Number of Members of Russian Elite Now Under Arrest Higher than at Any Point Since Death of Stalin, Dmitriyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – The number of senior officials now under arrest is greater than at any point since the death of Stalin, Igor Dmitriyev says, noting that the list includes two federal ministers, the owners of several major banks and corporations, senior FSB officers, the former head of the investigation body for regions, governors and a plenipotentiary representative.

            This “unprecedented” development, the Russian commentator suggests, is “not simply the intensification of the struggle among ‘the Kremlin towers’ but rather the beginning of a reformation of the entire Russian elite,” something Lev Gumilyev and others say happens in Russia ever twenty years (afterempire.info/2019/06/15/cikly/).

            Dmitriyev provides a long list of other Russian officials now being bars, but his primary focus is to argue that Gumilyev’s theory about elite renewal every 20 years in Russia, something the late scholar documented for earlier periods of tsarist and Soviet history continues to be true today.

             Few would dispute that there was a wholesale turnover in the elites of the Russian state in 1918 as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and in 1938 as a result of Stalin’s Great Terror. And most would accept that there was yet another turnover in 1958 following Nikita Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin and the cult of personality.

            The subsequent waves Dmitriyev sees, in 1978, 1998,  and 2018 as start of the latest changeover, are more controversial.  In 1978, Gorbachev was elevated to the Politburo and the USSR entered a new and troubled period which ended with the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union.

            Then, in 1998, the commentator continues, a new changeover in the elite began with the rise of Sergey Kiriyenko as prime minister and Vladimir Putin as head of the FSB.  The first ten years overseen by this group was relatively successful but then things began to go wrong in 2008.  And now a decade later, Dmitriyev argues, times are ripe for another turnover.

            “We cannot specify precisely which social stratum now will rise up the heights of the state pyramid. But judging by the reaction of ‘those at the top’ to the scandalinvoolving the falsification of accusations against journalist Ivan Golunov, ‘the systemic liberals’ will remain in the ruling duumvirate.”

            The clearest indication of that is not the dismissal of two MVD generals but “the reaction of the government media and officials who always have their finger in the wind. And they, from Simonyan, Khinshteyn, and Maria Zakharova to Moskalkova, Matviyenko and presidential advisor Anton Kobyakov all decisively supported the social protest.”

            If they are the obvious “winners” in this round, Dmitriyev says, there are some obvious losers as well, including first and foremost Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin whose city  has been an island of stability and who has attracted ever more support as a possible successor to Putin. Now, in the wake of the protests, his star is in eclipse.

            Obviously, the siloviki have also suffered as well. But “who then remains among the winners besides ‘the systemic liberals’?” He suggess that the list includes many people in or from the Federal Protective service, including the presidential plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus, the emergency services minister, and the governors of Tula, Yaroslavl, and Astrakhan.

            If this analysis is correct, Dmitriyev says, “this means that the Russian state is entering into an era like that of late Rome. There and then,” he continues, “came to power members of the praetorian guard, that is, to use the language of the present day, the very same ‘party of the adjutants.’”

            How things ended for the Roman Empire as a result is well-known, the commentator observes. Whether Moscow will follow suit in its capacity as “’the third Rome,’” very much remains to be seen.