From the editor:
In February in Moscow, with the assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy, a book by the head of the information service of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Ruslan Gorevoy, “Case No. 13: Murders of Journalists in Togliatti,” edited by A.K., was published. Simonova (M.: Medea, 2005. – Series “Media Affairs”. – 128 p.).

“Journalists are being killed. In Moscow and Kurgan, in Kaluga and Kyzyl, in Kasimov and Yoshkar-Ola, in Tula and Smolensk. But most often - in Togliatti,– Alexey Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, rightly notes in the afterword to the book. – Since 1995, 5 editors-in-chief and one general director of a local television and radio company have died in Tolyatti. None of the Togliatti murders were investigated. None of the killers have been found or punished. Why? The book you hold in your hands is an attempt to answer this question.”

Last October, we chronicled the unsolved murders of Tolyatti journalists (see). But investigative journalism is a completely different genre, a completely different job, requiring both talent and courage. Not being able to publish the book in its entirety, we decided to give some fragments concerning only part of the crimes committed in Tolyatti - the deaths of Andrei Ulanov, Nikolai Lapin, Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Loginov.

Instead of a preface

"...They can't kill us all..."
Alexey Sidorov,
editor-in-chief of the Togliatti Review newspaper, in an interview
New York Times, May 2002.

It is believed that the city of Tolyatti has a history of almost three hundred years. But it depends on how you count.

In 1738, a year after the tsar’s decree was issued on the separation of baptized Kalmyks and pagans with the subsequent resettlement of converts to the mouths of the Sok and Cheremshan rivers, the city of Stavropol-on-Volga arose. The place for the compact settlement of baptized Kalmyks and the construction of the city was chosen by the head of the Orenburg expedition, Vasily Tatishchev. On the left bank of the Kunya Volozhka (a branch of the Volga), opposite the Molodetsky Kurgan, it was decided to build a fortress and a city - the capital of the baptized Kalmyks. They called it Stavropol, which translated from Greek means “city of the cross.” The founder of the city V.N. Tatishchev was against such a name; he proposed calling the city Epiphania, which means “enlightenment,” but Queen Anna did not agree.

Stavropol-on-Volga stood for 216 years. In the fifties, construction of the Volga hydroelectric power station began, and in 1953 the city was flooded by the artificial Zhiguli Sea. Residents were relocated to a new location, approximately two dozen kilometers from the flood zone. They also began building a new city there, which in the summer of 1964 was named after the leader of the Italian communists, Palmiro Togliatti. And two years later, on July 20, 1966, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government decided to build the largest automobile plant in the USSR in Togliatti.

In fact, the car plant, which was supposed to assemble Italian FIAT 124 models under license, was going to be built in Belgorod, but construction would have cost 20 million rubles more. A certain international factor also played a role: Italians came to set up production, among whom there were quite a few members of the Italian Communist Party. It turned out to be a good propaganda combination: Italian and Soviet communists are building the largest auto giant in the city with a symbolic Italian name! International construction!

Workers from all over the Union came to build Autocity. In a matter of years, the city turned into a real Soviet Babylon: Russians, Ukrainians; Belarusians, Tatars, Bashkirs, Kalmyks and even Italians who refused to return to their homeland. The Volga Automobile Plant became the sole god of this Babylon.

In the early nineties, the Tolyatti Automobile Plant remained one of the few successful manufacturers of industrial products in Russia. Moreover, the products are in demand and even in short supply. Queues for brand new Ladas lined up until the mid-nineties. The rushed demand for cars and long-term corruption at the car plant became an excellent breeding ground for the emergence of organized crime in the city.

This crime was multinational, like the entire population of the city. And this crime was not restrained by any boundaries: neither the notorious thieves, nor the belonging of potential rivals to the same ethnic group. Only momentary gain, only profit at any cost. And absolute unscrupulousness, coupled with wolfish cruelty.

According to Moscow News columnist, Doctor of Law, retired police major general Vladimir Ovchinsky, over the past twelve years Tolyatti has experienced four criminal wars. Four radical redistributions of property.

– The modern criminal world of Tolyatti has developed according to the usual patterns of development of organized crime in Russia in modern times,– says V. Ovchinsky. – It all started in the late 80s, when the crime boss Alexander Maslov united around himself athletes, people with a criminal record, who started with games of thimble, then took up racketeering. Even then, Maslov’s community included 8 groups, where the leading position was occupied by the groups of Ruzlyaev, nicknamed Dima Bolshoy, and Vdovina, nicknamed Partner. Strict rules of obedience and discipline, distribution of roles, and punishment of disobedient people were introduced. The first business structures that appeared in the city immediately came under the control of the criminal community. By 1992, Tolyatti was generally divided between criminal structures. Under their influence were markets, commercial stalls, private firms, and charity lotteries and other gambling games that filled the city at that time. Extortion from citizens and enterprises purchasing cars then began to bring in considerable income. The first attempts were made to penetrate the main VAZ conveyor belt.

The huge profits made by crime bosses have led to fierce competition. In the fall of 1992, the so-called First Criminal War began in Togliatti. The victims of this war were the then leaders of local organized crime, and in particular Alexander Maslov himself. Six months later, in March 1993, a real battle of criminal gangs took place not far from the Zhiguli Hotel. According to various sources, from 70 to 100 people took part in it.

Another well-known authority, director of the Mirage glass tinting cooperative, Vladimir Bilichenko, died in the First Criminal. He was shot on September 16, 1992. Bilichenko was the first among the Tolyatti bandits to practice the so-called shipment. The shipment was carried out like this: from the VAZ conveyor to the utility yard, to certain sites, cars were driven out to order. Cars were taken from these sites by dealers who paid Bilichenko one hundred dollars for each car shipped above the cost. Nowadays, probably, few people remember that twelve years ago people spent months in queues, waiting for a car of the required configuration and color. Two seventeen-year-old village boys who did not even have basic weapons skills were equipped to kill Bilichenko.

The first criminal war in Tolyatti ended with a change of authorities. Instead of Maslov and Bilichenko, Partner became the leader of urban organized crime. Vdovin-Partner managed to further strengthen the influence of criminal structures on business, industry and the economy of Togliatti. Moreover, Partner took the Togliatti common fund into his own hands. The huge money concentrated in the hands of the Partner and his accomplices has significantly strengthened their roles in the criminal community. But Vdovin’s strengthening did not suit those bandits who lost access to AVTOVAZ’s trough.

And the Second Criminal War broke out. In 1994-1995, 66 people were killed in gangland shootings alone.

Vladimir Ovchinsky says:

– As a result of the Second Criminal War, a new balance of power arose in Tolyatti. The city and VAZ were divided into zones of influence, controlled by several powerful influential clans. This is the community of Partner and the Tatar brigades friendly to him under the leadership of Shamil. The counterbalance to them was the gangs of Ruzlyaev and Sirota. In addition, the Chechen and Zhiguli communities had serious positions in the city, the backbone of which were Chechen and Georgian thieves in law, respectively.

At the end of 1996, the Third Criminal War began. The reason for the new bloodshed was the assassination attempt on Ruzlyaev’s bodyguard named Petrov. Soon after the assassination attempt on Petrov, two leaders of the criminal group Partner were killed. And the authority’s answer was not long in coming. Since March 1997, there has been another surge in contract killings in Tolyatti.

- It was during this period that– says Vladimir Ovchinsky, – former Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Anatoly Kulikov decides to carry out an operation called “Cyclone” in Tolyatti. The operation was less like a police operation and more like a military one. And there were reasons for this: AVTOVAZ was literally in the hands of bandits. It had to be liberated by large SOBR forces, workshop by workshop, warehouse by warehouse. But at the same time the criminal war continued. As a result, in April 1998, Ruzlyaev - Dima Bolshoi - was killed.

Kulikov’s baton was taken over by Sergei Stepashin, who conducted two more stages of Operation Cyclone. AVTOVAZ was cleaned up, but the criminal world continued to settle scores with each other. The division of the structures that formed the economic basis of Dima Bolshoi’s criminal community further served as the impetus for a series of murders committed in Tolyatti during 1999–2000. In March 1999, the former chairman of the Fund for Social Support of Veterans of Special Forces of Law Enforcement Agencies, Durasov, was killed, the main leaders of commercial structures associated with the fund, as well as the managers and founders of the fund, including the new chairman, Minak, were killed. And in total, during the Fourth Criminal War, 16 people were killed by order, 2 attempts were made.

