Inside the Putin court: A research note

If the soviet system of government centred on the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, the Russian system has been based on the powerful executive presidency that was established by the 1993 Constitution. Given his relative obscurity before his appointment as prime minister in 1999, the world was understandably anxious to know ‘Who is Mister Putin?’ By the end of his first term of office, the outlines of an answer had become reasonably clear. Central authority would be vigorously reasserted; the Chechen war would be prosecuted without compromise; the oligarchs would be ‘liquidated as a class’; and the mass media, particularly television, would be placed under the control of the state authorities. It was a ‘managed democracy’ that found little favour in Western capitals, but one that allowed Putin to win an overwhelming victory in the 2004 presidential election and to retain a level of popular support that could be described as ‘Turkmenia’. 1

The composition of the ruling group became clearer as the new president advanced his supporters and marginalised those who had less reason to be beholden to him, particularly the El'tsin ‘Family’. The Putin elite in the early years of the new century was about the same age as its El'tsin predecessor but less likely to hold a postgraduate degree, somewhat more provincial, even more overwhelmingly male, more likely to come from the business world, and more likely to come from St Petersburg. There had also been a change in the career background of the ruling group, and particularly in the proportion that were siloviki—that is, who had served or were currently serving in the armed forces, state security, law enforcement or one of the other ‘force ministries’. 2 By the start of 2005, on our data, the siloviki had fallen slightly as a proportion of the top leadership but were still close to a quarter (24.7%) of the total, and they were continuing to advance in the national government (up to 34.2%) and in both houses of the Russian parliament (up to 18.3% in each case).3

Formal position has always counted for relatively little in Soviet or Russian politics, and even career background is an imperfect predictor of attitudes 4 —although a ruling group with a substantial component of siloviki is certainly consistent with the broad direction of public policy since Putin's accession, with a greater emphasis on ‘patriotic’ education in the schools, attacks on foreign NGOs, a dominant position for the state in the control of natural resources, restrictions on the freedom of scholarly inquiry, and a generous increase in budgetary support for the armed forces themselves. Accordingly, we need an approach that goes inside the ‘black box’ of Russian policy

formation. What are the patterns of informal association? What are the patterns of interaction between other members of the ruling group and Putin himself, and between the presidential administration, the government and other institutional actors? And what, going further, are the ties between informal coalitions and policy positions? Why should it matter which clan is dominant, and which is in retreat?

A modest body of literature has already begun to address some of these questions, although it rests on limited empirical foundations. 5 In what follows we take these matters further by drawing on a substantial new body of evidence, in particular a series of interviews with elite members themselves. The elite is defined, for our purposes, in positional terms: members of the Security Council, senior officials within the presidential administration, members of the government and both houses of parliament, heads of regional executives, presidential envoys, federal inspectors and the business elite.6 In all, we conducted 150 interviews with members of the elite itself or those closely associated with them, including 20 with staff of the presidential administration, 22 with Duma deputies, 11 with members of the Federation Council, 53 with senior officers of the force ministries, 18 with staff from the government apparatus and nine with staff attached to individual ministries. In addition, we conducted 50 interviews with highly-placed informants, and used our own access to elite circles to refine our understanding of the attitudes and policy orientations that prevail at the highest levels.

Patterns of elite decision making

On the evidence available to us, the authority of the central executive is in practice devolved to a series of small and informal groups around the President himself. Putin prefers to work not with formal institutions but with ad hoc groups that are not defined by institutional boundaries. Various people are invited to his meetings in the Kremlin, but scheduled meetings of the entire membership of the government or of the Security Council are relatively infrequent. Even the State Council meets as an ‘inner circle’ of the governors that have been chosen by Putin to serve on its Presidium.

In these circumstances it is not easy to identify a strategic elite who take the most important decisions and formulate national policy. To identify a group of this kind we used the following methods:

•	we analysed the composition of all meetings in which the President participated directly;
•	of these, we identified the meetings that were conducted on a regular basis; and
•	on this basis, we identified an ‘inner circle’ of people who took part in practically all of Putin's meetings.

