Vrio!

Alexander Beglov was appointed the acting governor of Petersburg or vrio (to coin the acronym for such officials who “temporarily carry out the duties” of one office or another) on October 3, 2018.

His appointment immediately sparked speculation the Kremlin had put him in charge of Putin’s hometown not only temporarily but also so he could run for the post “legitimately” in the upcoming gubernatorial election, scheduled for September 8, 2019.

As luck would have it, the seven-year reign of his predecessor, the dull but mostly inoffensive Georgy Poltavchenko, was blessed by relatively snowless winters.

Petersburg, however, is the northernmost major city in the world and, unsurprisingly, it sometimes snows a lot there in the winter. The “anomalous winter” of 2010–11, during which the local authorities could not get a handle on cleaning relatively heavy snowfalls from streets, pavements, and roofs, spurring wild popular discontent, famously led to the dismissal of then-Governor Valentina Matviyenko and her replacement by the quieter Poltavchenko.

Like all members of Putin’s clique of made men and women, Matviyenko was not punished for her failures. Instead, she was “upmoted” (my term) to the much cushier post of speaker of the Federation Council. There she has been instrumental, I suspect, in persuading the press and the public she presides over a “senate,” peopled by “senators,” not a rubber-stamp entity filled with repellent losers too big to fail who have been rewarded generous sinecures in exchange for total loyalty.

In any case, today’s would-be Russian “senate” is a far cry from the feisty and, at times, mildly separatist Federation Council of the nineties, whose members would never have been so obnoxious as to style themselves “senators” and then get everyone else to go along with this sycophantic malarkey, including opposition activists, reporters, and academics who should know better.

The winter of 2018–19 was another “anomaly,” apparently, and vrio (interim governor) Beglov made it even worse by behaving even more brazenly and clumsily than Matviyenko had done during her own “snow apocalypse.”

You would think the Kremlin would not be so provocative as to shove Beglov, who looks remarkably like Mel Brooks in his salad days, playing the “villain” in one of his hilarious film parodies, down the throats of Petersburgers on Election Day 2019, but that is the plan. All the stops have been pulled out, including a total purge of opposition candidates attempting to run for seats on the city’s district municipal councils, although these underfunded, powerless bodies that have zero say over the Smolny, Petersburg’s city hall, where Beglov and his team call the shots.

The Kremlin is willing to make Beglov the city’s “legitimate” governor over everyone’s dead bodies, as it were, alienating even more otherwise apolitical Petersburgers from the regime.

Finally and, perhaps, apropos of nothing, has anyone ever remarked on the fact that both Beglov and Poltavchenko were born in Baku in the mid-1950s? Does it snow there in the winter?

The picture, above, was taken by Kseniya Brailovskaya in downtown Petersburg during the height of the municipal collapse this past winter. As another heat wave envelopes Europe, you will probably see more of these snapshots in the coming days, especially since I have a post or two in the works about the flagrant purges of opposition candidates in Petersburg. They have mirrored similar purges in Moscow, but without sparking spontaneous unrest of the weekend before last or the heavily attended protest rally that took place in the capital on Saturday. {TRR}

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Rotunda
Telegram
July 16, 2019

A friendly meeting between the heads of over twenty Petersburg media outlets and acting Governor Alexander Beglov took place in the Smolny. The meeting was cast as a campaign event at which heated discussions were not welcome.

During the first hour, Beglov cheerfully talked about all the problems he had solved. He said his priority has been to combat depression among Petersburgers. Beglov thanked, in all seriousness, the opposition for keeping him on his toes and informing him about hotspots.

Then followed several questions from the attendees. The most pointed question was, “How can we help you?” or something like that. Despite being a candidate in the gubernatorial race, Beglov was not taken aback by this offer and spent another hour outlining his plans for the near term.

The only question that knocked the vrio off his high horse had to do with the scandals surrounding the elections to the municipal district councils. Beglov said he could not intervene since he himself was a candidate.

As the meeting drew to a close, the heads of the city’s media outlets asked whether Beglov would be willing to meet with reporters in a similar format in the future. Beglov said he would definitely talk with everyone but only after September 8.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Russia Has No Senate or Senators

800px-Maccari-Cicero Cesare Maccari, Cicero Denounces Catiline, 1889. Fresco. Palazzo Madama, Rome. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

“Russia’s Senate wants a visit from Mark Zuckerberg.”
—The Real Russia. Today email newsletter, May 30, 2018

I am not a huge fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but he can easily turn down this invitation, if only because Russia does not have a senate.

It does have something called the Federation Council, which is supposedly the upper house of the Russian parliament, a mostly fictitious organization itself, considering how its MPs are essentially appointed to their seats, not elected by popular vote.

The members of the Federation Council are a group of Putinist lackeys. They are handpicked by the Kremlin to represent Russia’s ninety-some regions. In most cases, however, they have nothing whatsoever to do with those regions, unlike during the rough-and-tumble Yeltsin administration, when each region’s two-person Federation Council consisted of its elected head and an elected representative of its own parliament. As I recall, this was the set-up not because Yeltsin decreed it, but because the regions themselves decided to run their own house of parliament this way, meaning the Federation Council was often a rowdy bunch, opposed to Yeltsin’s proposals and policies, just like the parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, which was so notoriously rowdy it often made the news in other countries. That does not happen anymore.

Nowadays, however, most Federation Council members are either natives or longtime residents of Moscow and Petersburg, both called “capitals” for similarly pompous reason. Like their fellows MPs in the State Duma, Federation Councillors engage in neither vigorous debate nor rebellion, but in rubber-stamping the increasingly odious law bills drafted for them by the Kremlin and various government ministries. They do their jobs as executioners of the remnants of Russian democracy and civil liberty so uncomplainingly and speedily that opposition-minded Russians have taken to calling the parliament the “mad printer.”