Thanks to the efforts of law enforcement agencies, it was possible, if not to stop gang wars, then at least to give them the appearance of local showdowns. And today, representatives of Tolyatti organized crime continue to extract excess profits from Avtograd. The annual profit taken by Togliatti crime from AVTOVAZ exceeds 500 million rubles. The city is still divided into spheres of influence by five criminal communities, which include at least 400 people. Tolyatti still remains one of the epicenters of the Russian criminal world.

Mafia structures mimicked and merged with the political establishment and legal business. And the further it goes, the calmer and more impunity the already practically legalized Togliatti crime feels.

And today, twelve years after the start of the First Criminal War, practically nothing has changed in Togliatti: all the high-profile contract killings are associated exclusively with the car plant. But despite the mortal risk, participation in the VAZ deal is still the dream of many Tolyatti businessmen and bandits. There is fierce competition for access to the feeder.

A distinctive feature of the Tolyatti showdowns of that time was the participation of law enforcement officers in them. The Social Support Fund for Veterans of Special Purpose Units of Law Enforcement Agencies and Intelligence Services was especially distinguished: three co-founders and managers of the fund, as well as several businessmen friendly to the fund, were killed. Most of them are former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB. Law enforcement officers investigating Tolyatti crimes also suffer losses. The head of the department for solving murders, Yuri Onishchuk, the head of the department for combating banditry of the Internal Affairs Directorate, Dmitry Ogorodnikov, were killed, and the justice adviser of the regional prosecutor's office, Irina Boyakhchyan, who supervised the investigation, inquiry and operational search activities in the Avtozavodsky district, was beaten half to death with metal rods.

Neither the large-scale operations of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, nor the visits of operational groups of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation, nor the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Kolesnikov, who often visits Togliatti, can stop this criminal conveyor.

Alas, journalists also die in the meat grinder of endless criminal squabbles.

The chain of murders of Tolyatti journalists has been going on since 1995. On October 15, on the threshold of his own apartment, the editor of the Togliatti Segodnya newspaper was fatally wounded by three shots from a pistol. Andrey Ulanov. Having barely had time to recover after the operation, Ulanov gave evidence to the investigation, on the basis of which a sketch of one of the attackers was compiled. Ulanov underwent several more operations, but they could not save him: the editor died on the twentieth day after the attack.

Tolyatti journalist Sergei Melnik wrote about this murder in the New Russian Word in December 1995:

“The mayor, who called Ulanov his friend, supplied the doctors with expensive, scarce medicines and placed armed guards at the intensive care unit, personally saw him off on his last journey: for Andrei there were meters in the old cemetery, which was officially closed and opened only in exceptional cases (for the lads - almost always). The death of the journalist and editor, coupled with a series of heinous murders that shocked the already murdered townspeople, forced the mayor to make a sharp statement on local television: all security forces should leave their offices and work on the streets - that is where law enforcement agencies belong.

And in the offices at that time, numerous versions of the murder were being worked out. (...) Journalists also have their own versions: the reason for the murder could have been the desire to “persuad” the not always accommodating editor in this way. Those who know the situation believe that literally the day before the shot, Ulanov received from AVTOVAZ - more precisely, from the local branch of the Chernomyrdin movement “Our Home is Russia” headed by Kadannikov - a firm promise to transfer funds to cover all the newspaper’s debts. It is possible that the reason for the murder could have been the controlling stake in the newspaper owned by Ulanov.

In short, there is something to dig here. But the investigation, which at first convinced the townspeople of its determination, today is no longer very actively resisting journalists’ guesses that it has reached a dead end. And few people in Togliatti doubt that this will happen. This is not the first case in the history of local contract killings.”

Law enforcement agencies found neither the killers nor those who ordered the crime. Five years later, in November 2000, on the pages of the Togliatti newspaper Present Center, people who knew Andrei Ulanov remembered him and speculated about the reasons for his murder.

Yuri BEZDETNY, head of the press center of the City Duma:

– Can you name me at least one contract murder that was solved? In my opinion, there is no doubt that the murder of Andrei Ulanov was ordered, and there are financial interests behind this case. In such cases, customers and performers are very rarely found.

Evgeny Baklanov, editor of the newspaper “Freedom Square”:

– Why hasn’t the murder been solved? Contract killings are not solved at all - such an unkind Russian tradition has developed. But we must remember that time, that business and our general inability to somehow get by in that business. A newspaper is also a business, albeit a small one usually. Somewhere Andrei probably made a mistake... Now the newspaper people have learned to navigate what is happening. Everything was new then...

Konstantin PRYSYAZHNYUK, ex-editor of the Present Center newspaper:

– I remember Ulanov well. And I couldn’t imagine that someone might make an attempt on Andrei’s life, because Andrei had never associated with any bandits. As for controversial publications, Tolyatti Today did not engage in this at all. Andrei was not the kind of person whose main job is to rinse someone out in order to ruin or embarrass them. I'm talking about this because in our environment there are simply dirty tricks. So Andrey was a very attentive and friendly journalist who could talk to anyone. He would have interviewed Hitler in such a way that it would have worked out. Ulanov was truly a high-class professional.

The order is generally difficult to open. But if we talk about the attempt on Andrei’s life, there have been rumors for several years that the perpetrators are known, but then everything is cut off. Moreover, all significant versions agree that the murder is not related to professional activities. At least with creative activities. And I am convinced that we do not have a global attack on freedom of speech, as some are trying to show. This, of course, looks good for the capital’s news agencies that almost every year journalists are beaten or killed in Togliatti. It looks exciting and sensational. But in fact, more often than not it’s not because of journalism. This is usually associated with matters that are not part of our core business. Often personal motives... But someone has the intelligence to combine them into a chain, to build logical arguments - their own, home-grown ones. Stupid... From someone else's misfortune they extract only their own ten lines, well paid for - what a sensation! But there is no mutual assistance or corporate solidarity. In Togliatti, unfortunately, among journalists, competitive relations prevail over human relations. And if something happens somewhere, God forbid, they will only trample on your misfortune; at best, your friends will provide real help, but not the journalistic community.

However, in recent years it has begun to dawn on many that this situation is unnatural. And the guys who are healthier, who are not zombified by competition, still try to show their solidarity. Our city is very dangerous to live in. No one can feel protected here. Anyone, even an oligarch, who can hire security, knows: if they want to kill, they will kill. And the simple person can only hope that no one will be interested in him. Naturally, the danger for a journalist is greater. And it must be said that a certain part of Tolyatti journalists did everything to make the press hated. Therefore, here, in addition to criminal disputes, the newspaperman also faces such a danger as unbalanced individuals, of whom there are many in the city. And they are even more unpredictable than bandits...

Alexey ORLIN, editor of Radio Tolyatti:

– When you walk through life side by side with a person for many years and love him, how can you not remember? Andrey is missing, and very much. Because, in my opinion, the city’s journalistic environment very rarely recruits such talented people in all respects into our ranks. Five years ago, we lost not just a brilliant journalist, not just a person who could express his thoughts in a completely tangible way on the pages of a newspaper, magazine, or on air, but also an amazing person in terms of human qualities. Of course it hurts. And this pain never went away...

I don’t particularly believe that Ulanov’s case will ever be solved. But, probably, this is not what we need to talk about now, although, of course, there should be punishment. It is important to understand something else: there are irreplaceable people, but Andrei’s place remains completely empty. No one has occupied it in Tolyatti and, I think, no one will ever occupy it. Why weren't they revealed? I wouldn’t just talk about the fact that someone somewhere didn’t complete something or didn’t do something, I don’t know, because the information was extremely meager: “We’re working, we’re busy, but due to reasons...” Police - it is an extension of what we have in society. And the saddest thing, if we talk about the detection rate or the crime itself, is that all these 5 years I personally have no understanding of why all this happened.

