Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh <shlapent@msu.edu>
Subject: Serdiukov as a Unique Defense Minister in Russian History: A Sign of Putin’s Absolute Power
Serdiukov as a Unique Defense Minister in Russian
History: A Sign of Putin’s Absolute Power
By Vladimir Shlapentokh (Michigan State University)
In one week last February, there were two surprising developments in Russian politics. Speaking in Munich on February 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin astounded foreign observers with his sudden, aggressive speech against the United States and NATO. The Russians themselves were less amazed by the speech, having become accustomed to their president (or his emissaries) making vituperations against the West and the country’s neighbors, such as Ukraine, Georgia and now even Belorussia. However, the second event, the appointment of Anatoly Serdiukov as the country’s 44^th defense minister on February 15, flabbergasted and angered the Russian public, even as it passed almost unnoticed in the West. No one in the army had the slightest clue about Serdiukov or his background. No journalist could hearken back to one of Serdiukov’s public speeches or interviews. The Russian generals did not recognize their minister as he appeared for the first time at a gathering at the defense ministry.
After Serdiukov’s appointment, the country and the world learned that he had graduated in 1984 from a trade college with very low prestige in the USSR. He had been such a mediocre student that the president of the school could not utter a single word about his merits when he was swarmed by journalists after Serdiukov’s appointment. In 1985, he started working in Leningrad in the furniture business and after fifteen years became the deputy head of a furniture shop. While working in this lucrative industry, he received a diploma from the law department of Petersburg University, an educational “achievement” considered by most Russians as fake. It was amusing that the minister’s official website did not offer any information about the “commercial period” in Serdiukov’s life, leaving readers to guess what he had been doing for fifteen years after graduating from college.
In 2000, Serdiukov moved from selling furniture to the Office of Tax Inspection; he was initially stationed in Petersburg and later in Moscow. In 2004, he became the head of Federal Tax Inspection, his last job before becoming minister of defense. One Russian author, who could not hide his acrimony about the new defense minister, compared his biography with that of the new secretary of defense in the United States. He derisively noted that when Serdiukov was attending a second-rank Soviet college, Robert Gates was preparing his doctoral dissertation on Russian history at Georgetown University. Then, while Serdiukov made progress in the furniture business, Gates became Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, then Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser and finally Director of Central Intelligence.
Putin’s choice of Serdiukov represents an unprecedented case for any normally functioning state, whatever its political regime. Indeed, the head of state in any contemporary society generally chooses military ministers who have a background in the professional military, a high level of political prestige, or a combination of both attributes. In democratic societies, the political factor plays a predominant role in the appointment of military ministers, particularly if the rules state that only civilians can be candidates. In non-democratic countries, there is a clear tendency to select well-known professionals as military ministers or people who combine their minimal professionalism with high political status. By selecting Serdiukov, Putin rejected both modes of choosing a military minister (democratic and authoritarian), since his appointee is neither a professional nor a politician.
Russian history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries confirms the crucial role of professionalism and political status as the basis for selecting the heads of the military establishment (of course, it is necessary to exclude the revolutionary period with its specific laws for selecting cadres). Indeed, none of the monarchs or Soviet leaders lifted from political nonexistence an individual without any military connections to the highest military post. Even Stalin, with all his dictatorial whims, did not provide us with an example that is even remotely similar to the Serdiukov case. Only Nikita Khrushchev, in 1963 (one year before being removed from the Kremlin), choose a candidate for a ministerial position (Ivan Volovchenko, the director of the state farm “Petrovsky” in the Lipetsk’s region) who jumped several rungs in the hierarchy to reach the government. But even in this case, the position of minister of agriculture had almost zero political significance. What is more, Khrushchev’s candidate, with his firsthand experience as a manager at a big farm, was likely more useful to the wretched Soviet agriculture than a minister chosen among Moscow apparatchiks. Still, Khrushchev’s cadre decision was among the examples of his arbitrariness (or “voluntarism” as it was labeled then) that would later be used to justify ousting him from the Kremlin.
Serdiukov served as a drafted soldier for only a year and a half (1984-1985) and left the army as a lieutenant. Serdiukov’s last job as the head of the tax inspection was so far from military issues that one journalist joked that Serdiukov might encounter problems in getting clearance to army secrets. What is more, several journalists sarcastically speculated that Serdiukov’s deputies, as well as the head of the GRU General V. Korabelnikov, would not share their sensitive information, because “who knows what his next post will be … perhaps, minister of agriculture.” Some authors predicted that the new appointment would drastically increase the role of Yurii Baluievsky, the head of the General Staff, while others foretold the emergence of tense relations between the seasoned General Baluievsky and Serdiukov. When Baluievsky learned of Sergei Ivanov’s resignation, he was confident that he would be the next defense minister. There were even rumors that Putin had already signed an edict for Baluievski’s appointment, but then had second thoughts.
