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Abstract: Two specialists on Russian society and politics analyze the composition of
Russian officialdom since 1991, focusing in particular on changes in recruitment
practice that have taken place under President Vladimir Putin. On the basis of elite
interviews and contemporary scholarly and media analysis of the Putin regime, the
authors examine trends in the number of government personnel who have a military
or security background. Also investigated are trends in the presidential administra-
tions hold over federal agencies and representation of former military-security per-
sonnel at regional levels within the Russian Federation.
S ince his victory in the 2000 presidential election, Vladimir Putin has
drawn a stream of people in uniform into Russias power structures.
At present every fourth member of the Russian elite has a military or
security background, and their numbers are continuing to grow. Why did
this happen, and what are the implications of a system of this kindwe
shall call it militocracyfor Russia?
1
Olga Kryshtanovskaya is Director of the Department of Elite Studies of the Institute of
Sociology (Russian Academy of Sciences), Moscow (e-mail: olgakrysht@mtu-net.ru). Stephen
White is Professor of Politics at the University of Glasgow (e-mail: s.white@socsci.gla.ac.uk).
An earlier version of this article was presented to the annual conference of the British
Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (Cambridge, UK) in March 2003 and to
a seminar in the Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, in April 2003.
The authors wish to acknowledge with thanks the comments received from colleagues, and
also the financial support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council under award
R000220127 in association with the Ministry of Defence under award JGS902.
289
2
Here and elsewhere we draw on the database of the Department of Elite Studies of the
Institute of Sociology (Russian Academy of Sciences).
PUTINS MILITOCRACY 291
and national conflicts, and the increase in organized crime and general
uncertainty of the years of perestroyka and post-communist reform
(Medvedev, 1999, pp. 1011, 396). According to the Kremlin strategists
plans, Putin would be presented as a reanimated Andropov, and one
wholike his predecessorwould engage in the consolidation of society,
the restoration of public order, and the strengthening of state power, using
the mechanisms of the Soviet system whenever necessary. The realization
of such a plan was expected to satisfy the demands of society as well as the
requirements of the elite itself. In turn, the transfer of power from Yeltsin
to a successor from the security apparatus led to fundamental changes in
the elite as a whole.
3
For a well-informed account of these developments, see Mukhin (2003).
PUTINS MILITOCRACY 293
Table 1. The Russian Elite under Yeltsin and Putin (in percent)
Source: Data collected by the Elites Department of the Institute of Sociology of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. The elite is defined for the purposes of this analysis
as the members of the Security Council, both houses of the Federal Assembly, the
Russian Federation government, and heads of the subjects of the Russian Federation
for the respective years. Elite higher education is defined as including Moscow
University, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the Maurice Thorez
Institute of Foreign Languages, the higher educational institutions attached to the
Communist Party and Komsomol, the Academy of the National Economy under the
USSR Council of Ministers or Russian government, the Academy of Social Sciences
under the Central Committee of the CPSU (now the Academy of State Service under
the President of the Russian Federation), Moscow Finance Institute (now the Finan-
cial Academy under the Russian government), the All-Union Academy of Foreign
Trade, and the Diplomatic Academy. The figures show the composition of each group
two years after the accession of Yeltsin and Putin respectively.
Upper Lower
National Govern- Regional house of house of Average by
leadership ment elite parliament parliament cohort
Sources:
a
The 21 Politburo members as of 1988, excluding the General Secretary (Chernev, 1996).
b
The 74 members of the USSR Council of Ministers as of the end of 1989 (Sovyet minis-
trov SSSR: Spravochnik, 1999, pp. 515).
c
The 174 first secretaries of CPSU committees in the union republics, krays, oblasts,
cities of Moscow and Kiev, and okrugs as of September 1989 (Izvestiya TsK KPSS, no. 9,
1989, pp. 5185).
d
The 2245 USSR peoples deputies as elected in 1989 (Narodnyye deputaty SSSR: Sprav-
ochnik, 1990).
e
The 15 members of the Security Council as of 1993 (database of the Elites Department).
f
The 35 members of the Cabinet of Ministers of 1993 (Politicheskaya Rossiya segodnya:
ispolnitelnaya vlast, konstitutsionnyy sud, lidery partiy i dvizheniy, 1993, pp. 78117).
g
The 89 heads of subjects of the Russian Federation as of 1993 (Politicheskaya Rossiya
segodnya, 1993, pp. 117266).
h
The 175 members of the 1993 Federation Council (Federalnoye sobraniye Rossii: Sovyet
Federatsii i Gosudarstvennaya Duma, 1995, pp. 13212).