Vladimir ISAKOV, head of the press center of AVTOVAZ JSC:

– Why is the crime not solved? We must consider this issue not in relation to an individual person, but as a whole. Probably because we fell apart as a society. And we do not take this tragedy as ours personally. If we do not want such crimes to continue, we need to unite, understanding that these crimes are not against the individual - they are against our society. And we need to fight every criminal manifestation, then they will not exist. In many countries people have understood this. And there, in the event of an emergency, they literally organize raids. Criminals have nowhere to go. And we have somewhere to go. And as long as there are shelters for criminals, no one can feel safe. The naive opinion is that you hire a couple of security guards and you will feel protected. Or he installed three iron doors for himself - and he was protected. Do not interfere in gangster affairs - and you are protected. None of us living in this city, in this country, can feel absolutely protected. We need to become aware of this situation. And when we understand the interconnectedness of our problems, then we can hope that society will provide a guarantee of protection to any of its members.

(...) A year and a half after the death of Ulanov, Tolyatti was shocked by another murder of a journalist. Editor of the newspaper “Everything about everything” Nikolai Lapin mortally wounded on Russian Press Day, January 13, 1997, in front of his own son. In the parking lot near house No. 29 on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street, an unknown person approached Lapin and, firing a pistol at point-blank range, ran to the car that was waiting for him, in which he disappeared. Lapin was taken to the hospital with a serious wound to the face. The journalist was operated on, but it did not save him. On the night of January 15-16, he died from his wound.

In addition to his publishing activities, Lapin, like many Togliatti journalists, was actively involved in politics: he headed the city branch of the LDPR and acted as a confidant of Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Needless to say, in this case neither the killers nor those who ordered the crime were identified. In November 1997, the prosecutor's office of the Samara region suspended the preliminary investigation into the murder of Nikolai Lapin. In a letter addressed to the Glasnost Defense Foundation and signed by the head of the First Department of the Investigation Department, Counselor of Justice V.A. Karpenko, it was reported that “the prosecutor’s office of the Komsomolsky district of the city of Tolyatti suspended the preliminary investigation into the case under paragraph 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR, due to the failure to identify the persons who committed this crime.”

Over the course of a year and a half, in a small Russian city, two chief editors of popular publications die from the bullets of hired killers. Even for the extremely criminalized Russia of the mid-nineties, this is a real emergency. The impunity of the killers could easily provoke new crimes against journalists, and the heads of law enforcement agencies could not help but understand this. All the more strange was their obvious inaction: neither the customers nor the perpetrators of the crimes were identified.

Thus, the subsequent murders of journalists in Togliatti were provoked by law enforcement officers themselves, creating the illusion of impunity. Over the next seven years, four more heads of local media will die in the city, and investigators will throw up their hands as usual: no customers, no killers...

Part 1

Murders of Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Loginov
(TV company "Lada-TV")

“Methods of pressure on independent media, which are in difficult
economic situation remained faithful to the reader and provide
him objective and complete information about events in the country and
locally, have become incredibly sophisticated - from tax pressures and other
methods of economic influence before gross intervention
law enforcement agencies, searches in editorial offices, falsified
court cases and revocation of licenses. Journalists are dying in this fight -
having exhausted all possibilities to force independent
professionals write according to prompts, corrupt authorities
goes for contract killings. Such is the tragic price
which current Russian society pays for freedom of speech
and press."

Valery Ivanov,
editor-in-chief of the Togliatti Review newspaper

In the fall of 2000, two key executives of Lada-TV, the only city television company broadcasting on the meter wavelength, were killed in Togliatti. Since both victims were engaged exclusively in television and were not distracted by extraneous commercial projects, it was obvious that the cause of their death should be sought in the sphere of professional interests.

The television advertising market in Togliatti is quite scarce: as is known, large advertisers are not interested in conducting large-scale campaigns in the regions. Nevertheless, things were generally going well for Lada-TV. The television company even applied to expand broadcasting: Lada’s capacity allowed it to cover an entire area with a meter signal. The transition to a regional broadcast network would automatically make the television company extremely attractive to both businessmen and politicians. After all, elections at various levels in the region take place almost non-stop, and you can make good money from election campaigns, not to mention the fact that, if you wish, you can play politics: provide support to candidates running for power, lobby for certain financial and political interests . And Lada-TV began to be seen as a serious factor of political influence in the region. For some it is clearly undesirable and even dangerous. But for some, on the contrary, it is coveted.

On the evening of October 3, at 22.30, the director of Lada-TV, Sergei Ivanov, was killed with five shots from a pistol, a few steps from his apartment. The control shot fired by the killer into the journalist's head and the weapon thrown at the crime scene left no doubt that the act was a professional. Therefore, the murder was contracted.

Ivanov has led the TV channel since 1996, and, according to people who knew him, no one has ever threatened him. According to information available to law enforcement agencies, the local gang did not attack Ivanov. Sergei had no financial debts.

It was not possible to identify either the perpetrators or those who ordered the crime without delay. Detectives from Samara joined the investigation into the murder: the Tolyatti police, with their unhurried actions, clearly alerted their colleagues from the region. Faced with “local specifics,” Samara investigators expressed a cautious assumption that the perpetrators, apparently, would not be punished: the interest of some authorities in the successfully developing television resource was too obvious.

Exactly a month later, on November 3, Lada-TV editor-in-chief Sergei Loginov died in the intensive care unit of the Togliatti medical town. Relatives of the deceased reported that on the evening of October 28, the journalist parked his car near his dacha in Kirillovka and went out to open the garage door. At that moment, a car standing nearby suddenly moved away and, accelerating, crashed into the garage door, knocking down Loginov and crushing him under the heavy door. The unknown driver fled the scene of the accident, and Sergei Loginov was found a few minutes later by passers-by. In a comatose state, the journalist was taken to the intensive care unit of the hospital. Banykina. With an interval of one day, he was operated on twice, but the injuries turned out to be severe, and it was not possible to save Sergei: he died without regaining consciousness.

Despite the fact that Loginov’s relatives were convinced of the domestic nature of the incident, there are quite a lot of strange inconsistencies. Thus, the Stavropol police department, which is investigating this incident, was very surprised when a correspondent for the Reporter newspaper asked how far the search for the car that caused the accident had progressed. Answering this question, the head of the public security police of the Stavropol district of Tolyatti, Viktor Alekseev, said that the car that allegedly caused the accident does not appear in the case at all. According to Alekseev, most likely, Sergei Loginov fell into the inspection hole of the garage himself.

And this time, representatives of law enforcement agencies were not inclined to connect the incident with the professional activities of the victim. Accident. And this means that no criminal case will be initiated.

But the doctors who examined the victim, in turn, suggested that such injuries could not have been received from a fall or even from being run over by a car, but only from numerous blows with a metal rod. The doctors' guesses made their way into the local press, and a week after Loginov's death, Tolyatti police officers decided to open a criminal case. But, as one of the investigators admitted, an order was received from Samara: “Consider Loginov’s case an accident and do not carry out a criminal investigation.” The police officer did not clarify who exactly gave this order and why. By that time, Loginov had already been buried, and it was not possible to carry out a detailed examination. But for some reason exhumation was considered inappropriate.

(...) The criminal case initiated into the death of the head of Lada-TV Sergei Ivanov has turned into another hanging. Until now, not only have the identities of the killers and those who ordered the crime not been established, law enforcement officers have not even bothered to identify those who benefited from Ivanov’s murder in the slightest degree. A year ago it was announced that Ivanov’s alleged killers had been detained. However, law enforcement officers were unable to establish the real involvement of the accused in the murder of the owner of Lada-TV.

Nevertheless, there are a number of versions that can shed light on the Togliatti murders. One of them - the official one - is this: the Lada-TV television company actively supported one of the candidates in the elections of deputies to the Togliatti City Duma, which took place shortly before Ivanov’s murder. Meanwhile, just during the election campaign and immediately after it, Loginov and Ivanov made a number of large purchases. Perhaps they, like the heads of the television company, having received the money, promised the candidate some guarantees, but were unable to fulfill their promises. The version is controversial: in the end, the financial issue could have been resolved differently. After all, the heads of the television company probably had money: it was not without reason that another expansion of the broadcast network was planned for 2001, a very, very expensive undertaking.