Meanwhile, Soviet history does not know of a military minister without an army background or long-term ties to the army (Lev Trotsky’s service as People’s Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs in 1918-1924 was an exception in revolutionary times). Nikolai Bulganin, whom Stalin appointed as defense minister in 1947, had not been a professional military man, but during the war he was a member of military councils of various large military units (“the army” and “the front”) and in 1945 served as a member of the quarters of the Chief Commander. Dmitry Ustinov, who was also not in the professional military, became Brezhnev’s defense minister in 1976. However, Ustinov had, three decades before, been deeply involved in weapons production and was a prominent manager of the armament in 1941-1953. Besides, by the year of his appointment, he was an alternative member of the Politburo and a secretary in the Central Committee and was known to the whole country.
All the defense ministers appointed by Yeltsin (Pavel Grachev, Igor Rodionov and Igor Sergeev) had been leading military commanders. The appointment of Sergey Ivanov by Putin as defense minister in 2001 was accepted by the army with discontent (the generals gave him the nickname “philologer,” because he had graduated from the philological department at Leningrad University), though he was still somewhat palatable, because he had served the intelligence services for much of his professional life (his last rank was general lieutenant).
The mainstream Russian media, even with its interest in pleasing the Kremlin, could not find words to praise the president’s choice. /Izvestia,/ a pro-regime newspaper, sent its journalist to the village where the hero was born, but the reporters could only describe an ordinary teenager with modest grades in school who did not see any reason to study English and who was saved from joining a local band of hooligans by a club of young technicians that attracted his attention. Most of the journalists and analysts who generally praise Putin’s actions, such as the political scientist Sergey Markov, this time avoided the subject. Some members of the Kremlin’s pool of journalists, such as Viacheslav Nikonov, justified the choice of Serdiukov because of his “financial expertise” and his ability to control the military budget. Others focused on the high level of corruption in the army, which demands a person with knowledge and experience with corporations that try to avoid paying taxes.
Many politicians who are generally loyal to the regime also had a difficult time explaining Putin’s decision. Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federal Council and a close friend of Putin, said that “the president and commander-in-chief knows what he is doing.” Mironov also tried to suggest that the appointment of a civilian as minister of defense is exactly what Russian liberals had advocated in the aftermath of 1991. Playing the democratic card, Mironov insinuated that Serdiukov’s civilian status alone was more important for society than his professional background. Victor Ivanov, Putin’s aide, offered the same “democratic argument,” suggesting that “a civil minister can run the army at higher technological and efficacy levels than a professional officer.”
The first negative reactions to Serdiukov’s appointment came from the Communist camp, which hates Putin for appearing too mild toward the West and too inconsistent in his attempts to restore the empire and the country’s geopolitical status. The members of this camp see Putin’s decision as an intentional desire to weaken the Russian army. Sergei Kurginian, an imperial ideologue, said that Putin had ignored the importance of the new minister’s image. Whatever his objective qualities, contended Kurginian, Serdiukov was perceived as a “furniture dealer” and already became a hero of many jokes that have damaged the military might of the country more than an antimissile defense system in Eastern Europe. One of the participants in a debate on /Radio Moskvy, /who, like many Russians, doesn’t hide his animosity toward the United States, said that Putin made his choice at the request of the CIA.
Valery Rashkin, a leader of the Communist Party and a Duma deputy, called the appointment “a gift to the United States.” The Communists articulated their anger over the new minister in their speeches during a meeting on February 23, the Day of the Motherland’s Defender,/ /in Moscow, calling Serdiukov a “furniture hawker.”
However, the most aggressive critics were the Former Defense Minister Igor Rodionov and Stanislav Terekhov, the head of a veteran officers’ association. They characterized Serdiukov’s elevation as “a rude offense against the army.” General Leonid Ivashov, who is known for his rabid anti-Western position, also labeled the appointment a rude insult to the army.
In their sharp critiques of Putin’s decision, the veterans expressed not only their own feelings, but also those of their active colleagues who cannot reveal their attitudes toward the “furniture dealer.” Indeed, none of the generals working in the ministry of defense who were interviewed in the wake of the appointment reported their views, with the exception of one who called the decision “highly disagreeable.”