This analysis showed that the President works publicly with two teams of officials, who meet regularly in his Kremlin office to adopt strategic decisions. There is also a smaller group of friends, who meet with him at his dacha. The President conducts these two sequences of meetings on Mondays and Saturdays respectively; the Monday meetings are, in effect, ‘meetings of the President with members of the government’, the Saturday meetings are ‘meetings of the heads of the force structures’.

The Monday governmental meetings take place in one of Putin's Kremlin offices, with members of the presidential administration in attendance. These meetings are reported regularly in the press, and shown in part on national television news. The composition of these meetings is subject to some variation; most often, however, the Monday meetings include the following:

	Putin himself
	Mikhail Fradkov (prime minister)
	Alexander Zhukov (deputy premier)
	German Gref (minister of economic development and trade)
	Mikhail Zurabov (minister of social welfare and health)
	Sergei Naryshkin (head of the government apparatus)
	Igor’ Sechin (deputy head of the presidential administration)
	Dmitrii Medvedev (head of the presidential administration)
	Sergei Ivanov (defence minister)
	Sergei Lavrov (foreign minister)
	Rashid Nurgaliev (interior minister) and
	Andrei Illarionov (presidential adviser).

Other, more occasional participants include ministers Aleksei Gordeev (agriculture), Yurii Trutnev (natural resources) and Igor’ Levitin (transport), and Sergei Yastrzhembsky from the presidential administration. It is immediately apparent that there are many ministers who do not take part in these ‘meetings of the government’, and that at the same time there are other officials who do attend but who do not have ministerial rank (Illarionov, Sechin and Medvedev).

The business of these meetings is reported reasonably fully in the press. In February 2005, for instance, the pay of military servicemen was under discussion; Putin asked for the ‘resolution of the problem to be accelerated’; Sergei Ivanov and German Gref responded with positive assurances. 7 A meeting in April focused on preparations for the summit with the European Union that was to be held the following month, and considered the question of membership of the World Trade Organisations.8 In May there was another of these ‘traditional Monday meetings with members of the government’ at which Putin discussed the gas pipeline from Taishet to Nakhodka with Viktor Khristenko, minister of industry and energy, and discussed the pensions problem with Mikhail Zurabov, minister of social development and health.9 Prime minister Fradkov conducts a separate meeting, also on Mondays, at which the social and economic development of the Russian regions is considered.10 The seating pattern of the most regular participants at these Monday meetings of ‘members of the government’ is set out in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1. Monday Meetings: The Participants And Where They Sit.

On Saturdays Putin assembles a smaller and rather different group of people, usually no more than eight in number. As with the Monday group, the typical composition of these meetings does not coincide with bureaucratic boundaries. As well as the heads of the force ministries and the Secretary of the Security Council, these Saturday meetings are generally attended by prime minister Fradkov and presidential chief of staff Dmitrii Medvedev. Sometimes the media refer to these Saturday gatherings as ‘meetings of the Security Council’, but they are more accurately described as ‘meetings of the President with members of the Security Council’. Even when the Security Council meets in its formal capacity there are several members who are not normally in attendance.

The Saturday meetings are further evidence of the President's tendency to avoid formal meetings with people with whom he finds it difficult to work, or who do not have his entire confidence. Those who attend typically include:

	Putin
	Mikhail Fradkov (prime minister)
	Sergei Ivanov (defence minister)
	Sergei Lavrov (foreign minister)
	Dmitrii Medvedev (head of the presidential administration)
	Igor’ Ivanov (Secretary of the Security Council)
	Nikolai Patrushev (Federal Security Bureau)
	Rashid Nurgaliev (interior minister) and
	Sergei Lebedev (foreign intelligence).