Since law enforcement officials were unable to prove the viability of the debt theory, they put forward another that seemed to investigators to be more plausible. Ivanov tried to sell VAZ spare parts and somewhere crossed the path of a Tatar group, one of the most influential organized crime groups in the region. However, the police were unable to motivate this version either: not a single document confirming the involvement of the deceased Ivanov in an automobile or any other business could be found.

Another version was put forward, not approved by official bodies, but quite plausible. The fact is that Lada-TV, as already noted, broadcast in the meter range. This means that almost all Togliatti residents could watch its programs, whereas, say, city television, rebroadcast in the UHF range, is available only to owners of fairly new TV models. PR people are well aware that active voters, as a rule, are not rich people. Their TVs are old, and they watch only “meter” programs. In relation to Tolyatti - central TV channels and Lada-TV. Therefore, it is most profitable to place political advertising on meter-long TV channels.

Local officials have repeatedly voiced their desire to participate in the acquisition of shares in Lada, or even better, in the purchase of the company entirely. Sergei Ivanov repeatedly refused such offers. He was killed, and a week after Ivanov’s death, editor-in-chief Sergei Loginov also received an offer to sell Lada shares. Loginov had few shares, but he could influence Ivanov’s heirs and persuade them to sell shares. However, Loginov refused to cooperate with potential buyers. A month later, he was gone too.

The version suggests itself: was the intractability of Ivanov and Loginov the reason for their death?

The police sluggishness and slowness brought to mind that law enforcement agencies are unlikely to ever reliably establish the names of those who ordered the murders of Ivanov and Loginov. The versions of the investigation did not stand up to criticism. Therefore, when conducting my own journalistic investigation of the Togliatti murders, I did not particularly trust the materials received from law enforcement officers and, building my own version, I asked myself only one question: “Who benefited from the disappearance of the Lada leaders?”

While answering this question to myself, I discovered some interesting things. For example, I was able to establish that in the last months of his life, Sergei Ivanov owned no more than 40 percent of the shares of Lada-TV. Approximately the same amount was concentrated in the hands of Samara Mayor Georgy Limansky. A certain Shakirov, a distant relative of Limansky, who headed the local branch of Svyazinform and provided retransmission of Lada-TV programs, could also be a co-owner of the shares.

There were witnesses who confirmed that Limansky at least twice offered Ivanov to sell him the shares of the television company, or at least part of them.

But it was not only Limansky who was interested in the television company. At the beginning of 2001, a new television company, owned by the editor-in-chief and actual owner of the Tolyattinskoye Obozrenie newspaper, Valery Ivanov, began broadcasting on the Lada frequency. According to Lada employees, Valery Ivanov at one time repeatedly offered to sell the television company to his late namesake at a profit, but Sergei refused.

After the deaths of Ivanov and Loginov, the Lada creative team intended to continue producing television programs, but in January 2001, the television company’s retransmission contract expired, and the Togliatti RTPC was in no hurry to conclude a new contract. Twice the management of the broadcasting center postponed making a decision, and as a result, Valery Ivanov received temporary permission to broadcast. The heirs to the shares of the television company had to make a choice: part with the shares and receive money from Ivanov, or keep the television company, which had lost the opportunity to go on air and be left with nothing.

As a result, Valery Ivanov became the holder of a controlling stake in the television company and airtime in the meter range. And he renamed Lada-TV.

In 2002, I described in detail the “double murder on television” in Novaya Gazeta. I conducted my investigation within the framework of the “Clean Feathers” program, which assumed that someone from the leadership of the Samara Regional Prosecutor’s Office would respond to the versions presented in the publication. In accordance with the requirements of the Clean Feathers program, the full text of my investigation was sent to the prosecutor of the Samara region A.F. Efremov.

In the afterword to my article, the master of investigative journalism Leonid Nikitinsky, in particular, wrote: “We thank A.F. Efremov for the promptness with which he responded, however, not everything in his answer convincingly refutes the conclusions of R. Gorevoy. Thus, the prosecutor reports that during the investigation into the case of the Volgov group, the investigation of which was successfully completed, 17 episodes of murders and attempted murders were revealed, including the murder of S.A. Ivanov. It was established that his motive was related to Ivanov’s collaboration with an opposing criminal group, and not to the activities of the Lada-TV television company.” However, how else could Ivanov cooperate with any group if not by giving it an advantage in using the capabilities of the television company?

Upon the death of journalist S.V. Loginova, the prosecutor's office concluded that it was the result of an accident: the deceased opened the garage door in front of a car walking along the driveway and was knocked over by the blow of the gate, hit his head on a metal part in the garage and received a fatal injury.

The credibility of the latest version can also be debated.

I ended my material with these words: “Apparently, the Togliatti battle for the right to broadcast in the meter range will continue. Because law enforcement agencies are conducting the investigation into Lada-TV carelessly - this has been proven by the stalled investigations into the deaths of S. Ivanov and S. Loginov, and the television company remains the object of close attention of local politicians, businessmen and mafiosi.

The price of pre-election PR is too high, the TV company remains too tasty a morsel, allowing this PR to be carried out effectively and for next to nothing.”

Time has shown that I was not mistaken.

A month after the publication of the material, Valery Ivanov appeared at the office of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, where I have the honor of working. He started with threats. They say that you will have to answer for the publication of libel. Okay, I agreed with Ivanov, I’m ready. File a lawsuit. Ivanov turned sour: “Maybe we can come to an amicable agreement? How much do you get?..” We didn’t agree. But we talked. About many things. We exchanged business cards. “You have no idea how difficult it is to work here. Between the bandits and law enforcement officers, we are like between a rock and a hard place,” Valery told me as he said goodbye.

On the same day, Ivanov left for Tolyatti. Less than a year later he was gone - killed by the bullets of an assassin...
_________________________
© Gorevoy Ruslan

From August 1, UAZ will begin working in two shifts

08/01/2018 at 15:00

844 views

Molarists, welders, slingers, engineers and many others. Only a hundred employees. The Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant announces a recruitment of vacancies.

We plan to attract people not only from Ulyanovsk and the region, but also from nearby regions. We are ready to organize the delivery of these employees from nearby locations. If it’s far away, we can partially compensate for the rent.

UAZ is a striking example of an enterprise that found itself in crisis situations and then got out of them with dignity. Now the plant is at its zenith. After almost six months of operation of the assembly shop in one shift, the conveyor again returns to its previous two-shift work schedule.

Ruslan GOREVOY - OPERATIONS DIRECTOR of UAZ LLC

This year there has been an increase in car sales. In June, sales were 10% higher than last year. We sold 3656 cars. In the second half of the year, volumes will increase further. We understand that in the single-shift mode of operation in which we are now, we will not be able to handle the volume of production, so we are launching a second shift.

The second shift will begin on August 1. At the same time, staff will be selected. By the way, today the average worker’s income is about 30 thousand rubles. The remuneration system directly depends on the qualifications of the employee. Age, as the company’s management assures, is not a hindrance for those who want to work at UAZ. We need both experienced and mature workers, as well as young and ambitious ones. There is an opportunity for on-site training.

Renata Aliulova, Ruslan Battalov

Who is killing financiers associated with VTB?

The recent funeral of former senior vice president of VTB Yuri Kotler gave rise to recall several similar stories related to this bank. And what is noteworthy is that every time they rushed to present the next tragic incident as an accident. Although it didn't look like accidents at all.

It is clear that there is nothing more important than the reputation of a bank, and it’s easy to taint it with human blood. But on the other side of the scale is the right of citizens to receive objective information on a socially significant issue, isn’t it?

In death - or in suicide? – 50-year-old Yuri Kotler is alarmed by the similarity with the sudden death of his VTB colleague, 43-year-old Alexander Furin. In both cases, nothing, as they say, foreshadowed the tragedy. On May 12, Kotler visited the Crimean Bridge as part of a representative delegation, and not as an extra, but stood a few steps from the general contractor. And, importantly, he was not depressed, as a suicidal person should be in five minutes, but even in high spirits. And the next day was Kotler’s anniversary. And he spent it, according to eyewitnesses, although not too noisy, but fun. There were no visible reasons to die on the night of May 14th. “Three weeks ago we accidentally crossed paths at the airport,” testified the director of the Center for Political Conjuncture, Alexey Chesnakov, calling Kotler’s departure strange. “I gave the impression of a man full of plans.” Kotler really had a lot of them - the day before, the experienced manager was invited to work on the expert council of the government.

