It took a fair time since the defeat of the administrative top of Komi. However, the question is left hanging in the air. And it sounds simple: why?
Indeed, the regional authorities received a completely illegible signal: you can be absolutely loyal, can give excellent results in the election, be a great specialist, have a stable social and economic situation in the region, but your neck will be instantly twisted, as well as the neck of all your friends and associates.
There are certainly cheers like what if this really is the fight against corruption? However, one does not know much about the system of state power in Russia today, if he asks such a question: today no governer cannot but steal in the broadest sense — from direct bribes and siphoning off to complex circuits and putting under control everything that moves in the economic sense of the verb. It is necessary to maintain and encourage a team, to give unrealistic results of the elections, which calls for total control over large enterprises and much more.
Governor of the Vologda region Oleg Kuvshinnikov gently expressed general bewilderment:
"People's attitude to the authority will be changed after such scandal as the arrest of Gayzer. For me it was a complete surprise, or even a shock. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich is the highest professional who understands all the economic processes taking place in the country. A person who has always defended his point of view; he is very calm, balanced, erudite. He was hugely influential among the governors, at least of the Northwestern Federal District. According to various rating agencies, Gayzer was one of the most highly effective governors. I do not want to comment until the end of the investigation process. But this is definitely a huge blow to the political elite of the country. I am sure that people's attitude to the authority will be changed after such scandals. Hands do not fall, but it becomes psychologically difficult to work. This strike will have to be hidden by even more professional attitude of governors to their work."
I will speak less diplomatically: retirement, escape followed by the foreign press conferences, suicide, illness, "family circumstances" — that is my prediction with respect to the future of many regional leaders. (By the way, one of the consequences can be a ban on foreign travel, which in turn will exacerbate the panic).
So, what was wrong with Gayzer, and what should his colleagues with a good instinct for self-preservation avoid?
I would venture to make one suggestion, perhaps it will ease someone's life.
Gayzer's team was a carrier of the practice of "managed democracy" (which is usually correlated with the name of Vladislav Surkov), rejected, and convicted by the unknown court in some governmental depths.
Total control, not force, but manipulative; cunning tactical layouts; soft, ingratiating style; ideological decoy — everything that characterized the activities of the "power broker of the Kremlin" was well internalized by Syktyvkar students.
But why was it such a horrible crime?
I suppose that this created an unfavorable background for other regions and the Kremlin which has passed to brutal force practices long time ago. Worse, it cast a shadow over the whole trend of "third coming" with its aggressive rhetoric, militarism and uncompromising. Something like trying to keep the NEP in a particular region, when there are already raging fires of collectivization and the first five-year plan throughout the whole country.
You need to be a good student at the right time and place.