In addition, Viktor Ivanov (a presidential aide), Igor’ Sechin (deputy head of the presidential administration) and Vladimir Ustinov (Procurator General) are normally present. The published record makes clear that ‘various questions of domestic and foreign policy’ are discussed at these meetings as well as defence and national security. 11 The seating pattern at these Saturday meetings is shown in Figure 2.

FIGURE 2. Saturday Meetings: The Participants and Where They Sit.

According to our informants there is also a third group, which might be called the ‘tea-drinking group’. This consists of Putin's personal friends, who meet informally at his official residence. Nothing is known of the frequency of such meetings, and every precaution is taken to ensure that even the names of those who are admitted into this inner circle are not made public. This ‘tea-drinking group’ is overwhelmingly composed of leading officials who—like Putin himself—were born in Leningrad and graduated from its university. They include Sergei Ivanov, Igor’ Sechin, Dmitrii Medvedev (a former member of the university's teaching staff), federal narcotics board head Viktor Cherkesov, presidential envoy Dmitrii Kozak (a Leningrad University graduate though not a native of the city), presidential aide Vladimir Kozhin (born in the Chelyabinsk region but a graduate of Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute), German Gref (born in Kazakhstan and an Omsk University graduate but a postgraduate law student at St Petersburg, where his father had been a professor), and Georgii Poltavchenko (presidential envoy in the central federal district, born in Baku but a graduate of Leningrad Institute of Aviation Equipment).

All three groups coincide to some extent. Fradkov, Medvedev, Sergei Ivanov, Lavrov and Nurgaliev, for instance, are members not only of the Monday but also of the Saturday group. Only two of them, however, are central to each of the three groups: Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov. These two (and after them prime minister Fradkov) should accordingly be regarded as Putin's closest associates, with whom he discusses all the key issues of domestic as well as foreign politics.

Kremlin clans

These patterns of interaction are underpinned by less formal patterns of informal association, or ‘clans’. 12 On the evidence of our informants, there are now essentially two of these clans, which can be labelled ‘siloviki’ and ‘liberals’ respectively (see Table 1). The siloviki are those in uniform, whether in the army, police or security. The liberals, by contrast, are committed to Western values, including the principles of a market economy, and support what they regard as a democratic path of development. This simple binary division is modified by a variety of cross-cutting allegiances, and by a constant process of horizontal and vertical mobility in which individuals constantly move between positions, and sometimes into or out of the ruling stratum as a whole. Not only this, but their political orientations are not as different as might at first sight appear, with very little opposition in either case to a ‘strong’ or even authoritarian state. This is an understandable position for siloviki to take; liberals support it for rather different reasons, arguing that the population is unready for democratic reforms and that the government has no alternative but to introduce them from above, by executive authority. Putin appears to have deliberately retained both of these groups in his immediate environment in order to avoid becoming dependent on either of them.

Table 1‘Siloviki’ and ‘Liberals’ in Government Structures, 2005

	Siloviki	Liberals
Presidential administration	Sechin, Viktor Ivanov	Medvedev, Surkov, Illarionov
Government	Fradkov, Sergei Ivanov, Lavrov,  Patrushev, Nurgaliev, Lebedev,  Cherkesov, Shoigu	Gref, Kudrin, Zubarov,  Trutnev, Gordeev, Reiman,  Naryshkin
Presidential envoys	Poltavchenko, Latyshev, Kvashnin,  Pulikovsky, Klebanov	Kozak, Kirienko
Other institutions	Ustinov, Stepashin, Primakov
Party leaders	Gudkov (People's Party)	Gryzlov (United Russia),  Rogozin (Rodina)

The siloviki

Over the years of the Putin presidency, the siloviki have become not only more numerous but also more differentiated. There are siloviki in security itself, siloviki who have moved into politics (such as those who head the federal districts), and siloviki who have moved into business (for instance, within Gazprom). Siloviki who were directly engaged in security in 2005 included the heads of the main force and law enforcement agencies: Nikolai Patrushev (head of the Federal Security Bureau), Sergei Ivanov (defence), Rashid Nurgaliev (interior), Sergei Lebedev (foreign intelligence), Vladimir Ustinov (the procuracy), Sergei Shoigu (emergencies), Yurii Chaika (justice) and the Secretary of the Security Council itself (Igor’ Ivanov). These siloviki provide the core of the Security Council and their institutions are as a rule directly subordinated to the President himself.

