 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky: 3% positive, 7% negative = -4% (FOM); 3.24 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin: 2% positive, 7% negative = -5% (FOM); 3.06 (latest VCIOM poll)
- Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov: 1% positive, 4% negative = –3% (FOM); 3.04 (latest VCIOM poll)
Well, you get the idea.
I know this sounds really radical, but perhaps the perceived performance of Ministers in office plays some role in whether they stay on or not, as opposed to how Atlanticist or Sovereignist PUTLER feels on any particular day.
Incidentally, the biggest discussions and memes on Runet about the Cabinet reshuffle have centered around orthothot Olga Lyubimova, who has a rather interesting background.
Photo from 2008: “Who are you people? What do you need? I don’t know you. Go fuck yourselves.”
As a waifu, perhaps quite Poklonskaya tier.
But very low genetic load regardless. Great great grandfather was the governor of the Vologda Governorate under Alexander III, while her great grandfather was the legendary actor Vasily Kachalov.
She also perhaps blogged too much in her youth, including one particularly powerful post from 2008 where she admits to hating museums, opera, ballet, and classical music. Sounds like an excellent qualification for the Ministry of Culture, but some beg to differ.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Seems like boring technocratic centrism.
Will Russia ever have a Nationalist government?
Exactly what you need from your Culture Minister.
The promotion of Belousov is the only good news in all this debacle. This government is 90% neo liberal ( i heard that Kravtsov is a kind of a ” reformist” technocrat too , he has a reputation of being obsessed with the worst fashionable pedagogical practices in global neo liberal institutions) . So dummy putin still fails to understand that the cause of all Russia’s problems is precisely this neo liberal path that he chose over the advices of real economists. Sad Sergey Glazyev isn’t listened to more too. Sad for Russia, which is probably saying good bye to high growth rates and technological reawakening ( at least for the next years)with this government of short-sighted accountants and dwarfs who , aside from keeping low inflation rates and public debt are interested in nothing. As a man living in France they pretty much remind me of the kind of elites we have had in France and Germany or Italy for the last decades and that brought us to the situation we find ourselves today in Europe .Putin will be remembered as a neo liberal Brejnev and thats probably the only nickname he really deserves.
Seems Putin has rolled out two related but distinct initiatives.
A Government led by proven, widely admired technocrats to competently execute the current objectives, most immediately the demographic/economic issues and the related 12 National Projects.
A feature about these newly ascended technocrats seems to be that they are apolitical without too much overt ideology defying easy political labeling. Their task is to execute to show results to targets that have been communicated , and not to politik too deeply or beyond the minimum needed to execute.
At a meta level, Putin wants to – or at the very least wants to be seen to want to – bring change that Russians increasingly desire, but in an evolutionary and not revolutionary way.
Ultimately the success of all these proposals are going to be not just about measurable economic numbers, but how people feel about how things are going, something that Putin acknowledged in his Federal Assembly address was a key metric.
Wouldn’t you want Germany on your teat? To know that you can nourish or strangle it?
One need only see a German water-heater to see how serious they are about “green” energy. And if they are such violent atomophobes, then they are probably scared stiff of aloha snackbars targeting liquefied gas terminals.
Illiterate sovok like Glaziev was never going to bring about “technological awakening”. More likely we would get something that looks like Bolivarian socialism.
Russians are generally clueless about economics, with attitudes that resemble South America. The prospect of a populist Russian government implementing popular economic policies scares me. I’ve come to see neoliberalism as the lesser evil.
Mutko was already out at that position. Pavel Kolobkov succeeded Mutko, with Oleg Matytsin succeeding Kolobkov, as part of the recent Russian government cabinet changes.
Economics aside, in foreign policy, the Western neolib influenced mindset is more detrimental to Russia’s best interests, when compared to someone like Glazyev.
The comments in the Russian internet that I’ve seen are really unhappy about Siluanov staying as finance minister, and I don’t know how much of a demotion is losing the vice premiership. In the same vein, this Belousov guy seems to be a vice prime minister without a ministry of his own, so that also looks like it’s more symbolic than practical.
Olga Lyubimova is based, and her take on culture really is powerful. Hopefully we can see great and brave things from her – imagine for example an anime industry developing in Russia instead of boring operas or whatever. True men of culture will appreciate.
Standardized national testing is a good thing, one of the few schooling interventions observed to have a positive impact on student performance in international assessments.
