Russia’s Governors Being Stripped of Power to Name Their Own Teams, Ultimately Weakening Moscow, Kynyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 30 – Over the last 20 years, the heads of federal subjects have not only lost the support and political skills winning elections can bring but have also lost the ability to name most of the key players in their administration. They have become simply primus inter pares among sets of officials Moscow has imposed, Aleksandr Kynyev says.

            The Russian political analyst says a new draft bill that would require governors to secure the approval of the federal health ministry for their choice to head local health administrations and the likelihood that those who could gain such approval would be from the center is only the latest move of this kind (vtimes.io/2020/11/30/gubernator-ne-hozyain-a1695, reposted at region.expert/guber/).

            In the 1990s, the heads of Russia’s regions and republics were local people who had won election to the position and formed their own teams typically from other local people. That gave them enormous authority locally and the power to stand up to Moscow, something Vladimir Putin has worked hard to eliminate.

            On the one hand, as many have noted, he changed the governors from being elected to being appointed, thereby dramatically reducing their links to local people and increasing the likelihood that they come from outside the region or republic to which they are assigned and will view obeying Moscow as more important than listening to the people in their federal subjects.

            But on the other hand, as far fewer have noted, Kynyev says, Moscow has simultaneously sought to reduce the governors in another way, step by step introducing requirements that the governor appoint people to key positions only after the profile agency in Moscow had approved the candidate, who increasingly often came from that agency rather than from the locality.

            Governors thus lost power not only vis-à-vis Moscow but over what were supposed to be their own teams. They became simply the most highly paid bureaucrats and behaved as such rather than as politicians which their predecessors had been. That further reduced their power and influence with the population and works to Moscow’s advantage most of the time.

            The problem, however, is, the political analyst continues, that when there is a political crisis, there is a vacuum in the regional governments. Those in office increasingly don’t enjoy the links with the local population that would allow them to lead the people or report adequately on what they people are thinking.

            But whether there is a crisis or not, there is another consequence of this Putin-orchestrated change. Those in charge in the regions have little or no interest in improving economic conditions there because in their minds their current jobs are just one stop on a long road that leads away from the regions and back to Moscow.

            In both cases, the Kremlin may conclude that it has increased its control over the regions, Kynyev says; but also in both cases, it is going to find that it has ever less of a real base on which to rely.  The only way to reverse this is to restore elections and allow governors to choose their own teams.

            But that flies in the face of everything Putin appears committed to and so is unlikely. Instead, Russia beyond the ring road will look stable until either economic development simply ceases or a crisis creates a situation in which having a base is far more critical than being satisfied with maintaining control.