The critics from the nationalist and Communist camps were particularly irritated about the timing of the appointment, which occurred only seven days after Putin’s extremely aggressive speech in Germany in the face European leaders and American senators (the same aggressive tone was used in his speech on the Day of the Motherland’s Defender). Although they enjoyed the tenor of Putin’s anti-Western speeches, they were deeply upset by the appointment, because it was difficult to imagine that Serdiukov could transform the Russian army into a force that could claim the world’s respect. Retired General Evgenii Kopyshev, a leader of an organization for veterans, even suggested that the appointment of Serdiukov was a signal to “Europe and America not to take Putin’s speech in Munich seriously.”
The liberal camp’s critique of Putin’s decision was no less mordant. Its members saw the selection of Serdiukov as a sign of the regime’s debilitation and de-professionalization, which has been an ongoing trend in all spheres of life, from the FSB to health services. Alexei Kara-Murza, a known Russian liberal, at a meeting devoted to the 90^th Anniversary of the February Revolution compared, using strong sarcasm, Alexander Guchkov, a military and navy minister of the provisional government and a first-rank politician with experience in the Central Military Industrial Committee (1915-1917), with Serdiukov, the former furniture dealer. While some liberals were relatively serious in their critique of the new member of the government, others satisfied themselves with various anecdotes about the new head of the army, a clear sign of their strong disrespect for Serdiukov. For instance, at a reception for the famous radio station /Ekho Moskvy,/ Alexei Venidiktov, its director, pretended to be curious about how the new minister of defense would master his horse; according to a nearly century-old tradition, he would have to ride a horse during the military parades in Moscow on May 9, the Day of Victory. One guest melancholically reacted with the supposition that a wooden horse would be used for this occasion, while another proposed the use of Putin’s Labrador “Koni,” a sort of pun because the Russian term “koni” means “horses.”
It is remarkable that none of the participants of the discussion in the media about the new defense minister was interested in the opinions of ordinary Russians. No one cited the results of a VTSIOM survey in late February, which showed that only one-third of the Russians endorsed the Kremlin’s decision. In view of the public’s apathy toward the country’s political processes, their opinions on this and other developments were of no interest to the Kremlin or Moscow political analysts.
There is a consensus in the country that the appointment of the new defense minister is unique in Russian history. However, even the free minds still active in Russia cannot offer any plausible hypothesis to explicate this nonstandard appointment. How is it possible to explain the appointment in rational terms, given the fact that it pitted Putin against people from almost all walks of life and most notably officials from the army? Putin’s declaration that Serdiukov is a unique person who can supervise the army budget and fight corruption did not convince even Putin’s most naïve admirers.
Oleg Sultanov, a known Moscow journalist, plausibly claimed that Putin chose a person with such characteristics because he was afraid of the professional generals at this very sensitive time for his personal future. Serdiukov, with his background in furniture, could not present any danger to the president. Besides, his Petersburg’s origin and personal ties with Putin, along with his active role in the destruction of Khodorkovsky’s oil company “Yukos,” as the head of the Federal Tax Inspection agency, could only enhance the president’s trust in him. This theory was supported by another prominent journalist, Alexander Budberg, who wrote about “Putin’s deep mistrust in army generals,” as well as by a few other authors who underscored that “Serdiukov does not belong to any clan in the army.” Alexander Privalov, a thoughtful Russian analyst, represented those observers who, despite the skepticism of the majority of analysts, looked for an explanation in the intrigues surrounding 2008. He supposed that Serdiukov’s appointment was a sly move in the Kremlin’s complicated chess game aimed ultimately at guaranteeing the continuity of the regime in one or another forms.
Another interpretation of Putin’s decision is that he wanted to get rid of Sergei Ivanov as the minister of defense in order to diminish his chance of being nominated as his successor. Separating Ivanov from the army would take away one of his major political trump cards. However, other analysts, claiming to have access to the mysterious Kremlin, argued just the opposite, suggesting that the promotion of Ivanov to the position of first deputy prime minister was in fact evidence that Putin had chosen him as an heir.
If Putin’s intentions are murky, the signal sent to the external world is relatively clear. Putin has absolute control over Russian politics; an equivalent level of power was only seen in the case of Stalin in Soviet history. Only a leader with absolute political power can defy the traditional patterns of choosing the head of the armed forces (based on military professionalism or high political prestige). Only such a leader can disregard the mood of the officers and generals, the views of the political establishment, including the nationalists, and public opinion. With Putin’s sudden belief in the power of Russia’s oil and gas resources, his self-confidence has reached a level that is dangerous to Russia and the world.