The Council for National Strategy, a non-governmental organization, was created in 2002; it comprised 23 "experts" from various parts of the political spectrum, including Iosif Diskin, Valery Khomyakov, Sergei Markov, Andrei Ryabov, Mark Urnov, Dmitry Oreshkin, Andrei Fyodorov, Valery Fyodorov, Leonid Smirnyagin, Vladimir Rubanov and others. The CNS was chaired by Stanislav Belkovsky, whom, as the paper wrote, many linked to Berezovsky. Markov was known as a convinced "Putinist" and one of the theoreticians of "managed democracy"; Khomyakov was a member of the political council of the Union of Right Forces, while Andrei Fyodorov was a statist, previously associated with former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi.
Contents of the Report
The CNS report claimed that representatives of big business were preparing to "transform the system of state power in the country in order to achieve a 'personal' union of big business and the executive branch. In reality, the country is on the brink of a creeping oligarchic coup." The business and political activity of the oligarchs, it went on, was harmful to the state.
Some CNS experts immediately stated that they had nothing to do with the report. In particular, the head of the Expertiza foundation, Urnov, demanded that Diskin be expelled from the CNS as the main author of the report, and along with him Belkovsky, whom he accused of passing off Diskin's work and that of several unknown co-authors as the collective work of CNS members. The demand was not met, and Urnov then announced his own withdrawal from the council.
Lists of "Oligarchs"
In the report, Diskin proposed a modified version of Boris Nemtsov's definition of oligarchy as a "shadow government" of big business. The paper called the division of entrepreneurs into "dirty" and "clean" depending on whether they interfered in politics subjective. On this basis, Diskin classified Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Fridman, Oleg Deripaska, Vladimir Potanin and Andrei Melnichenko as "oligarchs," and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Kakha Bendukidze, Oleg Kiselyov and Anatoly Karachinsky as "neo-oligarchs."
The publication cited versions according to which the report could be seen as an attempt by an influential administrative-economic clan—most likely the "Petersburg Chekists"—to undermine the position of the old "Kremlin Family." Another version was to weaken Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov: he and the head of the presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin, were portrayed as proteges of "anti-state oligarchs," while simultaneously sowing suspicions that Kasyanov would gladly surrender those same oligarchs.
The paper recalled a similar provocation in October 2000, directed this time against the "Petersburg Chekists": at that time rumors circulated about the imminent appointment of Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov as prime minister instead of Kasyanov, and the newspaper Stringer published an article titled "Anti-Putin—The Necessity of Removing the President from Power is Obvious," citing a supposedly top-secret document. In the end, Ivanov was appointed defense minister, and Kasyanov retained the post of prime minister.
Who Was Named the Main Target
According to the paper's count, in the report Khodorkovsky was mentioned 10 times, Yukos 25; Abramovich and Sibneft 9 and 22 times; Fridman and Potanin 4 each (Alfa Group 10, Interros 2); Deripaska and Melnichenko 3 each (Basic Element 5, MDM 1). Thus the main targets of the report were Khodorkovsky and Abramovich: according to Diskin, they were portrayed as the insidious ringleaders of a conspiracy against Putin.
The paper noted that, contrary to Diskin's statement in a recent issue of Itogi, Khodorkovsky had never acknowledged financing the Communist Party: he had said he would finance the election campaigns of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, and one of his Yukos partners sympathized with the communists and would support them from his own pocket. According to informed sources, this could have referred to the former head of the company's security service, Alexei Kondaurov, or to the chairman of the Yukos board of directors, Sergei Muravlenko, who a year earlier had financed the Revival of Russia party of State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov.
"According to the plans of a key representative of the ruling class, as early as 2004 a new government could be formed, controlled by and accountable to parliament. The favorite for the post of prime minister of such a government, formed under a new constitution, is considered to be Mikhail Khodorkovsky."
The paper wondered who benefited from such a provocation against the Yukos-Sibneft alliance, noting that Khodorkovsky and Abramovich had enough enemies. At the same time, LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov was never mentioned in the report—neither in the lists of "oligarchs" and "neo-oligarchs" nor in the text, nor was the company LUKOIL itself. The publication recalled that Alekperov was a direct competitor of Khodorkovsky and Abramovich, and asked whether he was behind Diskin's report or whether the omission had other reasons.
A commentary for The Moscow Times was written by Vladimir Pribylovsky, president of the Panorama research center.
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