The siloviki may also be divided into those who are concerned with questions of domestic politics and those who are concerned with Russia's international security. The first group is concentrated around Igor’ Sechin, and is currently the most numerous and influential in Russian politics. Its unquestioned leader is Sechin himself, deputy head of the presidential administration and a languages graduate who worked for military intelligence in Angola and Mozambique before establishing an association with Putin through his service in the foreign economic relations department of Leningrad city. Sechin, according to our informants, has direct access to the President and enjoys his absolute confidence. Apart from Sechin the most important members of this group are presidential aide Viktor Ivanov (who also has direct access to the President and is particularly influential in personnel matters), Procurator General Vladimir Ustinov, banker Sergei Pugachev, and the head of Rosneft’ Sergei Bogdanchikov. Ustinov is related to Sechin (their children are married, and there are grandchildren), Pugachev is one of Putin's personal friends, and Bogdanchikov is friendly with Sechin as well as Viktor Ivanov.

Defence minister Sergei Ivanov may be considered the leader of the other group, which is focused on international security. This group includes SVR director Sergei Lebedev, foreign minister Lavrov, the president's foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhod'ko, and the head of the General Staff Yurii Baluevsky. Prime minister Fradkov, whose background is in foreign trade and who is regarded by our informants as a Sergei Ivanov protege, may also be assigned to this group; his function is to promote the policies of the siloviki within government. The ‘foreign relations siloviki’ are less unified than their internal counterparts, and are less closely associated at a personal level; they are distinguished more by their allegiance to the President himself than to Sergei Ivanov. The defence minister is generally identified as Putin's closest confidant and most likely successor, though he has himself disclaimed such a role. 13

The ‘liberals’

The other Kremlin clan can be described as ‘liberal’ in only the most qualified of terms, as it includes people with very authoritarian views about Russia and its future. The leader of this group is Dmitrii Medvedev, head of the presidential administration since October 2003, together with his deputy Vladislav Surkov, presidential envoy Dmitrii Kozak, Gazprom head Aleksei Miller, ministers Gref, Kudrin, Reiman, Gordeev and Trutnev, presidential aide Igor’ Shuvalov, presidential counsellor Andrei Illarionov, Vladimir Kogan of the St Petersburg Banking House, and others. Medvedev, like FSB director Patrushev, is believed to have a difficult relationship with Sechin, and on some accounts he did not support the seizure of Yukos assets in late 2003; on the other hand his published statements have left little doubt that he shares the silovik diagnosis that Russia could ‘disappear as a state’ unless the elite preserves its unity, and that state ownership and management have ‘far from exhausted their potential’. 14 The position of the Medvedev group has been strengthened by the recent appointment of his classmate from Leningrad University, Anton Ivanov, as the new chairman of the Higher Arbitration Court.15

Clans and policy

Siloviki and liberals have few differences about the concentration of power: they are both agreed that Russia needs a ‘single vertical’ of executive authority. They are much more divided in their views about the economy. The ‘liberals’ do not object to the partial renationalisation of natural resources, but believe any changes of this kind should be carried out in accordance with the law and over a relatively extended period. In their view, Russian business will not revive until it has a greater degree of entrepreneurial freedom; they are annoyed by the peremptory actions of the siloviki, which have damaged investor confidence, and believe they cannot be entrusted with management of the economy as a whole. The siloviki, on the other hand, are convinced that privatisation has inflicted great damage on Russian national interests and take the view that ‘strategic’ enterprises, especially in the energy sector, should be returned to state control.

