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Moscow Times
August 9, 2004
Interior Ministry Reform Is Just Starting
By Nikolai Petrov
Nikolai Petrov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

Administrative reform has reached the siloviki. Following reform of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the Defense Ministry, it's the Interior Ministry's turn. The ministry hasn't exactly been left to its own devices all this time, however. The last three years have seen two new ministers and several large-scale shakeups among the federal and regional brass. The crackdown on so-called werewolves in epaulets -- officers involved in criminal activity such as extortion -- has been under way for more than a year. So what are we to make of the decrees that President Vladimir Putin issued in July?

Russian history can be interpreted as a succession of leaders or as the ongoing battle between ideologies and social classes. It could also be seen as a corporate battle. The siloviki squeezed out the existing bureaucratic elite, then went after one another. Only the most detached observer could have seen the siloviki as a united front, and only during their collective battle with the "suits." Intense rivalries between the KGB (FSB) and the Interior Ministry, between the KGB and the armed services, and between the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General's Office go back to the dawn of the Soviet era.

The stated goal of this latest shakeup is optimization of the Interior Ministry's central staff, which will be cut by 20 percent. The cuts will affect mostly support staff and the offices of deputy ministers, whose numbers will be reduced from 11 to three. The central staff will be trimmed to 2,970. Then again, an earlier decree, issued more than three years ago, set a staff limit of 3,000, and a further 200 jobs were cut last year. Some experts believe that the ax will fall not within the Interior Ministry itself, but in its federal district offices, which employ some 1,000 people.

Putin's decree strengthens the Federal Migration Service, part of the Interior Ministry since 2001. Five deputies will assist the head of the migration service, Andrei Chernenko. The central staff will be trimmed by nearly a third, to 400, but those remaining will receive a 50 percent pay raise. The migration service retains 18,000 employees in its regional offices.

Contrary to speculation, the central command of the Interior Ministry troops and the investigation committee were unaffected by the structural and staffing changes. What's more, no replacement has been named for General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, former head of the Interior Ministry troops, who was fired last month in connection with attacks on security forces in Ingushetia in June that left 90 people dead.

Under a reform strategy that has been discussed for several years now, the Interior Ministry troops would be converted into a national guard, while the investigation committee would become the basis of a new federal investigation service. Basic police functions would be handed over to municipal police forces, and federal jurisdiction would cover only the most serious crimes.

What's most interesting is therefore not the latest downsizing in the Interior Ministry, but the fact that fundamental reform has been postponed once again. Since 2001, the ministry has undergone a series of internal transformations. A chekist was attached to the ministry like a commissar and grew into a full-fledged leader. Widespread reshuffling and purges have been conducted at all levels by FSB alumni under the banner of the war on corruption. And local authorities' formal and informal control over the ministry's activities has been removed.

Putin's latest decree essentially completed preparations for the dismantling of a mighty institution. Feuds between the various siloviki corporations occurred in the past as well, but the party and administrative elite remained above the fray to some extent. Whether or not Putin can pull it off this time around is an open question.