Weren’t people saying this because of the newly suggested double citizenship and 25 year rule ?
That’d cripple the Atlanticist core, it’d also damage the Oligarch and the high ranking Sovok descendants since none of them like living in the Russia that their parents created
Russian Zoomers can be giant weebs, it wouldn’t be that shocking
Hard to get solid numbers on it since Russians, like all E. Euros, are free software and media visionaries
Although the taste of the average Russian and Jap are obviously quite different
What people usually associate with anime (overblown fights, big tits, idiotic romance plots, homosexuality and pedobait) isn’t the most popular in Russia, instead it’s the more down to earth (by Japanese Anime standards) stuff
Simple “slice of life” shows, comedies, western style cyberpunk and historical series (IE Samurai)
Another reliable way to tell if some show is popular in Russia is if it mentions Russia, has a Russian character or takes place in Russia
Examples:
Darker than Black, part of it is set in Vladivostok
Girls und Panzer, has a tank team parodying the USSR (a show which actually had crossover promotion with the game War thunder, developed by the Russian studio called Gaijin Entertainment)
Here’s them singing Katyusha in Engrish equivalent of Russian
A show called “How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift” which features a character who is a Russian weeb who decides to move to Japan after watching Anime and Jackie Chan movies
Ahem
There’s also this
https://cs.phncdn.com/insights-static/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/maps-pornhub-insights-2019-year-review-most-viewed-categories.png
I guess it’s proof of the Triune Rus Nation theory 😀
Said people were interpreting the Cabinet reshuffling in these terms. Which is not the case, as I hope I’ve shown here.
Citizenship law is separate from this, and can indeed be interpreted as a future filter on Atlanticists and crypto-Atlanticists coming to power.
On Nabiullina – she saved Russia. Putin should buy her flowers and chocolate, and build her a solid gold statue (thanks to her Russia’s got gold to spare).
Sure people complain she is hard and chokes economic growth. But countries that are not part of reserve currency club don’t get the option of printing without inflation. And it’s a club Russia wouldn’t want to be a part of anyway.
Solid monetary base is vastly more important for Russia than a percent or two of fake GDP growth for a couple of years. And what’s inflation in Russia now? 3%? And that’s with sanctions shmanctions.
Once the base is established and people actually trust the money, then print away. And indeed, this has been accomplished, thanks to Nabiullina.
The real controversy here aren’t her bog-standard warmed-over NPC takes, it’s her cringeworthy spelling and grammar mistakes. (“Sograda Familia”, really??)
Saaker, covering this same information, seems to feel that Putler on most days seems to feel Sovereignist or Eurasanist as he puts it and that the new makeup of cabinet members favors this orientation, leaving Medvedev “boxed in”.
No surprise here. Sometimes when I’m shopping at the supermarket, I easily substitute in meat filled potstickers for pelemeni. Pirogis are definitely more an Atlantacist sort of thing.
Medvedev associates got Justice and Economic Development, so perhaps Medvedev is still a player.
He’s now head of the Security Council, which is probably a promotion compared to being the Prime Minister.
Apparently Iran is not the only country Americans have difficulty locating on a map . . .
If hope Belousov can follow through with his previous ideas regarding the nationalization of Russian natural resources.
Source
A Jewish oligarch resorting to Critical Theory rhetoric, namely, “power to women, homosexuals, and minorities”. Mind you, “women” is universal and includes white women, in this case, ethnic Russian women). Who’s left out?
I didn’t know Deripaska’s political leanings, well, his liberasty is pretty clear now. When Putin goes away, it will be people like Deripaska who will control the Russian rule-making process, with all it implies, now that Putin is destroying the vertical power structure that keeps the parliament submissive to the Kremlin.
Patriotic corruption by Kremlin insiders means that the bribes dolled out by the West and rootless oligarchs are pennies for them. For members of parliament, many of whom will not serve past one or two terms, these bribes and the ‘job opportunities’ awaiting them outside of government are very enticing indeed.
Probably high percentage of visa overstays (this why Nigeria made the list). And unlike Poland and Ukraine, Belarus isn’t an ally.
The President is the head of the Security Council, not Medvedev, his mere deputy.
Ukraine isn’t a US ally. A useful idiot, perhaps. That said the decision is certainly to be applauded.
Deripaska is a genuine weirdo from the stories I have heard about him. He’s not particularly influential and unlikely to become so.
Visa overstays you say. I’m thinking of the reasons. Must be all the poverty and oppression from the regime, surely AP?
