Top Jobs In Russia Ever More Likely To Be Filled By Children Of Elite – OpEd
By Paul Goble
The Petersburg Politics Foundation says that ever more positions in the Russian political Olympus will be handed down from fathers to sons or daughters, thus reducing still further social mobility and the renewal of elites by means of the introduction of fresh forces from outside the current charmed circle.
The 3900-word study drawing those conclusions was posted on the foundation’s website today (fpp.spb.ru/fpp-aristocrats; discussed at politsovet.ru/59120-politologi-predskazali-nasledstvennuyu-peredachu-vlasti-v-rossii.html).
One can see, the report says, “that such an aristocratic scenario of modeling the transit of power will be ever more often copied in the coming years, all the more so because other scenarios of transition” including classic public political competition, and different variants of the use of ‘a cadres reserve’ still do not have the necessary history of success.”
The report argues that this pattern is likely to come to predominate at the regional level even before it does in Moscow, a somewhat unexpected conclusion given the Kremlin’s ability to shake things up by appointing outsiders at will.
But many will find the most useful part of the new report the listing of heirs likely to succeed to their parent’s position. Among them are Sergei Ivanov, junior, the son of the former head of the Presidential Administration; Vladimir Kiriyenko, the son of the current deputy head of the PA; Andrey Murov, son of the former federal security organization; Dmitry Patrushev, son of the Security Council secretary; Aleksey Rogozin, son of the new Roskosmos head; and Petr and Pavel Fradkov, sons of former prime minister Mikhail Fradov.
` “It is curious,” Politsovet observes, “that Katerina Tikhonova who is widely assumed to be the daughter of Vladimir Putin is not among the leading group. Her career success the experts label as ‘moderate.’”