It had become conventional during the El'tsin years for officials of ministerial rank to occupy positions on the boards of state-owned companies. Rather different practices have come to prevail under Putin: it is no longer ministers but Kremlin siloviki and senior officials from the presidential administration who have been entering the boardrooms. The head of the presidential staff, Dmitrii Medvedev, himself chairs the board of Gazprom, a company with an annual turnover of $30 billion, and Igor’ Sechin heads the board of the state oil company Rosneft’, with an annual turnover of $4 billion. Viktor Ivanov heads the boards of Almaz-Antei, the country's largest producer of anti-aircraft defence equipment, and of Aeroflot. Sechin's counterpart in the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, chairs the board of another oil company, Transnefteprodukt, and the President's foreign policy adviser, Sergei Prikhod'ko, chairs the board of an armaments firm. The president's press secretary Aleksei Gromov is a member of the board of the country's most important television company, First Channel, and presidential aide Igor’ Shuvalov has joined the board of Russian Railways.

At the same time, ministers of a more liberal orientation have been losing their places in company boardrooms: Kudrin left Unified Energy Systems and Gref resigned his positions in Rosneft’, Sheremet'evo, Svyaz'invest and Aeroflot, although vice-premier Aleksandr Zhukov has remained chairman of the board of Russian Railways and industry and energy minister Khristenko chairs the board of oil company Transneft’. 16 A few oligarchs of the El'tsin period have however maintained their position by establishing good relations with the siloviki: these include the heads of such companies as Surgutneftegaz (Vladimir Bogdanov), Severstal’ (Aleksei Mordashev), Lukoil (Vagit Alekperov) and Interros (Vladimir Potanin). Our interview with an FSB officer suggested that the siloviki had at least one guiding principle in their dealings with individual oligarchs: whether or not they were ‘nationally oriented’. ‘Good oligarchs’ were people like Mordashev or Bogdanov (‘they're Russians’), but not the others: ‘all Jews are traitors, oriented towards the West. That's how it's always been’.

Divisions between siloviki and liberals have underlain at least two of the central issues in recent economic policy: the ownership of oil, and the attempt to double GDP and ‘catch up with Portugal’. In early 2004 Dmitrii Medvedev began to use his position in Gazprom in an attempt to absorb Rosneft’, but Rosneft’ had given financial support to Sechin and Viktor Ivanov, who preferred to keep it outside the control of a rival faction, and the head of Rosneft’, Sergei Bogdanchikov, suggested a different form of association that would have preserved its commercial independence. 17 In March 2005 a new agreement was reached that Rosneft’ would indeed be sold to Gazprom, but then in May the deal collapsed, an outcome that was clearly advantageous to the siloviki.18 Tensions were even more apparent during the sale of the Yukos subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz to Rosneft’ at the end of 2004, ostensibly to help to pay off the tax debts of its parent company. Illarionov described the sale, for what was clearly much less than the company was worth, as the ‘scam of the year’; Gref attacked state management of the oil industry in general, and called for Gazprom itself to be reformed.19 But the sale proceeded, and in February 2005 the ministry of natural resources took matters further by prohibiting foreign and foreign-owned companies from taking part in the sale of ‘strategic’ oil and metal resources.20

Tensions about the rate of economic growth had begun to develop almost as soon as Fradkov had been appointed to the premiership in March 2004. GDP rose officially by 7% in the first nine months of the year; but liberals were dissatisfied, as inflation was likely to exceed 11.5% instead of the 10% that had been promised, and the rate of growth was clearly declining. Liberals accused the siloviki of incompetence, and of policies that would make it impossible to achieve their longer-term objectives (capital flight, for instance, was four times as great in 2004 as it had been a year before, which was an understandable reaction to the seizure of Yukos assets 21). The siloviki, for their part, accused the liberals of undue pessimism, and suggested other ways of resolving the problem that made greater use of the state itself. As one of our interviewees noted, this was another conflict with important political implications, because if the siloviki were able to achieve their objectives, extending state control and their own role in its management, they would have no alternative but to seek an extension of Putin's presidential term in order to protect themselves against the possibility that a future head of state might choose to make other arrangements.