A rare skill to shoot yourself correctly

It was a similar story with Furin. A week before the new year, 2008, a senior VTB employee celebrated the birthday of his daughter Sabina in a narrow family circle - an elderly mother and a 25-year-old wife. She turned 5 months old. I drank a little, went to rest and fell asleep. They didn’t wake him up; his wife put her daughter to bed and lay down next to her. And in the middle of the night, according to her, it was as if she had received an electric shock - she woke up. She found her husband in the toilet, without clothes and with a bullet through his head. Nearby lay a 9mm Jorge pistol, designed to fire rubber bullets. Furin bought it two months before his death. The widow recalled that the computer was working at night, the Internet and Skype were turned on (later it turned out that the program had stopped working, as if it had been deliberately disabled), and all her husband’s clothes were washed in the washing machine. What is this, someone covered their tracks? Furin knew how to handle weapons: before Jorge, he acquired two pistols and a shotgun. He kept them in a special safe, and literally never let go of the new clothes, bragging to his friends. “When I started swearing,” Elena Furina recalled, “he said that you couldn’t even get hurt with it, it’s a toy!” It's really a toy, you can't shoot yourself with this one. Unless, of course, you shoot yourself right in the ear. But only experienced specialists know how to kill like that, and Furin was not one. Yes, but this supposedly careless shot was fired precisely in the ear and at a special angle. Sitting on the toilet in the toilet, it is almost impossible to trick yourself like that.

But let's return to Yuri Kotler. His career is a story of success and luck. He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, worked at RIA Novosti, and collaborated with reputable American publications. By the will of fate - and, as they say, a little more through the efforts of Vladislav Surkov - he ended up in United Russia. In 2008, under the auspices of the party in power, the project “Personnel Reserve - the country’s professional team” was created. Kotler was entrusted to lead it. It is difficult to say how successful he was in his work as a personnel officer near the government, but such an episode is known. This was at the beginning of Kotler’s work in his new position. One sausage entrepreneur from a certain southern republic really wanted to lead it. For this purpose, he organized small popular unrest, and the legitimate head of the region almost fell victim to them. But in Moscow they decided that there was no need to change anyone, and they persuaded this entrepreneur to give up his ambitions in exchange for inclusion in the personnel reserve. With an unclear but tempting prospect. That's what they decided on. About a year passed, and the entrepreneur wanted his son to be included in the personnel reserve. But there was no agreement about this. Then it allegedly went like this: Kotler hinted to the entrepreneur that the issue was easy to solve - say, a million for one and a half dollars. The guest from the south was a non-greedy man. But his son never made it into the personnel reserve. There was terrible disappointment, there were threats - I would kill, they say, for a dashing deception. But it worked out. Knowing this story, we can assume that Kotler knew how to make enemies. So, they say, for this reason he did not stay too long at VTB - he moved to the Moscow representative office of the Novorossiysk commercial seaport. And from there - to the board of directors of the largest microfinance company in Russia, Home Money. The day Kotler died, the company declared default. She had obligations to investors amounting to 840 million rubles.

Surprisingly, while changing jobs, Kotler remained a member of the Supreme Council of United Russia, and in February of this year he was elected to the party’s expert council. So, being invited to the expert council under the new government and appearing the day before his death in preparation for the opening of the Crimean Bridge is not just that.

The “strange” death of Yuri Kotler

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Kotler could have fallen victim to a long legal battle with the owners of the Novorossiysk port - the recently detained Magomedov brothers (the Summa group). The Novorossiysk port is a specific place; until recently, its co-owners were the eminent Crimean “authorities” Alexander Skorobogatko and Alexander Ponomarenko, and they had a cooler disposition. “House Money” was also not exactly an easy place to work. So, everything was not easy for Kotler with VTB. In his suicide note, the deceased refers to a certain Kaban - under this nickname the former head of the press service of CentroCredit Bank Dmitry Pleshkov could appear. Kotler and Pleshkov were very friends. Information appeared that his friend, upon leaving VTB, received a “golden parachute” - 80 million rubles. But they didn’t give him this money; instead, they offered him to take out a mortgage on an expensive apartment in the center of Moscow. And VTB would pay off the mortgage. They shook hands. At first everything went smoothly, VTB regularly fulfilled its obligations. And then he supposedly suddenly stopped. Moreover, Kotler was sued - he allegedly took out a loan from a bank to buy an apartment in Bryusov Lane and did not return it. And the debt, taking into account the penalty, exceeded 50 million rubles! Shortly before his death, Kotler tried to sue the bank, but to no avail.

It’s not a pretty story, you’ll agree, and the fact that VTB, the second most important Russian bank, appears in it is even surprising. Was it worth spoiling the sign because of some 50 million rubles? The debtor was difficult, high-ranking and promising.

But we, apparently, will not know the whole truth about Kotler’s death. Why? They said it was an accident.

In October 2006, the director of the VTB branch, Alexander Plokhin, was killed in Moscow - he was shot in the entrance of the house in which he lived on Kolomenskaya Embankment. Judging by the fact that the deceased’s wife made a living by selling homemade toys, the family clearly did not live on fat. So the killers did not take Plokhin’s wallet, and the investigation, comparing strange facts, spent a long time trying to establish the motive for the crime. In vain.

So what would you think? They wrote it off as an accident: they say they could have been guarding someone else, not Plokhin. Three weeks before the death of Alexander Furin, in December 2007, his VTB colleague Oleg Zhukovsky, managing director of the bank, who worked only with the largest clients, died a strange death. He drowned in the pool of his country house in an elite village near Moscow, having previously tied himself hand and foot with a clothesline - that, in any case, was the official version of the investigation. And also an accident. During his lifetime, Zhukovsky managed the bank’s huge cash flows (we were talking about tens of billions of rubles), making decisions at the state level. Colleagues in one of the joint projects - Vitaly Yavelsky and Armen Khachatryan - called Zhukovsky on the eve of his death and planned meetings. They recalled that the voice of their interlocutor, as usual, was cheerful and businesslike.

It was rumored that Zhukovsky might have known something about some financial irregularities in the bank, for which he allegedly paid. During the investigation (at first a murder case was opened, but later it was reclassified) it was established that in fact some unsightly manipulations had taken place. So, was there still a motive for the murder? And its background is the banking activities of the deceased? There is also no clarity in the story with Furin. The press reported that he had some troubles at work - at VTB. And because of them, Furin was even transferred from the Frunzensky branch to the Lubyanskoye branch, as if with a demotion. Furin, like Zhukovsky, worked with large corporate clients. If, say, he had stolen heavily or made some terrible mistake, he would simply have been fired. But a transfer to another bank branch with a downgrade is not a typical situation. So, the bank may have had some complications with Furin? And in the end there followed a fatal shot in the ear, too accurate for a suicide.

Did the bank go too far with Kotler?

Here, perhaps, it’s time to return to VTB’s showdown with its former top manager Kotler. Former colleagues gave him legal trouble over 50 million rubles. Can you imagine what would happen if the debt turned out to be even greater? The former owner of the Neman Pulp and Paper Mill, Igor Bitkov and his family now represent that they had the imprudence to owe VTB a whole billion rubles. It would seem a banal Russian story: they lent money to develop a business, but the development didn’t work out, they got into debt (not only, as you understand, bank debt) - in the end they had to flee abroad to save their lives. They ran far away, all the way to Guatemala. And VTB representatives were hot on their heels. To return the money, they involved the International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), operating under the auspices of the UN. The result is this: the special court of Juzgado de Mayor Riesgo sentenced Igor Bitkov to 19 years in prison, and his wife Irina and daughter Anastasia to 14 years. During the announcement of the verdict, the Bitkovs and their relatives sobbed - if they had remained in Russia, they would definitely not have been sentenced to such exorbitant terms. It is clear that debt is worth paying, and the fate of the defaulting debtor, whatever one may say, is unenviable. But did VTB go too far? And how often does this bank have to “go too far” like this? Just imagine what would happen if a Russian court imposed such exorbitant prison sentences on a certain family of debtors! But they even dealt with the Bitkovs in a Jesuitical way - taking advantage of the fact that they were forced to go on the run. No, no one is justifying the debtors, but the bank’s actions in this story look, to put it mildly, strange and disproportionate. Didn't the bank go too far in the story with Yuri Kotler?

