Russia's President Vladimir Putin and First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visit Rostov, February 1, 2008.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Men’s Patrol
// Dmitry Medvedev tours Russia’s regions
This week, Dmitry Medvedev is to end the series of his campaign trips to Russia’s regions with visits to Ufa and Nizhny Novgorod. Kommersant Vlast analyses the future president’s route and compares his preferences for regions to those of his predecessors.
As Kommersant Vlast said [see #4 of this year], visits of Russia’s state leaders to provinces are an old Russian tradition. Moreover, when the leaders began being elected by the whole nation, there appeared a special type of those visits – campaign trips. However, Dmitry Medvedev, just as Vladimir Putin in 2000 and 2004, calls them working trips, but it does not change their purpose. Studying the list of places visited by the candidates of power during the last four presidential campaigns allowed to rate Russia’s regions according to their campaign attractiveness from the Kremlin’s viewpoint.
The Way Guests Visit
First Deputy PM Medvedev has already visited 18 regions of Russia (not to mention Moscow and Moscow Region) during the current presidential campaign, and will add two more soon. It is by far more than Putin visited in 2000 (11 regions), and in 2004 (just six visits, for the president was to be re-elected for his second term). However, the current successor has not surpassed Boris Yeltsin-1996; but Russia’s first president needed four months for his 20 trips, while seven weeks were enough for Medvedev.
Three tens of Russia’s regions to host the campaign visits of the presidential candidates of power can be divided into three groups [see chart]. Usually, the number of visits directly depends on the regions’ political importance for Russia on the whole and for the candidates themselves.
It is not surprising that St. Petersburg, the only region visited by everyone – Yeltsin in 1996, Putin in 2000 and 2004, and Medvedev in 2008, heads the list of most important campaign visit sites. St. Petersburg had been Russia’s second city in population, as well as political and economic importance, long before the current and the future presidents of Russia blessed it by having been born there.
The first-group membership of its other regions is quite explicable as well. Bashkiria and Tataria are the largest national republics, while their presidents have been in power since early 90s.
Krasnodar Territory is always on the campaign visit list as ‘Russia’s breadbasket’, and – since recently – as the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Visits to Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk help underline Siberia’s and Far East’s importance for the country. The last but not the least is Volgograd – hero-city, a symbol of victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Meanwhile, changes in the part some regions play in Russia’s politics can be traced by means of comparing the campaign visits. For instance, both Yeltsin in 1996 and Putin in 2000 considered it necessary to secure the backing from Kazan and Ufa, who had been struggling for expanding their regional powers ever since the ‘parade of sovereignties’ began. On the contrary, when the state tightened the screws on Russia’s regions in 2004, and the republics’ leaders were successfully incorporated into the vertical of power, candidate Putin preferred visiting lower-profile Chuvashia instead of Tataria or Bashkiria.
In this sense, the second group of regions follows the same principle, where the candidates of power came two times each. So, Chechnya in war was visited both by Yeltsin and by Putin-2000 (the latter performed his famous flight from Khankala to Krasnodar in a fighter jet), but Grozny in peace was not on the campaign agenda of Putin-2004 or Medvedev. Moreover, Kaliningrad had to wait for the second pre-election visit for 12 years, and both trips’ political messages were different. Yeltsin came there after the election’s first round, to assure local residents that Moscow remembers its Baltic exclave – and was awarded 24-percent extra of support in the second round. Medvedev did not need to assure anyone. On the contrary, it was the hosts who assured him that owing to the Kremlin’s wise politics, Kaliningrad people live not worse than other Russians.
The theme of the candidates’ visits to one and the same regions was subject to change as well. Thus, Putin discussed the fuel-energy sector’s development in Tyumen Region in 2000, when the oil industry’s repartition was yet to come. Gazprom’s board chairman Medvedev focused on the public utilities maintenance and national projects in 2008. ‘Military’ regions witnessed a similar change in landmarks. Putin came to Murmansk Region in 2004, took part in the North Fleet’s exercises, taking to the sea in a submarine. Medvedev, called “the most society-oriented presidential candidate” by his associates, visited an army hospital and met with fishermen in the same region of Murmansk.
At last, analyzing the candidates’ campaign routes brings surprising conclusions. First of all, it is obvious that the current successor wants to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps: Medvedev visited 8 out of 11 regions visited by Putin in 2000, and 4 out of 6 visited by Putin in 2004. However, the largest number of coincidences (11) is between the first deputy PM and Russia’s first president. So, in terms of campaign routes, Medvedev can be called Yeltsin’s successor.
