Wedding

What Egor Putilov plays on. Press about us. This is the diagram of the eco-model implemented in the Stockholm quarter of Hammarby Hestad. Its goal is to include literally every resident of the area in the eco-cycle in order to halve water and energy consumption. This

The article is devoted to a brief biography of Sergei Yulievich Witte, one of the most significant political figures of Tsarist Russia.

Witte's biography: climbing the career ladder

S. Yu. Witte was born in 1849. He received a good education at home, on the basis of which he entered Novorossiysk University. Having successfully completed his studies, the young talented man abandoned the scientific field and decided to enter the public service, getting a job in the Odessa office.
Government work did not attract Witte and he began working in institutions involved in railways. Thanks to his diligence and great knowledge, he quickly climbed the career ladder. Witte achieved the position of manager of one of the railway communities, increasing his income several times, helped by the knowledge acquired during his studies.

In 1889, Witte headed the work of the railway department and immediately showed his best side. Witte was a skilled administrator and in a short time was able to assemble a professional team of specialists, achieving enormous efficiency in the department.

In 1892 he became Minister of Railways. Witte considered it a priority to complete the creation of the Trans-Siberian Railway as soon as possible. The minister correctly predicted the enormous importance of this transport artery in the development of Russia, especially its Far Eastern region.

Witte was the initiator of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which became a sharp stumbling block in international politics and one of the reasons for the Russian-Japanese War.

Biography of Witte: at the peak of his career
After some time, he was appointed Minister of Finance. In this position, Witte was able to demonstrate his abilities to the greatest extent. The Russian economy experienced a huge shortage of funds. Witte managed to obtain significant foreign loans, which he used to develop domestic industry. Realizing that this was not enough, the minister implemented a major reform of the financial system. The rapid development of industry was accompanied by an increase in taxes, which began to generate serious income. In order to further growth, Witte introduced a new customs tariff. It has become more profitable to buy domestically produced goods.

The patronizing policy towards Russian industry has led to Western companies becoming more willing to invest money in its development.
A huge item in Russian trade was the sale of vodka. Witte introduced a state monopoly on the trade in alcohol, which accounted for a significant part of the budget. Monetary reform strengthened the position of the Russian ruble, which became the hardest currency in Europe.

At the end of the 19th century. Witte draws the emperor's attention to the situation of the peasantry. He argues that the normal development of agriculture is greatly hampered by the presence of a traditional community. The minister's proposals were subsequently used by Stolypin when carrying out agricultural reform.
At the beginning of the 20th century. Witte is appointed chairman of the Committee of Ministers.

Biography of Witte: recent achievements and decline of his career

Witte's important achievement was the signing of a peace treaty with Japan. As a result of the shameful war, Russia's position in the Far East was significantly undermined. Japan could dictate its terms to a defeated enemy. The task of the Russian delegation was to weaken Japanese demands as much as possible in Russian interests. As a result, the terms of the agreement were greatly relaxed, which was the direct merit of Witte. The concessions included the payment of indemnity to Japan and the transfer of the southern part of Sakhalin; Korea was recognized as a sphere of Japanese interests. Taking into account the heavy defeat and the beginning of revolutionary events in Russia, these were acceptable and fairly moderate conditions. Public opinion, however, did not recognize Witte’s efforts, and he was given the nickname Count of Polus-Sakhalinsky.

Soon, due to political contradictions, Witte retired and devoted the rest of his life to working on his memoirs. Subsequently, they were published first abroad, and then in the USSR.
Count Witte died in 1915. His activities and significance were assessed differently by conservative and liberal public circles. There is no doubt that he was a figure of great importance who had a great influence on the development of Russia in various fields.

