Reshuffling

After Poltavchenko’s move to Petersburg this week, and with rumours of another reshuffle taking place soon (either before or after the elections), the thought occurred to me: what if every time you reshuffle, your group gets weaker?  It doesn’t matter how small the reshuffle is.  Even if you only lose one person, you still have to move three people (or more) to make it all work.  For example, they lost Mironov.  And to replace him, they had to lose Matviyenko, who was then replaced by Poltavchenko, who will be replaced by… and it keeps going.  But every time you do that, you lose trust.  Trust that has to be rebuilt.  And that takes time.  If you reshuffle on a regular basis, the trust never really gets rebuilt to its previous point, because there isn’t enough time to rebuild it.  So that every time you reshuffle, your group becomes less cohesive, and therefore weaker.

Alexei Chadaev

In light of the rumours of a reshuffle going on in the Presidential Administration, I want to address the issue of Alexei Chadaev.  At 31 years of age, Chadaev has accomplished quite a lot.  He is a graduate of the State Academy of Slavic Culture, and a member of the Public Chamber.  The most interesting thing about Alexei, however, is his book entitled, Putin.  His Ideology. Chadaev was praised quite highly for this at the time, including from one of my favourite people Vladislav Surkov.

What confuses me is what FT has to say about Chadaev:

Alexei Chadaev, a conservative political commentator, is expected shortly to be named as a speechwriter working alongside the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov, who oversees management of the Kremlin’s domestic political machine. Mr Chadaev is known for a public criticism of Mr Surkov’s ideology in January. Yet to be confirmed, his appointment has been widely reported by Moscow papers with close links to the Kremlin and people in the Kremlin have confirmed that background checks are being carried out.

I suppose Chadaev could be considered “conservative”, but in Russia my definition of conservative is someone along the lines of Eduard Limonov, the leader of the National Bolsheviks.  However, Chadaev was (I have been unable find out if he still is) involved with Nashi.  Often compared to the Hitler Youth by opponents, Nashi is also quite conservative.  Since FT reports that there was some kind of falling out between Surkov, and Chadaev, I assume that Chadaev is no longer involved with Nashi.

Chadaev is also involved with a website called liberty.ru, which seems to be connected in some way to Gleb Pavlovsky, who is usually referred to as “a Kremlin connected analyst”.  None of this information makes Chadaev seem like a good candidate for anything within the Administration, especially if he is supposed to be working with Surkov.