Son for father? Or another accident?

Seven years ago, a tragedy occurred in the family of VTB head Andrei Kostin - his son, also Andrei, died. He was 32 years old. I was riding an ATV outside the city, on a country road, the wheel fell into a hole, hit my head on a tree - and the guy was without a helmet. And - to death. Accident? A criminal case was opened under the article “Violation of traffic rules and operation of vehicles,” but, as Life News reported in hot pursuit, the investigation had another version. “The attackers could have set up a car accident that led to Kostin’s death: the ATV may have been deliberately damaged to provoke an accident,” one of the investigators who led the case told this publication. Kostin Jr. worked for Deutsche Bank for a long time - first abroad and then in Moscow. If the accident that occurred in the Yaroslavl region is a consequence of an assassination attempt, then it is unlikely to be related to his work, suggested Anatoly Aksakov, president of the Association of Regional Banks of Russia.

But they could well take revenge on the young man’s father in this way. However, this tragic incident was classified as an accident.

It is impossible to ignore another “accident” - the plane crash of the Mi-8 helicopter in the Khabarovsk Territory. On board the aircraft were top managers of VTB Leasing, a wholly owned subsidiary of VTB. Of the 16 people, 11 survived, including the general director of the company Andrei Konoplev and his two deputies. One of the helicopter's engines failed, and the machine could have landed, having reached a convenient place. But I didn’t make it. The survivors were simply lucky. They guessed to jump into the water before the helicopter crashed and reached the shore safely. Perhaps this time it really was an accident. Why then did the Internet portal “All Investments,” when reporting the incident, mention 100 billion rubles received by VTB from the National Wealth Fund the day before? “One thing is clear,” the publication reported, “as a result of the plane crash, not only an audit on the issue of transport safety is needed, a financial audit is also required, both for VTB and for VTB-Leasing.”

If the relevant authorities had carried out such an inspection, there would be no room left for misunderstandings and assumptions. There would be clarity. The same can be said about the tragic incidents involving VTB employees. The rapid investigations into the cases leave many questions. So the death of Yuri Kotler is presented as an accident. But is this really so? And will the series of similar “accidents” continue in the second largest bank in Russia?

By the way

Last November, rumors rippled through the capital's corridors of power that Alexey Kudrin might lead VTB. The reason for the possible replacement of Andrei Kostin was called the so-called Mozambican deal, which was investigated by the US FBI. Its gist is this: a Russian bank allegedly provided a loan of $535 million to an African country. And he received for this, as Reuters reported, a “manifoldly inflated loan fee”, in our opinion - a kickback in the amount of 7% - about 35 million dollars. In general, last fall Kostin, apparently, could have been “written off as an expense.” But he sat still. But Kudrin headed the Accounts Chamber and promises not only an audit of dubious transactions, but also full-fledged investigations with the prosecution of all those responsible. So it looks like Kostin is in trouble? Or, as always, will it work out?

Russian regions are in for a general cleaning - if, of course, we abandon the more precise definition - “personnel purge” - which carries a negative connotation with reference to Yezhov and Beria. The recent rehearsal for the Dagestan elite, mired in excesses, was more than successful - it would be a shame not to extend such experience to other provinces

They will, apparently, start with Tatarstan and the Chelyabinsk region - local officials, according to their own words, were informed in advance about the inevitable. And Sergei Kiriyenko will clear the regions of everything bad.

While the country is whispering why Kiriyenko was nominated for the “Gold Star” of Hero of Russia - either to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his short-term premiership, which ended in default, or for some secret successes of Rosatom, where he has not worked for two years , or for the competent and effective conduct of the presidential elections - but knowledgeable people hint: the curator of internal policy in the presidential administration was awarded for Dagestan. Yes, all the practical work there was done by “Governor General” Vladimir Vasiliev, but it was Kiriyenko who was the first to grasp the “social order” - and the further process began precisely with his suggestion. Moreover, as a pilot, Kiriyenko deliberately chose, perhaps, the most difficult region - with several national elites fiercely competing with each other. And his cleanup was successful. Who would have thought that ungovernable Dagestan could be managed by a federal politician with no local roots, and that the parliament would be led by a manager invited from Tatarstan! As a result, the first deputy head of the presidential administration responsible for regional policy was entrusted with overseeing four departments (instead of two, as before) and most importantly, the State Council under the President of Russia, which was becoming the key department.

The cause of regional heartburn of Sergei Kiriyenko

Meanwhile, the regions froze in anticipation of a “grandiose trick” - an all-Russian personnel purge. “The head of the FSB Directorate for the Chelyabinsk Region, Yuri Nikitin, flew to Moscow in April,” the Znak publication feared, “where he was informed that the region was included in the plan of priority measures to combat corruption. It should be cleaned by 2019. For now, they’ll start with cities and regions.” And in Kazan, having followed a chain of events that was obvious to many except the local elite - from the November expulsion of the head of the region Rustam Minnikhanov from the State Council to the replacement of the curator of the State Council with Kiriyenko - they are also preparing for big changes. After all, Tatarstan gives Kiriyenko a long-standing toothache – even from the time he worked as plenipotentiary representative in the Volga Federal District. But this should be discussed in more detail.

Few managers began their careers with such a crushing fiasco as Sergei Kiriyenko. In April 1998, the State Duma approved him as Russian Prime Minister, and four months later a default and resignation followed. Kiriyenko was saved from the irrevocable collapse of his career by chance. Once, as head of government, he was the first to tell one guy that he had been appointed director of the FSB. But sensitive people do not forget kindness, and the retired prime minister one day woke up as the presidential plenipotentiary in the Volga Federal District. Of the seven plenipotentiaries of the first conscription, only Kiriyenko did not wear a uniform jacket - five of his colleagues sported general's uniform, and one had a high diplomatic rank. But, as vice-president of the Center for Political Technologies Rostislav Turovsky recalls, “Kiriyenko’s relations with the republican elites, Shaimiev, Rakhimov were quite complicated.” It couldn't be more complicated, it's true. “It got to the point that they refused to receive plenipotentiaries at the level of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan during his visits to Kazan,” recalls the Business Online publication. Meanwhile, Kiriyenko experienced “a painful period of building the vertical of power, curtailing the powers of the regions, the actual abolition of sovereignty and bringing republican legislation into line with federal legislation.” Just remember the scandalous story with Tatarstan inserts in Russian passports, which the plenipotentiary spoke out against. And now the front in Tatarstan is not subsiding at all. The regional head still does not want to give up the label “president,” although even Ramzan Kadyrov, without hesitation, caught the signal sent and became governor. And Kazan journalists have to maneuver when describing meetings of the heads of Russia and the region. A recent scandal forced changes to the language law - children from Russian-speaking families found themselves in an ambiguous position due to the imposition of Tatar in schools. So should we be surprised at the rumors that there is personal hostility in Kiriyenko’s relationship with the regional authorities? There was a reason for it. It was the regional elites, represented by Mintimer Shaimiev, Yuri Luzhkov, Murtaza Rakhimov and Vladimir Yakovlev, who contributed to the inglorious resignation of Prime Minister Kiriyenko. And unfortunately, Kiriyenko, who was shot down, had a good memory.

In February 2003, the process of “regional consolidation” began in Russia. Kiriyenko never said that the idea was his. But there are good reasons to say that it is him and no one else. And then it’s clear why they decided to start with the Volga Federal District controlled by Kiriyenko, with the unification of the Perm region and the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug. Everything went without a hitch: local legislators unanimously accepted appeals to the president “on the creation of a new subject of the Federation,” and both regions submitted appeals almost simultaneously, with a difference of two days. The plenipotentiary representative, of course, did not emphasize his role. But Leonid Drachevsky did not succeed as brilliantly as Kiriyenko - the process of unification of the Irkutsk region with the Ust-Ordyn Autonomous Okrug entrusted to his efforts lasted for five long years. And all because one plenipotentiary acted extremely harshly with the regional elite, while the other was diplomatic.