Witte Sergey Yulievich

Biography of Sergei Yulievich Witte - early years.
Sergei Yulievich was born in Tiflis on June 17, 1849. Father Julius Fedorovich belonged to the Pskov-Livonian knighthood and was the owner of an estate in Prussia. Mother Ekaterina Andreevna was the daughter of the Saratov governor. Sergei studied in Chisinau at a Russian gymnasium. In 1870 he graduated from Novorossiysk University and became a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. The Witte family was sorely short of money, so they had to give up their scientific career and start working on the Odessa railway. He started as an ordinary cashier at a ticket office, then, over time, began to rise higher and higher, and rose to the rank of manager of the southwestern railways. In this regard, he was given a luxurious mansion in a prestigious area of Kyiv. But, after some time, Sergei Yulievich Witte realizes that he is too cramped in this field.
At this time, his book “National Economy and Friedrich List” was published. A few months after the publication of the book, he becomes a statesman, he is elevated to the rank of state councilor at the department of railway affairs. They greeted him there with caution, but less than a year later he became Minister of Railways, and after another year, manager of the Ministry of Finance. It was he who was one of the first to spot the talented scientist D.I. Mendeleev and offered him a job in his department. After some time, Sergei Yulievich introduces the gold standard, which is the free exchange of the ruble for gold. And this despite the fact that almost all of Russia was against this reform. Thanks to this decision, the ruble becomes one of the most stable currencies in the world. Also, Witte introduces a monopoly on the trade in alcoholic beverages. From now on, vodka could only be sold in state-owned wine shops. The wine monopoly brought in a million rubles a day, the country’s budget began to be built on getting the population drunk. At this time, Russia's external debt increases significantly, as the government constantly takes out foreign loans.
Witte's first priority was always railway construction. When he just started his activities, there were only 29,157 miles of railways, and when he retired, this figure was already 54,217 miles. And if at the beginning of its activity 70% of the railways belonged to private joint-stock companies, then by the end of its activity everything had changed, and 70% of the roads were already the property of the treasury.
Biography of Sergei Yulievich Witte - mature years.
At the beginning of the 20th century, an economic crisis occurs, S. Yu. Witte is appointed responsible for the global economic downturn. And here the minister’s biography becomes bleak; he is accused of all sorts of mistakes: concluding unprofitable loans, paying too much attention to trade, selling out Russia. Witte had a difficult relationship with Nicholas II due to the fact that the Tsar was a very young heir. From all sides they whispered to the tsar that Sergei Yulievich was ignoring the autocrat. And as a result of this, on August 16, 1903, Nicholas II deprived Witte of the post of Minister of Finance. But the former minister never ceases to dream of returning to power, and after Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Witte was appointed plenipotentiary in negotiations with the Japanese. The negotiations are successful, and soon the war ends with the signing of peace, thanks to which Witte is given the title of count.
Returning to his homeland, the count develops new reforms, and on October 17, Nicholas II, after much deliberation, signs the manifesto. This document stated that from now on the population receives political freedoms and the opportunity to elect an autocratic government. This document had a huge impact on state policy, but nothing could be undone, and Russia was entering a new stage of political development. On October 17, 1905, Witte was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers. He had two main tasks: to suppress the revolution and carry out the necessary reforms. The most serious reform was the agrarian project, which provided for the possibility of peasants purchasing privately owned lands. But the landowners turned against Witt for this project, and he had to abandon the project and fire its author.
On April 23, 1906, a new version of the Basic State Laws was introduced. The opposition was outraged that the government had stolen power from the people. Indeed, autocratic power was preserved and the privileges of the ruling elite were protected. The state, as before, prevailed over society as a whole and over each individual individually. After the publication of these laws, Witte resigned along with his cabinet. It was the end of the count's six-month premiership, which had failed to reconcile political extremes. This is where Witte’s career ends, but his biography shows that for a long time he did not want to realize this and tried to return to power.
Witte died on February 25, 1915 at his home on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt. All his papers and office were immediately sealed. The police wanted to find his memoirs, which would say how Witte managed to keep the entire ruling elite in constant tension. But before his death, the count took all precautions: he kept all his manuscripts in the safe of a foreign bank. For the first time, Witte's memoirs will be published only after the revolution of 1921-1923. They are considered the most popular historical source, reprinted more than once. The most interesting thing is that Witte’s memoirs, published in three volumes, do not give a normal idea of either him or the government officials with whom the count had to work.
Many books have been written about this famous man, both by Russian and foreign authors. But even after one hundred and fifty years, the characterization of the state activities of Sergei Yulievich Witte is controversial. The biography of the famous count suggests that he was a unique person who did immeasurably much for our country.

Look all portraits

WITTE, SERGEY YULIEVICH(1849–1915) - an outstanding Russian statesman and reformer.

Born on June 17 (29), 1849 in Tiflis in the family of the director of the department of state property in the Caucasus. Witte's paternal ancestors, Germans, moved to the Baltic states from Holland in the 17th century. Through his mother - the daughter of a member of the main administration of the governor in the Caucasus - Witte's pedigree was traced back to the descendants of the Dolgoruky princes. S.Yu. Witte’s cousin on this line was H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of theosophical teaching. The boy grew up in the family of his maternal grandfather and received the usual monarchical upbringing for noble families.

In the 1860s he was a student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Novorossiysk University in Odessa. He studied at the expense of the Caucasian governorship, since after the death of his father the family was in need, he was fond of the theory of infinitesimal quantities in mathematics, but due to the lack of funds to continue his studies, after university he was enrolled in the department of the railway traffic service in the office of the Governor General of Odessa. There he worked as a ticket cashier, controller, traffic inspector, freight service clerk, assistant driver, assistant and station manager, and thoroughly knew the commercial side of the railway business.