The Way Hosts Receive Them
The rating of regions’ campaign attractiveness largely coincides with the level of preparation for the visits, carried out by local authorities on the eve of Medvedev’s coming. There is inverse proportion here: the more ‘chief candidates’ frequent this or that region, the calmer regional authorities regard these visits.
For instance, St. Petersburg did without urgent repair of roads or urgent façade-painting. Although the roads were cut off for the high guest’s cortege to pass, it was very moderate, as witnesses say. Medvedev’s campaign headquarters in St. Petersburg explained that he was received in the city just as first deputy PM, without extra, ‘successor’ privileges. Krasnoyarsk and Kazan did not do more than just removing snow from the streets. In Khabarovsk, there were noticed only two snow-removal cars on the central roads, and a chain of police cadets along Muravieva-Amurskogo street where the cortege passed.
The streets were decorated in Volgograd. However, the Mayor’s Office said it was due to the 65th anniversary of the victory in the Stalingrad Battle, and not to Medvedev’s coming.
Krasnodar authorities organized the visit in a most rational way of all. In order not to renew the façades for every high-ranking guest, they had built long metallic fences along all central streets, hiding lopsided hedges and shabby houses. However, the authorities decided to repaint the metallic fence ahead of Medvedev’s visit. To make it faster, the paint was put over old posters and ads, making the paint chip and peel off together with old paper soon afterwards.
There is no more single approach among the authorities of regions in the second group of our rating. Some prepare for the successor’s coming as for the year’s chief event; others prefer ‘St. Petersburg’s scenario’. Ekaterinburg blocked its streets for Medvedev for a short time, which made its residents recall the last-year visit of Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, when traffic in the city center was paralyzed for almost 24 hours.
Other regions undertook some very special measures. In Kaliningrad, there was no particular preparation for Medvedev’s visit. It must have been because the guest visited places outside the city or on its outskirts. Yet, the local authorities strictly warned journalists against asking “any questions” to the candidate, and ordered not to call him “the successor” in their articles, and not to regard the trip as a campaign visit at all. Apparently, the same warning was delivered not to journalists only. A construction worker at a nearby site said: “You know, he’s coming… But they told us not to call him this way… The successor!”
Some regions of the second group carried out a large-scale preparation. Voronezh police removed all homeless and poverty-stricken people from the streets where the cortege passed, and removed all vendors from the central market square, for they were spoiling the view from the hotel where the major part of Medvedev’s delegation stayed. Moreover, the city authorities had to make more effort due to the successor’s intention to visit his aunt. The premises of her house were cleaned immaculately; several police cars and a car full of plain-clothed agents stood on guard nearby. Ahead of the visit, the agents asked local policlinic and fitness club (which are in the same building where the aunt lives) to close down for two days – because no one knew for sure when exactly Medvedev was going to see his aunt.
Murmansk was very active as well, mobilizing the officials (who cancelled their delegation’s planned visit to Norway) and law-enforcers (road police cars stood every 500 meters on the streets, and snipers sat on top of high buildings). Certainly, the streets were cleaned up. Yard-keepers were ordered to be on guard on their territories for the entire day – in case if the future president suddenly wants to drop in. Meanwhile, non-authorized contact with Medvedev was categorically banned. The central department store hung up posters reading “We are attacked by raiders! Please help!”, but it hung out there just for 20 minutes. The police took it down long before Medvedev arrived to a neighboring building.
Speaking of the third group of regions, they are always generous when receiving dear guests. Novocherkassk, which is located in Rostov Region, and, unlike Rostov, received a presidential candidate of power for the first time, displayed the full set of urgent measures: street clean-up by an army of yard-keepers, hurried asphalt laying, and façade-painting. Moreover, the authorities had some trash cans removed from the streets; commercial ads on billboards where the cortege was to pass were shifted to social ads; they once again redecorated the recently-reconstructed school where the guests were to drop in, and planted fir trees around the school building.
Penza is the only region standing aloof against the backdrop of other regions in the third group. Medvedev visited it together with Putin as well. Local authorities decided to stand above some small things like new-looking façades or roads, and presented two ambitious projects instead. First, the High-Tech Medical Aid Center. Second, Burtasy Sports Complex. Their total floor surface is over 30,000 square meters. Yet, there plans were nearly hampered by a post-Christmas incident. On January 2, Penza Region’s Drama Theater burned down, and part of labor force had to be urgently transferred from the two buildings under construction to the one recently destroyed. So, the medical center was not completed on time, while the sports complex was opened right on the day of Putin-Medvedev’s visit. However, a few days after the guests’ departure, the latter building’s façade had a few letters of its name fall off.
Dmitry Kamyshev, Afanasy Sborov
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 25, 2008
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