i
The 445 deputies of the 1993 State Duma (Federalnoye sobraniye Rossii, 1995, pp. 213
540, 582583).
j
The 28 members of the Security Council of 1999 (database of the Elites Department).
k
The 50 members of the Russian government as of April 1999 (database of the Elites
Department).
l
The 88 heads of subjects of the Russian Federation, excluding Chechnya (database of
the Elites Department).
m
The 82 members of the 1999 Federation Council, excluding governors (Rossiya na
rubezhe XXI veka. Senatory Rossii, 2000).
n
The 450 Duma deputies of 1995 (Dumskiy vestnik, 16, no. 1, 1996, pp. 529).
o
The 24 members of the Security Council of 2003 (database of the Elites Department).
p
The 58 members of the Russian government of 2003 (database of the Elites Depart-
ment).
q
The 88 heads of subjects of the Russian Federation, excluding Chechnya (database of
the Elites Department).
r
The 168 members of the Federation Council (Kommersant-vlast, 26 February 2002, pp.
2952, with subsequent changes).
s
The 448 deputies of the State Duma as elected in December 1999 (Federalnoye sobraniye:
Sovyet Federatsii. Gosudarstvennaya Duma. Spravochnik, 2000, pp. 272346).
PUTINS MILITOCRACY 295
Ministries 23 18 1 5 4
State committees 7 6 1
Federal commissions 2 2
Federal services 13 5 8 3
Russian agencies 8 7 1 1
Federal supervisory 2 2
bodies
Other federal bodies 6 1 5
Total 61 41 1 20 8
Source: Sobraniye zakonodatelstva Rossiyskoy Federatsii, no. 21, 2000, art. 2168, as modi-
fied by ibid., no. 49, 2000, art. 4799; no. 43, 2001, art. 4071; no. 45, 2001, art. 4251; and no.
12, 2003, arts. 1099-1102. Security Council (SC) membership is as identified in ibid., no.
18, art. 1840, 26 April 2001.
Leading officials from the ODR play the role of grey cardinals in this
connection, taking their place among the ranks of ministerial deputies but
with additional powers that allow them to act as the eyes and ears of the
presidential administration.
PUTINS POLITBURO
The Soviet political system was based upon an institutionalized hier-
archy of power embodied in the nomenklatura. At the top of this pyramid
was a group of senior party officials, called the Politburo, who exercised
supreme executive authority. The most important was the General Secre-
tary, but his personal authority was limited, and he could not make
unilateral decisions without considering the views of his colleagues. Deci-
sions were taken by vote, collectively, with any differences resolved by a
structure of subordinate committees (Lowenhardt et al., 1992, ch. 7). The
composition of the Politburo depended on the positions that were consid-
ered to be crucial at a given moment. Usually these included the Central
Committee secretaries who monitored ideology and the economy, the
chairman of the government and his deputies, the ministers of foreign
affairs and defense, the chairman of the KGB, the chairmen of both cham-
bers of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and six or seven party leaders from the
union republics, first of all Ukraine (Kress, 1980).
The hierarchy of power in post-communist Russia has been less closely
studied, and outside observers have no direct means of access to the
mechanism of decision-making itself. The structure and composition of the
ruling group, however, is reasonably distinct. The Putin regime is in the
first instance a system of personal rule based upon the presidency. The
institutions of government are immediately subordinate to it, taking deci-
sions that fall within their respective spheres of competence. There is one
agency, however, that brings together a group of officials of particular
significance and plays a special role in the overall direction of the work of
government. This is the Security Council of the Russian Federation, which
in number and composition has become a reasonably close approximation
of the Politburo of the Soviet period. The Security Council, just like the
Politburo, brings together the key officials of the second tier of government
and is headed in a similar way by the countrys leading politician, the
General Secretary or (since 1991) the Russian President.
In Table 4 we set out the structures of the Politburo and of the Security
Council as they have evolved since the late Soviet period. In order to
facilitate comparison we have dispensed with titles and replaced them with
functional equivalents. The figures who by the early years of the new
century had become an almost automatic presence in the Security Council
included the following: heads of department within the presidential
administration, the state officials who were responsible for ideology and
the economy, the prime minister and selected deputy premiers, the heads
of the force ministries, the minister of foreign affairs, the heads of both
legislative chambers, and the heads of key regions.