In the early 1870s, under the patronage of the Minister of Railways, Count Bobrinsky, S.Yu. Witte was appointed head of the Odessa Railway traffic office. During the Russian-Turkish War of 1877–1878, he distinguished himself by organizing the transportation of troops to the theater of military operations, for which he received the position of head of the operational department of the South-Western Railways. In Petersburg. Here he proved himself to be an excellent analyst in the commission of Count E.T. Baranov to study the railway business in Russia, amazing everyone with his excellent memory. Book published by S.Yu. Witte in 1883 Railway principles tariffs for cargo transportation brought him fame in the circles of the Russian bourgeoisie.

According to his political views, S.Yu. Witte then sympathized with late Slavophilism, wrote for I.S. Aksakov’s newspaper “Rus”, and collaborated with the Odessa Slavic Benevolent Society. But - according to his admission - in those young years he preferred the “society of actresses” to politics.

After the events of March 1, 1881, he put forward the idea of creating a secret organization to protect the sovereign and fight terrorists using their own methods. The idea was embodied by the monarchists who created the “Holy Squad” in St. Petersburg, and S.Yu. Witte himself received the task of organizing an assassination attempt on one of the populists in Paris. He did not become a terrorist, the society was dissolved, but Witte’s stay in it demonstrated his loyal feelings to the royal family.

Witte's new promotion was helped by an incident - a derailment due to the speeding of the Tsar's train in Borki on the South-Western Railway. October 17, 1888. Before this, Witte had repeatedly warned the Minister of Railways about the possible consequences of excess speed by the drivers of the royal trains. In the report to Alexander III in connection with the incident in Borki, they remembered the warnings of S.Yu. Witte. The Tsar appointed him to the newly approved post of Director of the Department of Railway Affairs under the Ministry of Finance, promoting him from titular to actual state councilor.

The 40-year-old director of the department wanted to be noticed: soon after his appointment, he substantiated in practice the need to regulate railway tariffs. In February 1892 - having overcome intrigues against him in the transport and financial departments - S.Yu. Witte was appointed to the post of Minister of Railways, and six months later (due to the resignation of I.A. Vyshnegradsky due to illness) he became a Privy Councilor, an honorary member Academy of Sciences and Minister of Finance of Russia. Under his ministry, S.Yu. Witte created the State Press Agency for the first time in the history of Russia (1902).

S.Yu. Witte held the post of Minister of Finance until August 1903, guided by the theoretical heritage of his predecessors - N.H. Bunge, I.A. Vyshnegradsky. His economic views were greatly influenced by the works of the German economist F. List, the analysis of which is devoted to the work of S. Yu. Witte The National Economy of Friedrich List.

Having set the goal of bringing Russia into the category of advanced industrial powers, catching up with the developed countries of Europe, and taking a strong position in the markets of the East, S.Yu. Witte developed conceptual and tactical approaches to the problem of forming market relations and creating an independent national economy. To accelerate the industrialization of the country and accumulate domestic resources, he put forward the task of actively attracting foreign capital, substantiated the need for customs protection of industry from competitors, and promotion of exports. During his tenure as Minister of Finance, no less than 3 billion rubles were attracted to Russia. foreign capital. An important step towards strengthening the Russian domestic market was the introduction of a protectionist tariff in 1891 and the conclusion of customs agreements with Germany in 1894 and 1904.

He considered the most important mechanism in implementing the internal restructuring of the country to be unlimited government intervention - a set of financial, credit and tax measures, including limiting the issuing activities of the State Bank, conversion loans abroad, etc. The initiator of the monetary reform of 1897, he achieved stabilization of the ruble, introduced gold circulation , ensuring the absolute stability of the gold ruble until 1914.

A way to enrich the Russian treasury was the introduction of a wine monopoly (the tax farming system - on the initiative of S.Yu. Witte - was replaced by excise taxes on each degree), which became one of the foundations of the budget of Tsarist Russia and provided up to a quarter of all revenues to the treasury.

S.Yu. Witte also associated the modernization of the country's economy with the rapid development of transport communications. Having started his activities as Minister of Finance, he took over 29 thousand miles of railways, but after leaving this post, he left 54 thousand miles (70% of them were state-owned). On his initiative, the Trans-Siberian Railway (1891–1901) was built, along which passengers saw the inscription on cut down rocks: “Forward to the Pacific Ocean!” As the road was built, new cities arose (Novonikolaevsk, now Novosibirsk); ships were built for merchant shipping along the Northern Sea Route (icebreaker Ermak).