Only this is FAKE NEWS, actually Belarusians have a very low visa overstay rate:
https://qz.com/1789425/why-is-belarus-being-considered-for-a-us-travel-ban/
Also the assertion that US visas are distributed only to ‘allies’ is baseless.
The Belarusian pov:
No, Hanna. It’s PUTLER moving his peons in the Trump admin so Lukashenka feels the urge to welcome the Russian embrace. /jk
It is considered so by Americans from across the political spectrum.
Extreme state idiocy ended in 2014
I was just guessing about visa overstays.
Which is double the average of 1.9%:
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/18_0807_S1_Entry-Exit-Overstay_Report.pdf
Oh yes, that’s when Ukraine stopped being nice with Russia, hence, stopped being ‘idiot’, right?
The wise state of Ukraine is one where Joe Biden can threaten your country’s top prosecutor if he dares investigate his son’s sinecure in the Ukrainian energy sector, totally due to merit and nothing to do with access to his father’s ears, of course.
Ukraine got hundreds of millions in aide in exchange for dropping a corrupt prosecutor.
Is Ukraine a US Ally?
Not among the US foreign policy realists. As for the ones you bring up, they aren’t going to war with Russia over Ukraine. Blowing hot air isn’t the same.
Ukraine was slated to get that aid, before Biden made his corrupt quid pro quo. In terms of being corrupt, the same has been reasonably said of the succeeding prosecutor.
Hence, it’ about a corrupt US VP looking to cover his family.
Providing hundreds of dollars in military aide isn’t “blowing hot air.”
CIA provided anti-tank rockets to Al Qaeda proxies in Syria as well. This caused actual Russians to materialize on the battlefield, and both Al Qaeda and CIA are regretting that move today.
I understand why US does it – Raytheon has Congress on payroll. But Ukraine won’t even see this money. They won’t even get a chance to steal some of it. All Ukraine gets is more dead Ukrainians.
After Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo, and especially now, when Ukraine and Russia are at least trying to make peace noises, US military aid strikes more of a curse than a blessing.
Glazyev has a PHD in economics , member of the Russian Academy of Science and member of the government since Yeltsin at least. I dont know what allows you to say he is illiterate. Especially that he is far from the only economist to support a keynesian strategy for Russia. Russian néoliberals on the other hand always brought nothing but disaster for the Russian economy ( and for the economy of every state on the Earth btw). They are proved incompetent.
South America is indeed another place where their disastrous legacy can be contemplated. One only need to look at what mess Macri put Argentina in to measure the extent of their incompetence.
The russians are not more clueless than any other people. They just know where their interests lie . And “popular economic policies ” is how Russia got its 15 years of high growth from 1998 to 2012 to begin with.
We can ask ourselves what value those “international assessments ” really have though .
It’s wasting money on a false premise, as has been eloquently noted by Tucker Carlson among other Americans.
Schiff is off his rocker with the spin of how arming Ukraine is to avoid fighting Russia closer to home (US). Ukraine is better suited for other aid that actually goes to needy Ukrainians as opposed to the likes of Joe Biden’s son and a former Polish president.
Raytheon backs huckster Schiff:
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=dcola&hsimp=yhs-001&type=gsp_lovelytabff_00_00¶m1=1¶m2=cat%3Dweb%26sesid%3D2d4d2e9bf96dc36cb86ccd676a68e975%26ip%3D72.68.156.52%26b%3DFirefox%26bv%3D72.0%26os%3DWindows-7%26os_ver%3D6.1%26pa%3Dgencoll22%26sid%3D5a7ab0964a2ec490046601dc5c727ceb%26abid%3D%26abg%3D%26a%3Dgsp_lovelytabff_00_00%26sdk_ver%3D%26cd%3D%26cr%3D%26f%3D%26uref%3D&p=adam%20schiff%20raytheon
Schiff’s Blatant Lie Unchallenged
Re: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZaYnD63tPs
Refer to the 16:15 mark, showing Adam Schiff falsely saying that Russia has killed 15 thousand in the civil war on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR.
Laura Ingraham has plenty of company when it comes to US mass media elites not picking up on Schiff’s lie.
In reality, that roundabout 15,000 figure includes those killed as a result of action taken by Ukrainian government forces and those loosely affiliated with it. To a considerable extent, the civilian tally in this conflict involves the indiscriminate attacks undertaken by this grouping.