The State Council is the center of provincial government. And the country?

When it became clear that the role of the individual in transforming the country was too great and Kiriyenko’s colleagues might not solve the assigned tasks as brilliantly as he did, it was decided to postpone the massive consolidation of the subjects of the Federation. And already in June 2003, Kiriyenko assured the Volga region press that the merger of regions was “complete nonsense.” At the same time, the plenipotentiary selected such wording that, as if by chance, the ugly truth came out. “In our country there is not just a territorial division, but a national-territorial one,” Kiriyenko explained, “and the national theme is always a sensitive issue. Territorial disputes – even more so.” And then the plenipotentiary said, as if by chance: “And in Russia today there are more than 2 thousand territorial disputes. One wrong move - and quiet conflicts will instantly become loud, there will be some bastard who will engage in populism, inflaming the national question.” Here is a real explanation why the process of consolidation did not take off then. But nevertheless, the problem required a solution, and it was postponed until better times. It turned out - for a decade and a half.

In mid-June, the internal political bloc of the presidential administration held a two-day seminar for vice-governors - on Old Square and at the Sberbank corporate university near Moscow. The topic of the event was the gubernatorial elections scheduled for September 9 in 22 regions. But they talked not only about the elections, but rather about what would follow after them, about the inevitable local “cleansings”. They will not take place simultaneously, but like replacing governors - in “waves”. Almost two decades ago, the institution of plenipotentiary representatives was created in order, as the newspaper Gazeta noted, to “tighter control the gubernatorial freemen, to avoid regional Frond following the example of the performance of the group of Luzhkov, Shaimiev and Yakovlev in the 1999 elections, or even to avoid the “risk of the collapse of the country” in “ appanage principalities." And today we are talking about abolishing the plenipotentiary missions and introducing strict control from the center, using the mechanism of the State Council. “The Department of the Presidential Administration under the State Council for the most part solved internal political problems,” explains political scientist Andrei Kolyadin. – Most of them concerned the development of regions, while regional policy is under the jurisdiction of the internal policy department. By transferring the management of the State Council to Kiriyenko, the president brought the issue to its logical conclusion, when one person is responsible for related issues. And this is an undoubted strengthening of Kiriyenko.” By the way, the elimination of the institution of plenipotentiary representation as such was the idea of ​​Alexei Kudrin and experts from his Center for Strategic Research, who were preparing a reform program for the president. And, who knows, whether Kiriyenko will use it in the foreseeable future?

It should be recalled that “Our Version” wrote about the State Council in November last year: They began to “cheat” the State Council five years ago. Then, for the first time, district plenipotentiaries were introduced into its composition, significantly increasing the weight of the advisory body, essentially turning it into a political body of strategic purpose. The project was conventionally called “Politburo, version two.” The State Council is formed on the principles of the Soviet Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee or, if you like, the “magnificent seven”, the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, with the prospect of transferring power from the president to the head of the State Council. Political scientist Valery Solovey told us about the same thing at the same time: “The idea of ​​creating a State Council is being discussed not instead of the post of president, but along with it. Strategic issues will come under the jurisdiction of the State Council, while operational and ritual issues will remain with the president. The real power in this case will rest with the head of the State Council.” And today, what we wrote about is gradually coming to life.

At the same time, the department of the presidential administration under the State Council comes under the control of Kiriyenko, along with the department for the development of information and communication technologies and communications infrastructure - in addition to the department of internal policy and the department of public projects. And let us remind you that Svetlana Chupsheva, affectionately nicknamed “Kirieshka,” is responsible for the Kremlin’s strategic projects. In fact, Kiriyenko becomes the most influential manager in the entire presidential circle.

At the same time, the State Council has not yet been finalized, but its contours are already emerging - and their scale gives no illusions to anyone. The sudden concentration of power in the hands of the deputy head of the presidential administration, whose ceiling was recognized by Rosatom two years ago, cannot fail to impress.

On the warpath with Kindernator

Some were so impressed that an information war was launched against Kiriyenko. The other day, press reports were full of news that the office of Valentin Yumashev, Boris Yeltsin’s former son-in-law, had been discovered either in the Kremlin or on Old Square, and on the door there was a sign saying “adviser to the president.” The hint is clear - nothing is changing in the country. The sign, however, turned out to be old, and there was no office at all (but, as we found out, there is an office with Yumashev’s ex-wife Tatyana Dyachenko). Meanwhile, reporting about Yumashev, who, as it unexpectedly turned out, remained an invisible adviser to the president for 20 years, the authors of the “news” targeted Kiriyenko.

“The influence of Yeltsin’s “family” on Kiriyenko has always been”

– explains economist Mikhail Khazin

- but someone just now needed to spread the word about the open secret to the whole country. However, as political scientist Alexander Ustinov rightly noted, “in addition to Dyachenko and Yumashev, Vladislav Surkov and Anatoly Chubais can be included in the “family” - members of the “family”, one way or another, had or have a long experience of holding government positions while performing real work " In general, when the information bomb exploded under Kiriyenko, it did not cause him much harm. But the “bomb throwers” ​​have revealed themselves - are they not the ones who will soon be affected by the all-Russian personnel purge?

At one time, the publication by the Americans of the “sanctions list”, in which the lion’s share of those involved were figures from the federal center, and the regional elites remained, as it were, not covered, raised many questions. Why do Americans so openly and persistently oppose the federal and regional elites of Russia? Is it because bets have already been placed on the small-town princelings? And what if we assume that the whole point of the anti-Russian sanctions was to push two branches of government into conflict, one of which having previously been discredited? Maybe now is the time to launch a preemptive strike, thwarting the West’s insidious plan? “An outright pogrom of the regional elites is being prepared,” opposition politician Anatoly Nesmiyan, who travels widely around the country, shares his observations, “with criminal cases, personnel purges and punitive expeditions from the center. The operation in Dagestan was a success, and following its pattern, security forces are preparing similar events in a third of Russian regions. Almost no governor can consider himself safe.” And the process does not move spontaneously - it is regulated by the one who is responsible for regional policy, Sergei Kiriyenko. Not some worthless Kinder surprise with milk on the lips, but a seasoned Kindernator. Controlling key structures of the presidential administration, easily winning election campaigns. Casting director and manager of governors, as well as an informal curator of the country's long-term development plan. Too powerful and almost indestructible. Especially against the backdrop of the rapidly losing feathers of the prime minister, from under whom two Atlantean associates were pulled out - Dvorkovich and Shuvalov and for whom the warm golden shower from the personal inexhaustible cloud of the Magomedov brothers was turned off. So think about it, you know, who could have called in a fit of annoyance about the ill-fated “Yumashev’s office.”

However, Kiriyenko, like every Olympic celestial who does not have immortality, has his own Achilles heel. By poking at it you can achieve a much greater effect than from reminiscences on the theme of Yeltsin’s “family”. According to rumors, these are people from his inner circle who have worked with him for a very long time and enjoy almost unlimited trust. The reality is that Kiriyenko, who is rapidly gaining political weight, is being fired upon from all sides - by regional elites, who may lose their feeders, and by federal helmsmen, who are losing their sense of stability. And along with them are the liberals, for whom Kiriyenko, although a constant travel companion, is still a stranger.

Sergey Moshkin, political scientist:

“Something went wrong with the secret decree.” If it is secret, then why did everyone know about it? Is this how we keep secrets now? Senior police lieutenant Popryadukhin in 1973 participated in the arrest of a gang of Yak-40 hijackers in Vnukovo - they wanted to escape to America. Popryadukhin was awarded the star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, but under a secret order. And no one found out about this until the beginning of the 2000s, until the award order was declassified. And it immediately became known about Kiriyenko - they gave him a Hero! And there is a reasonable question on everyone’s lips: why? But those who awarded are silent - and think what you want. If they awarded for Rosatom, then why didn’t they give the Hero of Labor, as expected? A successful presidential campaign would not have been awarded the “Gold Star” - it was clear who would win in the end. And in general, such awards are given for a feat, and not for the totality of achievements. If Kiriyenko were a “closed” person, secrecy would be justified. But he is a public figure, a political points-scoring administrator. Maybe the leak is the work of his high-ranking ill-wishers? In this case, the award could be connected with Dagestan and with a possible repetition of what happened there in other regions of the country.