Having a university education and understanding the importance of science for an economic breakthrough, S.Yu. Witte invited D.I. Mendeleev to head the Chamber of Weights and Measures, and was the initiator of the opening of new universities - 3 polytechnic institutes, 73 commercial and many other educational institutions.

Witte was recognized in business circles in the West as one of the creators of the Russian commercial and industrial world. His dizzying career aroused envy among the Russian bureaucracy. High-society Petersburg could not come to terms with the “provincial upstart”, his straightforwardness and demeanor. Attacks on the successful Minister of Finance were intensified by the fact of his marriage to a Jewish woman, M. Lisanevich (née Nurok), who was divorced from her husband after a scandalous financial incident. Emperor Alexander III himself became the minister's defender. The conversations died down, but Witte’s wife was not accepted either at court or in high society. Conversations in high society influenced Witte's relations with the royal court, and Nicholas II, who replaced Alexander III as head of state, more than once thought about removing Witte from the post of Minister of Finance, accused by ill-wishers of republicanism.

In left-wing circles, Witte was credited with the desire to curtail the rights of the people in favor of an autocratic state. Liberals believed that his program distracted society from socio-economic and cultural-political reforms. There was even talk about imposing “state socialism” on him. In reality, this supporter of a strong Russia had a very cool attitude towards socialist ideas and believed that Marxists were “strong in denial and terribly weak in creation.”

Landowners reproached Witte for his attempt to revise agrarian policy, seeing in it a desire to ruin them in favor of the peasants. He also sought a transition to bourgeois methods of management through the expansion of market relations, the purchasing power of the domestic market, and the transition from communal to private land ownership. The law abolishing mutual responsibility in the community, adopted back in 1899, was the first step of the reformer minister towards agrarian reform; Another such step was the creation - with the support of the Minister of Internal Affairs D.S. Sipyagin - of the “Special Meeting on the needs of the agricultural industry” (1902). The “Special Meeting” set the task of “reviving personal property in the countryside” and thus anticipated many of the ideas and actions of P.A. Stolypin. To implement the program outlined by the “Special Meeting”, 82 provincial and 536 district noble committees were created, which collected answers from “experts” in agrarian affairs (landowners, zemstvos, etc.) and were called upon to analyze them and answer the question of whether rural community.

The agrarian question became the arena of confrontation between S.Yu. Witte and the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. Plehve, who replaced D.S. Sipyagin. The tsar himself was on the side of V.K. Plehve, but the Ministry of Finance in 1903 was experiencing difficulties. The economic crisis slowed down the development of industry, reduced the influx of foreign capital, and upset the budget balance. Russia's expansion in the East brought the war with Japan closer. The committees created by the “Special Meeting” became centers of liberal opposition to the government, advocating the voluntary transition of peasants from communal land ownership to household ownership. In the summer of 1903, general workers' strikes temporarily paralyzed the life of ten large cities in southern Russia.

Ultimately, V.K. Pleve managed to “frame” S.Yu. Witte, blaming him for the instability in the country. In August 1903, the successful Minister of Finance was offered an “honorable resignation.” He was removed from office and granted the post of Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. All programs were left behind, including the “Special Meeting”. Its work was curtailed, and on March 30, 1905 the Tsar closed it. However, the “Special Meeting” revealed the reasons for the stagnation of agriculture and the plight of the peasants, identifying possible directions for future agrarian reform, which slowed down the development of the revolution of 1905–1907.

As Chairman of the Committee of Ministers, S.Yu. Witte continued to implement the program to consolidate Russia in the Asia-Pacific region. Even earlier, he sought to counteract Japan’s aggressive policy in the Far East, pursuing a course of rapprochement with China and Korea. With his participation, an agreement was concluded with China on the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway. on the territory of Manchuria. The war with Japan, he believed, would require large funds that the country needed for other needs. But his position was sharply at odds with the course of the “small victorious war” of the Tsar’s Secretary of State A.M. Bezobrazov, which was supported by the naval and military ministers, and Nicholas II himself.

S.Yu. Witte did a lot to protect the monarchy. Having shown himself to be a categorical opponent of the expansion of zemstvo institutions, as “not corresponding to the autocratic system,” he insisted that from the decree of December 12, 1904. On plans for improving the state order The clause on the participation of elected representatives in the State Council was crossed out. This earned him the temporary favor of the king. He argued to Nicholas II that if the Committee of Ministers had been vested with real power, then such a turn of events as “Bloody Sunday” would have been impossible. At the end of January 1905, the tsar instructed S.Yu. Witte to organize a meeting of ministers on “measures necessary to calm the country.”