A range of other divisions separate liberals and siloviki on matters of domestic politics. The silovik ideology is as follows. The state is the basis of society; therefore, the state should be strong. A strong state controls everything. The supports of the state are the siloviki and law enforcement agencies in general. Accordingly, they occupy a certain position in society. They need a special status—material and legal. Security agents who risk their lives in the service of the state, for instance, should be beyond the reach of courts of law. A strong state should also control the economy, at least its natural resources, which cannot be allowed to remain in private hands. Pluralism of opinions is dangerous as it undermines the state from within. There is still an external enemy—the West—and this means that a strong army is needed, and a powerful armaments industry. The state, accordingly, should spend heavily on defence, and on research into new weapon technologies. Society should be passive and obedient, and not impede the strengthening of the state; and the aim of Russia itself should be to be feared, as only those who are feared are respected.

The ‘national project’ that is implicit in this diagnosis has been summarised as follows: patriotism; anti-Westernism; imperialism; Orthodox clericalism; militarism; authoritarianism; cultural uniformity; xenophobia; economic dirigisme; and demographic pessimism. 22 The central element is the revival of the Russian state, understood in the traditional sense: as a patrimonial, monocentric form of authority, in which every citizen is a subject of the supreme ruler. The revival of the state is understood as the elimination of anything that weakens its power, above all the separation of powers, an effective parliament, independent media and an organised opposition. Moreover, it is a project that has domestic and foreign opponents. Its external enemies are all who do not wish or even fear a strong Russia, the USA in particular. Internal enemies, by extension, are those who support the West and share its values.

The newspaper Komsomol'skaya pravda has become the agency through which the siloviki have found it most convenient to set out their views. The first to raise these kinds of issues was the deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, in an interview that appeared in September 2004. There was a ‘good’ West and a ‘bad’ West, Surkov suggested. The first wanted a stronger Russia as a ‘good neighbour and reliable ally’; the second wanted to ‘destroy Russia and fill its enormous geographical space with numerous unviable quasi-state entities’, making use of a ‘fifth column’ of domestic oppositionists. 23 The same assumptions were apparent in the contribution of a businessman close to the Kremlin, Mikhail Yur'ev (a former Yabloko member and vice-speaker of the Duma). He identified Russia's enemies very precisely:

Anyone who calls for negotiations … with Maskhadov, … or whoever says that it was not necessary to storm Dubrovka or Beslan—is an enemy. Anyone who suggests repeating Khasavyurt is an enemy. Anyone who proposes practically liquidating the army because the mighty West supports peace on the planet is an enemy. Anyone who suggests that our economy and political system should be organised in the way and only in the way that Western countries and all kinds of IMFs tell us is an enemy. Anyone who pines for Gusinsky's NTV and shouts about a dictatorship because there is not a single channel on which you can see Russia being attacked and insulted is an enemy. Anyone who says it is unnecessary to imprison the billionaires who have seized power because it is bad for the investment climate is an enemy. 24

Putin invited Yur'ev to the Kremlin to continue the discussion; as he later told the radio station Ekho Moskvy, they talked for three and a half hours.

Finally, on the eve of New Year one of those closest to Putin, Viktor Cherkesov, published his own view of the country's current problems, and in the same widely distributed newspaper. Cherkesov wrote of certain forces that were interested in the disintegration of Russia:

The problematic nature of our present existence, our truncated state as compared with previous centuries, doesn't suit someone but incenses them. The real target is not a particular political regime but the country itself. And we have to take account of that. We have to look straight at a dreadful truth—the possibility of another state collapse, the second since the disintegration of the USSR. Perhaps the last. One after which our historical existence will be exhausted, and we will fall into the group of stateless peoples and ‘dead’ civilisations. 25

As statements of this kind make clear, the tensions between rival Kremlin clans is likely to have a very direct bearing on the domestic and international policies that will be followed by the Kremlin during and indeed beyond the Putin leadership.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge with thanks the support of the UK Economic and Social Research Council under grant RES-000-22-0127.