Ruslan Gorevoy

Work on mistakes

I have repeatedly heard from fellow journalists in Moscow that human rights structures working with the media are of no use to anyone. Like, it’s not clear why such organizations exist at all: newspaper people are smart guys, moneyed, they know how to stand up for themselves, and if the authorities are prohibited by law, then almost every editorial office has lawyers. Why any more human rights activists?

I contrast my personal experience with the naive bravado of my capital colleagues.

Four years ago, I received a criminal sentence for a “professional” journalistic article for libel: I published material about a major police figure who, in his spare time, amused himself with rape in a perverted form. The activist was tried but acquitted. True, after some time the loving colonel received his nine years of special regime in full: impunity, as is known, contributes to the commission of similar crimes. But this belated triumph of justice no longer saved me: the day before, the court recognized that I was a slanderer and sentenced me to two years in prison. I had to flee from prison.

I forgot to say, and this is important: it happened in Ukraine. The investigation dragged on for six months, and the trial dragged on for another four months. All this time I tried to get in touch with local human rights activists. I would never have thought that I, until recently a quite prosperous editor of a department of a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 150 thousand, would need help, so to speak, from outside: I earned decent money, and there were already four lawyers working in the newspaper. I felt strong, smart and well protected.

Alas, I soon became convinced of my own arrogance. First the newspaper closed. Then my lawyer was shot, and there were no more people willing to defend me in court. A little later, in the prime of his life, the judge suddenly died, having announced the day before his intention to send the case for further investigation. By the way, in six months there were four investigators in the case. In general, I urgently needed help and support.

The head of the local branch of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine sympathized with me as a human being, but flatly refused to help. Several other organizations (which I can name, but I don’t want to), where I applied and where they could help, refused to support me on the obscure grounds that I worked for a Russian-language newspaper. Now, if I wrote in Ukrainian, then I would, they say, with a dear soul.

So no one helped me.

Anyway. I received my sentence with a suspended sentence and left out of harm’s way to Moscow. I worked in different newspapers and along the way tried to find someone who could help me or at least give me some advice: the verdict was not overturned, and they even put me on the republican wanted list.

In the editorial offices where work was found for me - in "Vek" and "Chimes" - they knew my story: I got a job there virtually without documents, thanks, so to speak, to the personal guarantee of the general director of the Russian PEN Center and my fellow countryman Alexander Tkachenko. I had to tell in detail what happened to me and why.

It’s interesting - my colleagues treated what happened to me as something unreal. Not from this life. After all, the passion that a few lines of truth in a newspaper can be paid with criminal prosecution and years of wandering remained somewhere far away, in stories about emigration from Soviet times. I remember how the editor-in-chief of the defunct Kuranty newspaper, Anatoly Pankov, when hiring me, said: “Yes, your story is atypical...”

But life on the run could not continue indefinitely, and I was forced to look for an organization that would help me gain some kind of complete civilian identity: return the documents selected by the prosecutor’s office investigator, stop the prosecution and restore justice. I searched slowly and for a long time, for three whole years, until I accidentally came across the Glasnost Defense Foundation.

And my life regained meaning. And instantly there were lawyers who filed a complaint with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, and partners in Ukraine who provided a lawyer. And money to help my sick mother. In the eyes of the Foundation’s employees, I saw not only compassion, but also understanding. They not only heard me: they understood me and helped me.

And then it happened that I stayed to work at the Foundation.

It turned out that in the organization, which by definition deals with problems of the media and journalism in general, there is not a single professional journalist. In essence, there was no feedback from journalists in the regions: information from all over Russia flowed into the Fund, but it was not entirely clear what to do with it. It was included in the monitoring, foreign partners were informed about the most egregious violations of rights, and they helped, as best they could, journalists in trouble, in particular, the “godsons of the Foundation” Andrei Babitsky and Grigory Pasko. But there was no talk of establishing a two-way communication channel with the Russian hinterland, or establishing information exchange between the Center and the regions. But there was a need.

And we began to publish an information digest, in which, in essence, we began to “introduce the regions to each other.” They talked about the problems of the independent press. Characteristic violations were selected and given a legal assessment. They spoke out in support of one or another publication persecuted by the authorities, and asked regional journalists to support their colleagues. And often we found understanding.

Establishing feedback with the regions was extremely important for us.

Firstly, publications working in the outback have the opportunity to be heard. It became more difficult for local authorities to put pressure on these media, because many people in Russia and abroad would certainly learn about each such fact. But pointing out a problem, identifying it means half solving it.

Secondly, the fund has the opportunity to help affected media to act more consciously and less chaotically. And even to some extent analyze changes in the information space in the regions.

That is why our next step was the primary processing of the information we received, so to speak, primal analysis. This is not yet analytics, but it is no longer statistics. And it is this kind of promptly processed information that is the most valuable today. On its basis, it is possible to predict the general situation in the media and identify the most disadvantaged regions.

Primary analytics, which we began to publish monthly, helped us identify the most dangerous trends of today: the creation of giant media holdings by presidential plenipotentiaries in the federal districts; the information security doctrine, which has no legal force, but is widely used in the practice of putting pressure on the media; intensification of prosecutorial pressure, etc.

The main task of the Foundation's information projects service is not to fight minor ailments of our press, but to prevent professional journalistic diseases.

At different times in the Foundation's activities, different programs were recognized as priorities. When it seemed that the democratic development of Russia was forever, then they began to develop an educational program: teach journalists the basics of legal literacy, conduct seminars, round tables, etc.

Today, independent analysts predict that by the end of 2001 the share of non-state media in Russia will be 12-17% of the total. And if the authorities’ priorities do not change (after all, we are realists, and we understand that a bear can be taught to dance in the circus, but not in ballet), then in another year the state will control 93% of the media. This means that the time has come to realize the degree of danger of this process.

So, in my opinion, the priority for the near future is the development of a service for information and analytical projects.

Perhaps many colleagues will not agree with me. After all, it is so difficult to admit that the results of a decade of defending glasnost turn out to be not at all what we could have counted on. It is difficult to admit your own mistakes, but admitting them does not mean admitting your own powerlessness.

In Russia there are still non-state publications that allow themselves to oppose the officialdom. There is a relatively good law on the media. But there is no civil society, and therefore no confidence in the stability of the same legislation: the state can at any moment, by a strong-willed decision, put an end to both opponents and glasnost in general. There will be no one to object. The formation of civil society is one of the main tasks of the media in countries with developing democracies. Unfortunately, journalists in general have neglected to solve this problem and are now forced to confront government pressure alone. The people, who have never become a civil society, remain silent. And evidence of growing state pressure on the media is not long in coming. This includes the doctrine of information security, which is illegal in essence, but has already been adopted by government officials as a guide to action, and numerous attempts to change the law on media undertaken by the Ministry of Press, and the “hooks” created by legislators in bills, at first glance, absolutely not related to the media (let us remember at least one of them, which prohibits the propaganda of drugs, and at the same time any mention of them in the press - an attempt to establish hidden censorship).

It is necessary to resist the pressure of power, but you cannot get hung up on it. War is by no means a way to solve problems. We need to think about what to do next and look for constructive solutions. If possible, bloodless.

Glasnost, as we know, had a past, has a present, and certainly has a future. The present is, alas, a crisis. An attempt to return to the values ​​of the Late Paleolithic era. But the new generation is also “children of glasnost.” They are accustomed to breathing the air of freedom; the constricting rubber of a gas mask is alien to them by definition. But are they ready to fight for the right to breathe this air in their country?

And the future... So that it does not take us by surprise (as happened in 1985), we need to collect bit by bit information not only about our victories and achievements, but also about mistakes and blunders, carefully comprehend everything that happened, and convey knowledge to those who will follow us. Perhaps our experience will to some extent protect them from inevitable mistakes.