Witte hoped to transform the meeting into a government of the “Western European model,” but this caused another tsarist disfavor. And only at the end of May 1905, in connection with the urgent need to end the war with Japan as soon as possible, the Tsar again called on Witte as an extraordinary ambassador to conduct difficult peace negotiations. On August 23, 1905, he signed the Treaty of Portsmouth with Japan. From the hopelessly lost war, S.Yu. Witte the diplomat (with the active participation of American President T. Roosevelt as a mediator) managed to extract the maximum possible, for which he was awarded the title of count. (Ill-wishers in high society nicknamed S.Yu. Witte Count “Polus-Sakhalinsky”, accusing him of ceding the southern part of Sakhalin to Japan).

In the context of the growing revolution in the fall of 1905, S.Yu. Witte managed to convince Nicholas II that he had no choice but to establish either a dictatorship or a constitutional monarchy in Russia. Insisting on the need to create a “strong government” headed by himself, S.Yu. Witte ensured that - after painful hesitation - the tsar signed the Manifesto on October 17 On improving public order. This step saved the autocracy from collapse. On October 19, the tsar also signed a decree on reforming the Council of Ministers headed by S.Yu. Witte, which had a program of liberal reforms that he had previously drawn up together with A.D. Obolensky and N.I. Vuich and set out in a note to Nicholas II at the beginning October.

Having become the head of the Russian government, S.Yu. Witte reached the pinnacle of his career. Demonstrating amazing flexibility and remaining a firm guardian of autocracy, he made preparations for the convening of the State Duma. The government led by him drew up a project Basic laws, implementing the freedoms proclaimed on October 17, dealt with issues of restructuring peasant land ownership.

At the same time, in the fight against the development of revolutionary sentiments, the Witte government showed firmness and even harshness, introducing a state of emergency in areas covered by the revolutionary movement, resorting to courts-martial and the death penalty. To stabilize the internal situation, Witte secured large European loans, which were used to suppress the revolution.

The decline of the revolutionary movement predetermined the elimination of the first Russian prime minister. The tsar no longer needed him and on April 14, 1906 he was forced to submit his resignation. The end of his career was brightened up by a special rescript from the Tsar, who awarded him the Order of Alexander Nevsky with diamonds.

Until the end of his days, Witte remained chairman of the Finance Committee of the State Council and often spoke in the press. In 1912 he completed his Memories, which remain to this day a valuable eyewitness testimony to the turbulent events of the early 20th century. S.Yu. Witte spent the last years of his life in St. Petersburg and abroad. At the beginning of 1914, he predicted that Russia’s entry into the war would end in the collapse of the autocracy; he was ready to take on a peacekeeping mission in negotiations with the Germans, but he was already mortally ill.

He died on February 28 (March 13), 1915. His funeral was modest, there were no official ceremonies. His office was sealed and his papers were confiscated. Witte's death caused widespread resonance. The newspapers were full of headlines: In memory of a big man, Great Reformer… Witte’s activities were contradictory, combining a commitment to unlimited autocracy and an understanding of the need for reforms that undermined its foundations. But the meaning of S.Yu. Witte’s life was service to the Motherland, this was recognized by both his like-minded people and his ill-wishers. Foreign historians call S.Yu. Witte “a champion of state capitalism.”

Works of S.Yu. Witte: Memories. In 3 vols. M., 1960; Memories. In 2 vols. St. Petersburg, 2003.

Irina Pushkareva

From Kashin: Infamous author Egor PUTILOV continues to explore the connections between Moscow leftists and the Kremlin. After his sensational article “Pocket Revolutionaries”, for which Kolte later had to justify himself, Putilov continued to work on this topic and now we invite you to read his new article.

The war in Ukraine has clearly highlighted the contradictions and infiltration of the Russian political scene - especially its left wing. This, in turn, was largely the result of the artificial construction of political reality, which began under the Surkov administration. One of the most telling examples was the opposition Left Front, whose frontman Sergei Udaltsov announced support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the emerging Novorossiya. I will tell you why opposition movements support the Kremlin and how political strategists have taken over Russian politics.

The Left Front, which took an active part in the protests on Bolotnaya in May 2012, is considered the left wing of the non-systemic opposition - in addition to the servile Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which is part of the Duma. In recent years, the Left Front has been known to the general public mainly in connection with the Bolotnaya case and the arrest of Udaltsov and Razvozzhaev in connection with it. Another aspect of the activities of the leaders and founders of the organization, namely active work on the Ukrainian issue aimed at the left in the West, is much less visible. Despite this, it led to significant results: a split in left-wing parliamentary parties in a number of European countries in Ukraine and the emergence of political resistance to the regime of harsh sanctions against the Russian Federation. Obviously, the Kremlin’s rhetoric from the lips of an opposition movement persecuted by the authorities sounds much more convincing - especially for the European left. Although at the last congress in August of this year the LF got rid of the odious Daria Mitina, who is the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Donetsk People's Republic in Moscow, Udaltsov is still a member of the executive committee of the movement - symbolically number one. It is curious that Ilya Ponomarev, who is considered the shadow leader of the LF, modestly calls himself simply an activist of the movement and does not hold any positions in it.