Naturally, given their real condition as contemptible yes-men, the Federation Councillors decided it would be more dignified if they fancied themselves “senators” and dubbed their rinky-dink collective sinecure a “senate.”

The funny thing is the non-senators have succeeded in hoodwinking nearly all reporters, even foreign reporters, into adopting this utterly groundless, self-aggrandizing, hokey moniker.

This is hardly surprising, since, in my experience, reporters are gullible creatures. I once persuaded a Russian reporter I was an unemployed Finnish shipbuilding engineer from Turku who had turned his life around by making fresh mango and salt lasses from a cart in downtown Helsinki. She duly reported this non-fact about my fictional alter-ego in her article about the latest edition of International Restaurant Day. The article was duly published in a well-known Petersburg daily, which has since gone defunct. I had just been joking to pass the time of day while making lasses outside in less than clement late-spring weather, but the reporter took me seriously. She even snapped my picture or, rather, the picture of the Finnish ex-shipbuilder from Turku, and it, too, was printed, properly captioned, in her overview of Restaurant Day in Petersburg.

The resident of New Haven, Conn., who edits the daily English newsletter for the online Russian-language news website-in-exile Meduza has bought into the “Russia Senate” con hook, line, and sinker, too. Seemingly indifferent to what really happens in our rapidly re-totalitarianizing country, he has endowed us with a senate on several occasions, in fact. You see, it is the done thing nowadays, whether it is actually true or not.

But I don’t have to buy it, nor does Mark Zuckerberg. And neither should you.

Russia has no senate and, hence, no senators. Anyone who says or writes otherwise is indulging in glibness for reasons that should make you question everything else they write or say. Good reporters write something because it it true or reported to be true. They don’t involve themselves in collective hoaxes, especially, as in this case, in an easily disproved imposture that has gone on for years. // TRR

“Senators” vs. “Undesirables”

A37K0741_0 — The Russian Federation Council,* whose members have a penchant for calling themselves “senators,” even though they are not a popularly elected body nor a body known as a “senate.” This peculiar fashion has been picked up by the Russian media and, now, even some foreign media, thus reinforcing the fallacy that Russia is governed democratically. Photo courtesy of *Izvestia* and Zurab Dzhavakhadze

Media Learns about Idea to Expel People from Russia for “Undesirable Behavior”
RBC
September 4, 2017

The Federation Council’s Committee for Defending State Sovereignty and Preventing Interference in Russian Domestic Affairs [sic] has been drafting a law bill that would stipulate expulsion from Russia for “undesirable behavior.” Izvestia learned about the bill from sources in the parliament familiar with the drafting of the document.

Acccording to the newspaper, the penalty of expelling people from Russia for “undesirable behavior” would be stipulated by a law bill that could be tabled in the State Duma as early as next year. It would amend the current federal law “On Undesirable Organizations,” adopted two years earlier.

The newspaper’s sources said that expulsion for “undesirable behavior” would be applied to individuals, mostly foreigners. However, the sources noted the term could be applied to Russian citizens and legal entities.

The newspaper notes that “undesirability” would be determined by whether the actions of the persons caused real harm to Russia’s national security. It could be a matter of “inciting ethnic and religious hatred and political discord,” as well as potential interference in Russia’s electoral process. The newspaper likewise notes that “outside work” with Russian educational institutions and young people could be deemed “undesirable.”

According to the sources, several options for how the law would be applied were currently under consideration. One of them would involve empowering State Duma and Federation Council members with the capacity to send requests to the Prosecutor General’s Office to check whether a person’s activities were “undesirable.” If the audit turned up a violation, Russian citizens could be accountable. [sic] Foreigners, on the contrary, would be threatened with expulsion from the country.

Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the Federation Council’s Committee on Foreign Affairs confirmed that the amendments to the law were being drafted.

Translated by the Russian Reader

*Сritics of the Federation Council stress that it is an inherently undemocratic body made for regional elites, with little say from the Russian people. Since the reforms advocated and passed by President Putin in 2000, critics have also charged that the Council resembles more of a rubber stamp body for the Kremlin than an independent legislative body. Many senators are viewed as close allies of Putin and the United Russia party, despite rules which explicitly spell out that political factions are not allowed. Since Mironov’s rise in the Council in 2002, the Kremlin’s position on impending legislation is closely communicated to and coordinated with the Chairman and the committee and commission chairs. This top-down approach has meant that the Council votes with extreme efficiency, backing Kremlin positions on legislation nearly all of the time.

Critics also point to how long the Council convenes, meeting only one day every two weeks, speeding through legislative analysis and providing lop-sided majorities for each vote. Many blame this speedy legislation on the enormous influence the Kremlin exerts, who they charge have already instructed Council committee and commission chairs on how to vote. Several left-leaning State Duma deputies have lamented that Putin has stripped away the Federation Council’s last hold on checks and balances.

Since Putin’s restructuring of provincial executives in 2004, placing them under direct appointment by the Kremlin upon approval of their legislatures, federalist supporters have also charged the president in reducing the provincial role of the Federation Council. Where Yeltsin had envisioned a chamber [addressing] regional concerns, they argue, critics view Putin’s restructuring as deeply centralizing the Council to reflect the president’s and United Russia’s political interests, taking away provincial voices. Putin supporters counter these criticisms by acknowledging that Yeltsin had also appointed governors to Russia’s federal subjects in the early days of the Federation.

Source: Wikipedia