298 KRYSHTANOVSKAYA AND WHITE
Putins
Yeltsins Security Security
Soviet Politburo Council Council
Departmental heads, 24 43 7 4 4
ideologists, secretaries
Force ministries 14 10 43 46 46
Other ministers 19 29 50 39 8
Parliamentary heads 5 5 7 8
Regional leaders 38 14 29
Representatives of science 4 4
Total (number) a 21 21 14 28 24
a
Excluding the CPSU General Secretary and the Russian President.
them to intervene in any regional issue as they saw fit. The Tatar president,
Mintimer Shaymiyev, was particularly critical of the new system, remark-
ing that the parallel functions of federal and regional structures were giving
rise to a new army of officials and to a complete shambles in the
distribution of governmental responsibilities (Yezhenedelnyy zhurnal, April
30, 2002, p. 8).
From the federal point of view, a confusion of functions had its advan-
tages, as it gave the president more room to maneuver in his management
of the regions. The real function of the envoys was not so much to carry
out particular control functions as to lend support for the president wher-
ever the situation required it. Apart from the tasks identified in the Reg-
ulations on the plenipotentiary representative of the President of the
Russian Federation in a federal district (O polnomochnom, 2000)
working to advance the work of government in foreign and domestic
policies, checking on the implementation of federal decisions, and organiz-
ing appointmentsthe envoys carried out a number of less clearly speci-
fied special tasks. These included the supervision of regional elections
in light of the Kremlins requirements, using their administrative
resource.
As well as establishing new federal structures in the regions, the Putin
administration began to reassert control over the officials who headed
regional agencies of law enforcement, and who had come increasingly
under the influence of governors in the Yeltsin years. Nor was this surpris-
ing, in that a substantial part of their housing, transport, and other benefits
were allocated by the head of the region. The linkages with central govern-
ment became increasingly attenuated, and the dependence of federal offi-
cials on regional authorities became so great that governors began to press
openly for the transfer of appointments within the force and law enforce-
ment agencies to the competence of the region (see for instance Profil, May
13, 2002, p. 23). If the regions had succeeded in pushing through a change
of this kind, the last ties between federal structures and the center would
have been broken. In the event, a new power vertical was established
that derived in part from the introduction of new federal structures and in
part from the subordination of existing officials to the central authorities.
the success of their business depended directly on the state. Former KGB
officers were particularly welcome: their intellectual and professional qual-
ities were widely respected, and their special skills especially valued.
The stratum of military and security officials in business increased from
year to year, as those who had already been appointed used every oppor-
tunity to draw their colleagues in behind them.
Former officers who found employment in the private sector did not
lose contact with each other or with the institution they had left behind.
On the contrary, they often relied on the assistance of colleagues who still
work[ed] at the old place (Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 16, 1993, p. 6), with
contacts that developed as their new responsibilities extended. Serving
officers had been rather isolated according to the sub-organization in which
they served: security officials interacted with security officials, policemen
with policemen, and army people with army people. Now the military
cohort inside private business actively sought out associations with their
counterparts elsewhere. Retirees working in the commercial world became
a kind of fraternity, based on mutual understanding and assistance.
They began to meet regularly and to develop a wide range of contacts
within government and law enforcement. They also created a whole series
of veterans organizations that have been successful in placing their
candidates in elected bodies (see Kommersant-vlast, December 23, 2002, pp.
6576).
The mass movement of military personnel into business was not an
operation planned by the state, and it would be an exaggeration to suggest
that the regime deliberately introduced officers into the private sector with
the aim of using them in the future as its agents of influence (though there
were such cases). No one calculated in advance the consequences of such
a militarization of business. And not all retirees who had moved into the
private sector retained their earlier associations; many were assimilated
and lost touch with their former colleagues. But on the evidence of our
interviews, the majority of military and security officials did indeed retain
their earlier associations. The basis on which they formed a new solidarity
with businessmen was the ideology that, perhaps surprisingly, they came
to share.
The military had been one of the most ideologized of institutions in
the Soviet period, with a strong emphasis upon the inculcation of patri-
otic values. Very few were critical of the Soviet system, still fewer were
dissidents. And they adapted with some difficulty to their movement out
of full-time service in the 1990s. The more such people worked in business
and became accustomed to high salaries, chauffeured limousines, and
other benefits, the more they became reconciled to the economic changes
that had taken place since the end of communist rule. But at the same time
they could not entirely abandon the values to which they had been com-
mitted throughout their previous careers. They detested turncoats who
changed their opinions in line with changing orthodoxies, and according
to our interview evidence they were proud that they still voted Communist.
Their Marxism-Leninism gave way to a set of values that contained more
PUTINS MILITOCRACY 303
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PUTINS MILITOCRACY 305