The Left Front was created in 2005 as a broad union of left-wing political forces outside the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. According to a former member of the Left Front, who wished to remain anonymous, the creation of the organization was initiated by the presidential administration in the person of Surkov’s right hand, Konstantin Kostin, a PR specialist and political strategist, at that time deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission of United Russia, unofficially responsible for the party’s PR. After working in the presidential administration as deputy chief of staff for internal policy, Kostin currently heads a structure under the Presidential Administration with the telling name “Civil Society Development Fund.” According to the source, the LF was created in order to “close” the left political spectrum - on one side there was the older generation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which had a target group, while on the other, the youth and remnants, dissatisfied with the servility of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, were selected by the more active Left Front. The source’s words are quite consistent with what is known about the behind-the-scenes of domestic politics in the Russian Federation in those years - at that time, the AP was busy creating a Kremlin-controlled political landscape of “managed democracy” - a blooming variety of political forces for all tastes, controlled from one center - the presidential administration. According to the activist, special attention was paid to the forces on the extreme political flanks - right and left radicals. In order to control the latter, the Left Front was created. Some aspects of the biography of the creator and one of the leaders of the LF, Ilya Ponomarev, and people associated with him indicate that this version has a right to exist.

In 2005, Ponomarev was part of the so-called Institute of Problems of Globalization (IPROG) - a left-wing think-tank, the history of which is closely intertwined with the initial period of the existence of the Left Front. Thus, in the early years, the headquarters of the organization was located in the IPROG office, and the founders included many employees of the institute. In an interview with Meduza, Ponomarev claims that he was involved in financing the movement through IPROG. The Institute carried out orders for design research, including in the interests of government agencies, for example, the creation of the “Strategy for the Development of Siberia” for the Krasnoyarsk Territory. When asked why such studies were ordered from IPROG, and not from specialized consulting firms, Ponomarev replies that the orders were given “for him.”

Ponomarev can indeed be considered an extremely talented manager and businessman: he began working at the age of 14 - however, at the institute headed by his father, on a “computer literacy course” organized by him. At the age of 21, Ponomarev becomes director of development in Russia and the CIS of the transnational corporation Schlumberger. “Well, I’m just a little lucky,” Ponomarev comments on his extraordinary career growth. However, it should be taken into account that a common practice among international corporations in those troubled years of initial capital accumulation was to appoint “wedding generals” to their Russian representative offices - individuals capable of providing support for influential clans to business interests. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the reasons for luck both in the career and in the political sphere actually lie in the origin of the politician.

Ponomarev comes from a dynasty of high-ranking Soviet bureaucrats. His relatives include, in particular, Tikhon Yurkin, People's Commissar of Agriculture under Stalin and advisor to Kosygin, and Boris Ponomarev, a member of the CPSU Central Committee and a candidate member of the Politburo. An interesting detail: Boris Ponomarev, Ilya’s uncle, supervised the APN (Political News Agency) through the international department of the Central Committee in the 70s, which was then headed by Sergei Udaltsov’s grandfather. A number of observers believe that Ponomarev owes the political heights he has achieved to the position of his family. This version seems plausible if we remember that Ilya’s grandfather Nikolai Ponomarev served as the first secretary of the USSR Embassy in Poland - a position that was traditionally occupied by the heads of KGB stations. In this light, it no longer seems strange that Ilya was brought into the left movement by a retired KGB general with extensive experience in the 5th Directorate, and subsequently by the FSB, Alexei Kondaurov, who introduced him into the structure of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Let us recall that the 5th Directorate of the KGB was engaged in countering “ideological sabotage.” In an interview with Meduza, Ponomarev confirms that Kondaurov actively participated in the creation and work of the Left Front, working along the “intellectual and ideological line.” It is worth noting that Kondaurov, along with Ponomarev, was also part of the notorious IPROG.

Ponomarev’s protégé is also one of today’s official leaders of the LF - international relations coordinator Alexey Sakhnin. The Ponomarev-Sakhnin connection seems key to understanding the current state of affairs in the Left Front.