Notes

1 Nezavisimaya gazeta, 28 December 2001, p. 2.

2 Ol'ga Kryshtanovskaya & Stephen White, ‘Putin's Militocracy’, Post-Soviet Affairs, 19, 4, October – December 2004, pp. 289 – 306, at pp. 293, 294. The term itself began to be widely used in the mid-1990s: Gusan Guseinov, D. S. P.: Materialy k Russkomu Slovaryu obshchestvenno-politicheskogo yazyka kontsa XX veka (Moscow, Tri kvadrata, 2003), p. 502.

3 Authors' data. Siloviki also accounted for 44% of the national leadership (defined as the members of the Security Council), and 9% of the regional elite.

4 Searing, for instance, found that the importance of social background for elite attitudes varied considerably from one political system to another, and that recently held career positions were generally a better predictor (Donald D. Searing, ‘The Comparative Study of Elite Socialization’, Comparative Political Studies, l, 4, January 1969, pp. 471 – 500).

5 See in particular the series of studies issued under the auspices of the Centre for Political Information in Moscow, most recently A. A. Mukhin, Nevskii—Lubyanka—Kreml’. Proekt-2008 (Moscow, TsPI, 2005); A. A. Mukhin, Samurai prezidenta. Proekt-2008 (Moscow, TsPI, 2005); A. A. Mukhin, Praviteli Rossii: Staraya ploshehad’ i Belyi dom (Moscow, Algoritm, 2005); and A. A. Mukhin, Putin: blizhnii krug prezidenta (Moscow, Algoritm, 2005). Although rich in biographical detail, these studies cite unspecified ‘information’ or even ‘rumour’ in their references to informal associations among elite members.

6 We included 24 members of the Security Council, 36 top officials of the Presidential Administration (the head of the apparatus and his deputies, heads of department and their deputies, presidential advisers and counsellors, and the heads of the main departments), 72 members of the Russian government, 178 members of the Federation Council, 450 Duma deputies, 88 heads of regions and republics (taking account of the formation of a merged Perm’ territory from January 2005), 120 members of the business elite, seven presidential envoys and 82 main federal inspectors. This produces a composite elite of 1,057 as of January 2005.

7 Kommersant, 8 February 2005, p. 2.

8 Kommersant, 19 April 2005, p. 2.

9 Kommersant, 31 May 2005, p. 2.

10 Ibid.

11 See for instance Kommersant, 23 May 2005, p. 2, and 30 May 2005, p. 2.

12 A term that was popularized by the US diplomat Thomas Graham in an outspoken contribution to Nezavisimaya gazeta, 23 November 1995, p. 5.

13 See for instance Izvestiya, 14 January 2005, p. 2.

14 Mukhin, Praviteli, p. 23. Our own informants suggest he did not directly oppose the actions that were taken against Yukos, or its chief executive. Medvedev's own views are taken from his interview in Ekspert, 4 April 2005, pp. 72, 75.

15 Izvestiya, 27 January 2005, p. 1.

16 A full listing appears in Mukhin, Nevskii—Lubyanka—Kreml’, pp. 16 – 18.

17 Kommersant, 1 October 2004, p. 16.

18 Izvestiya, 3 March 2005, p. 1, and 18 May 2005, p. 1.

19 Kommersant, 29 December 2004, p. 1, and 11 January 2005, p. 6 (Gref).

20 Kommersant, 11 February 2005, p. 1.

21 Izvestiya, 17 January 2005, p. 1.

22 T. Polyannikov, ‘Logika avtoritarizma’, Svobodnaya mvsl’, 2005, 1, pp. 59 – 60.

23 Komsomol'skaya pravda, 29 September 2004, p. 4.

24 Komsomol'skaya pravda, 6 November 2004, p. 11.

25 Komsomol'skaya pravda, 29 December 2004, p. 11.