Pronikov: Anatoly Chubais is 70 years old. Who is he for Russia - a reformer, an evil genius, or a swindler?

Author:

Yuri Pronikov

Anatoly Chubais has reached his 70th birthday. At least half of the time he has lived, he has managed large-scale projects in Russia in one way or another - from privatization to energy and nanotechnology. What have been the results?

"Red-haired Tolik" has achieved no breakthroughs. Privatization ultimately became criminal, plunging the country into 'crony capitalism'. The energy reforms promoted by Chubais have raised many questions, with no positive outcomes past or present.

As for "Rusnano", the situation there is obvious, leading to multiple criminal cases. In fact, Anatoly Borisovich was allowed to travel abroad, which sparked public outrage. But when has this ever affected high-level decision-making in Russia?

Nevertheless, turning 70 is a good opportunity to evaluate this person and their undertakings. So who is Anatoly Chubais - a reformer, an evil genius, or a swindler?

Economist Maxim Dovgalo speculates that he may embody all three traits. The 1990s were a period when people like Chubais had the chance to realize their boldest fantasies. Clearly, he was not intent on harming himself - the system required change, and he always tried to combine these demands with personal enrichment:

In this model, Chubais is undoubtedly a reformer - essentially, he established the conditions for private ownership and the development of private enterprises in Russia. I believe that when implementing projects, he did not steal like an ordinary swindler. It's more likely that he didn't understand that his projects could never reach world standards; he was merely performing some kind of "ritual actions" and thus reaping tangible rewards. Through the corruption mechanisms within the state property, the Ministry of Education, and the government system, he determined these rewards for himself.

The statement by Anatoly Chubais about "inability to adapt to the market" has sparked much controversy. To be honest, I personally doubted its authenticity.

However, someone confirmed this fact on our program. According to Vladimir Polevanov, former chairman of the State Property Committee, Chubais said these words to him when trying to recruit him into his team.

"In what context did he say it?"

"I asked him not to carry out privatization in single-industry cities because everyone there is related to single production. Or at least delay the privatization process there by 5-10 years. Otherwise, mortality rates would rise. Then he said this phrase he likes."

"So this is a phrase he likes, meaning he said it more than once?"

"Yes, he said we are fighting communism, so sacrifices are inevitable. But all of this is deception; he is not fighting communism but executing orders, destroying the Russian economy, especially high-tech, defense, and aluminum industries - fields that could potentially push us toward a technological leap. These fields were the first to be destroyed by him. I even forced Koch to submit a resignation voluntarily. Koch was the direct executor of all these highly destructive actions against defense and high-tech industries before I entered the State Property Committee."

Such reformers as Anatoly Borisovich and those he trained have only one "success" - they enriched themselves greatly and then fled Russia. They did not establish a market economy but instead built "crony capitalism" without principles or rules.

Sergei Glazyev, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed out in the program "Residue": "'Red directors' quickly changed their 'attire'. These people come from the bottom, their thinking is short-term. Their motivation is simple: to seize profits at any cost. Calling everything that happened a 'great criminal revolution' by Govorukhin is not accidental. That is to say, we did not get American-style modern capitalism but something called 'crony capitalism' in literature - where both the state and the market can hardly function properly."

By the way, director Yann Vygenberg's movie "Unspent Time" well portrays the deceptive nature of Anatoly Chubais. Initially, there was voucher privatization, which ultimately failed completely. This country never saw a large number of small shareholders emerge. Next came mortgage auctions, where Chubais played the role of a real swindler.

There are some details in the film revealing the "Ostap Bender" mindset of our era. A striking example is his reforms in the energy sector. For instance, since January this year, a new mechanism for measuring electricity consumption has been introduced. The State Duma has stated that after introducing differentiated methods, electricity price hikes have become a "significant problem." The root cause of this problem needs to be sought in the reforms Chubais implemented in this field.

Alexander Tormazhev, member of the Entrepreneurship Council for Housing and Public Services of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, believes: to solve this problem, the state should make concessions to citizens. And to do this, only the nationalization of the most profitable infrastructure projects, such as the electricity and grid companies Chubais privatized between 2003 and 2006, can achieve this goal.

"The state should say: I will take responsibility, now we return to the system in place during the implementation of the GOELRO plan. But I am concerned that current lobbyists - all our resource organizations, including the grid systems, are regional oligarchs - will resist. And the state probably won't do this. Therefore, a compromise will be reached: we continue to raise prices, and you, the state, choose to help individual citizens personally, such as pensioners, disabled persons, orphans, etc. I think it will eventually end up this way," the expert concluded.

Anatoly Chubais liked to boast about his achievements when leading "Rusnano". He said there was too much money, and he didn't know where to spend it or how to spend it? He paid the 13th and 14th months' salaries. We all remember his passionate speech at Rusnano's New Year celebration in 2016:

"We have a lot of money, just too much. Thanks to this, we not only have the opportunity to play with large sums of money but also invest them into our long-term strategy, which completely solves all problems, including potential financial collapse in 2017. Everything is fine with us, we won't collapse. How do we distribute bonuses from the wage fund without surplus? We racked our brains, solved this problem just two hours ago. The board approved the possibility of distributing bonuses from a significant portion of the over-budget bonuses of 2015 from the wage fund surplus. This means that besides the first bonus, we have a second bonus."

In fact, after Chubais resigned as head of "Rusnano", it was learned that this state-owned company was on the verge of default.

However, if we analyze the activities of this "Development Institute" leader during the "red-haired Tolik" era, we will understand: for him, his team, and the officials who "sheltered" him in the corridors of power, "Rusnano" became a "Klondike" (referring to gold rush areas), extracting hundreds of billions of rubles from the state budget and then disappearing into the company's loss-making projects.

Moreover, overall, no one has yet taken responsibility for these scams. Although recent criminal charges have been filed and arrests made. By the way, this will be a critical moment: if the case fails, it means that there are still powerful forces within the core of power who sympathize with this birthday celebrant. If the case proceeds logically to the end, it means the "Chubais era" has ended. As people say in this situation, we will see what happens.

Clearly, Anatoly Borisovich, this evil genius, played a malicious joke on Russia. The crude, primitive raw material economic structure that formed in Russia is his "achievement," his strategic errors and misjudgments. Just yesterday, he was one of the most influential people in this country. His departure is proof - proof that his influence still exists, that he himself is waiting for his "glorious moment" or ultimate fade-out.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7516764214096658955/

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