As the leader of the Left Front, Sakhnin simultaneously worked for the Laboratory of Political and Social Technologies in election campaigns, including for the direct political rival of the United Russia Federation. This is confirmed by the creator of the Laboratory and Sakhnin’s former colleague on the Left Front, political strategist Alexey Nezhivoy: “About the Laboratory and Sakhnin, this is work in elections and in projects. Sometimes I adjusted it to him. After all, I was both an adviser to the mayors of large cities and, in general, a participant in large conflict campaigns. As for working for United Russia during the elections, he worked, I didn’t!” Sakhnin’s work as a political strategist for United Russia is also mildly condemned by his colleagues in the left movement - they say that enemies can cling to this fact.

At the height of its activities, the Laboratory in its blog answered questions from those interested like: “I am interested in the technology of working on the “ANTI-rating of a candidate”, that is, we take a victim candidate and begin to kill him, thereby lowering his rating and increasing his anti-rating + we are doing PR for ourselves and recognition." Unfortunately, Sakhnin himself was unable to find out whose responsibilities it was to answer such questions and other details of Alexey’s work for Nezhivoy. he did not want to comment.

In 2013, Sakhnin moved to Sweden, allegedly in connection with the search for the Bolotnaya case, where he was mainly involved in Ukraine, in particular, branding Ukrainian fascists in an interview with the Rossiya TV channel and conducting educational work among the Swedish left. At the same time, he continues to be listed as an assistant to State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, the only one who voted in the State Duma against the annexation of Crimea. It should be noted that it was under the influence of Ponomarev that the Left Front changed its line towards Ukraine - the new line, expressed in the statement “War on War”, adopted at the last congress of the LF, can be briefly summarized by the phrase “both sides are to blame.” Needless to say, the position “we are not only against Ukrainian fascists, but also against Putin” has every chance of adding credibility to the left in the West and stopping criticism of the proximity of their position to the Kremlin’s. Alexey Sakhnin in Sweden is wavering along with the general line of his party and, according to an anonymous source, has already prepared a number of articles for the Swedish press, explaining the new nuance.

At the same time, Sakhnin’s former colleague at the Laboratory and co-founder of the Left Front, Alexei Nezhivoy, continues, in his own words, to “keep his finger on the pulse” of the organization, while being a successful and sought-after political strategist. On the website of his Laboratory you can find out about the services it offers, including: “Conducting special. measures regulating the value scale of perception of the voter. Carrying out public events to order. Conducting regulatory PR campaigns in the field of social activism.” In particular, according to Nezhivoy, he helped LDPR deputy Maxim Shingarkin get elected to the Duma in 2011 and worked with him for some time. This, by the way, is the same Shingarkin who became famous after the beating of security guards at Sheremetyevo airport, and was also accused of providing political cover for the import of radioactive industrial waste to Moscow under the guise of an anti-icing mixture as deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Ecology.

Nezhivoy also worked a lot in the field of ecology - in particular, taking part in protests against nickel mining in the Voronezh region. Local eco-activists themselves, however, evaluate his participation with restraint: “His assistant (Shingarkin’s note), Alexey Nezhivoy, communicates with local residents, says that some activists are good, others are bad, and is trying to split the movement. It feels like they want to take control of the protest…” says Konstantin Rubakhin, an environmental activist who was forced to leave Russia due to a criminal case brought against him as a result of his protest activities. Nezhivoy himself, in an interview with Meduza, admits that during this conflict he worked for Konstantin Kostin, organizing round tables for Shingarkin.

In addition to ecology, Alexey actively participates in election campaigns, helping not only the left Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia, but also deputies from the LDPR, as well as from United Russia. In an interview, Nezhivoy, however, clarifies that in the latter case we are talking only about deputy Dmitry Sablin - and then through the “Combat Brotherhood”. “Combat Brotherhood” is an organization of veterans of local wars and military conflicts in Russia, the deputy chairman of which is Sablin. Nezhivoy was a member of it previously - in his own words, to gain access to work with young people.

The “Combat Brotherhood” is accused, among other veterans’ associations, of recruiting volunteers for the DPR and LPR – according to Novaya Gazeta, at the organization’s meetings, members were asked to support Novorossiya and enroll in the militia. According to Nezhivoy’s former colleague at the Youth Left Front, political strategist Andrei Karelin, Nezhivoy works closely with the presidential administration on projects in Ukraine and the Baltic states. Nezhivoy himself in an interview acknowledges his work in Lithuania and Latvia - in particular, an “ecological” project to prevent the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Ignalina, Lithuania, in order to preserve Lithuania’s energy dependence in the interests of the Baltic Nuclear Power Plant being built in the Kaliningrad region. Let us recall that Lithuania, which currently has a negative energy balance, with the construction of a new nuclear power plant would become a net exporter of electricity, which would deprive the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kaliningrad of an economic basis and increase the level of economic, and therefore political, independence of Lithuania from the Russian authorities. Nezhivoy also mentions his project to mobilize the Russian-speaking minority in these Baltic republics. However, he denies direct work for the AP: “I don’t conduct direct projects with them themselves - we work with them in parallel.”

Another colleague of Ponomarev in IPROG and ally of Nezhivoy is Boris Kagarlitsky, who in 2006, together with the latter, published the report “Storm Warning”, dedicated to corruption in Russian parties. The report passed over the two largest parties in silence - United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party - and strangely proclaimed the Communist Party of the Russian Federation the most corrupt political party in the Russian Federation. Kagarlitsky was then accused of being biased by the Kremlin administration - namely by the same Kostin.

This is how Alexey Nezhivoy recalls this time: “I had no idea about Kostin then, but suddenly a resource appeared - press conferences at RIA Novosti, anti-globalist conferences... We visited the Communist Party of the Russian Federation because we competed with it in the field of control in the opposition field. “As a result of the scandal that broke out, Kagarlitsky was forced to officially leave the Left Front and IPROG. After his expulsion, he was given a column in the pro-Kremlin publication Vzglyad, and later Kagarlitsky founded his own resource Rabkor.ru, where many prominent leftists still publish. In 2014, the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, headed by Kagarlitsky, received a presidential grant from Putin. In parallel, Kagarlitsky continues to work with the left in Europe, participating in conferences “against the war in Ukraine” and predictably branding Ukrainian fascists. This, however, does not prevent him from visiting the far-right club “Florian Geyer” (the same name was the 8th SS Division), which is headed by another founder of the Left Front, Heydar Dzhemal. Kagarlitsky is also seen in the company of Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of the Oplot paramilitary group from Eastern Ukraine, and the famous nationalist Konstantin Krylov.

Another strange figure was also listed as an IPROG employee: Ponomarev’s close colleague, GRU Colonel Anton Surikov, who was a member of the Left Front Council until his sudden death in 2009. Surikov headed the company Far West Ltd., based in Dubai and uniting former and current employees of Soviet and Russian intelligence services with experience in third world countries and providing, as Surikov himself said, including “consulting services.” At various times, Surikov was accused of organizing the supply of Soviet weapons from Ukraine and Belarus to Afghanistan, North Africa and other regions in a state of civil conflict, as well as protecting drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Russia. It is curious that, as First Deputy Prime Minister, Yuri Maslyukov unsuccessfully lobbied for Surikov’s appointment as head of Rosvooruzheniye.

In 2001, Surikov spoke in the press accusing the Russian military of organizing drug trafficking and having contacts with the Taliban on this basis. It is difficult to judge whether this was an expression of an intraspecific struggle for control over supply routes, but it is striking that Surikov, who at that time held the modest post of chief of staff of the Duma Committee on Industry, clearly had access to information beyond his rank. Surikov is credited with participating in the semi-mythical meeting between Voloshin and Basayev in Nice shortly before his group’s invasion of Dagestan and the start of the second Chechen war, which brought Putin to power. However, he openly admits in his lifetime interviews that he knew Basayev well from working together during the Abkhaz conflict.

Alexey Nezhivoy believes that it was Surikov who was the curator of the LF from the presidential administration: “Analyzing this (obituaries on the death of Surikov - approx.) one can easily come to the conclusion that the curator is from the AP, the part that was for Medvedev. I just got too carried away and crossed the line.” After Surikov’s sudden death, a number of his political colleagues expressed doubts that he died of natural causes and put forward the version of murder as a result of the action of a poison that causes a heart attack. One more detail: Ilya Ponomarev, answering questions about Surikov, said that he tried to attract him to work in the LF as an “experienced technologist with great connections,” but “forgot” that he was a member of the LF Council and managed its activities.

The history of the creation and existence of the Left Front is a vivid illustration of the formation of “sovereign democracy” and a corporatist state, when professional political strategists working simultaneously on opposite sides of the political spectrum like Nezhivoy or Sakhnin, and the heirs of Soviet clans, replace live politics, and “the holding of public events "becomes just one of the services that can be ordered on the website of a small political technology bureau. The large-scale political decorations built since the early 2000s turned out to be only a prelude to the unity of opinions and the emergence of a totalitarian state - it is no coincidence that many of the heroes of the article are now working “in Ukraine.” The once harmless, Pelevin-style, political fake turns into real deaths and blood, and the created state-corporation, the backbone of which is the Soviet and KGB clans, has become not only a Russian, but also a global problem.

Alexey Nezhivoy: “The presidential administration is in fact now a field structure of performers - they are pretty bad, but then there are those who rule them. It's like an octopus - sometimes you see a tentacle, but where does it lead? And there are so many of these tentacles..."