The Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and Political Parties: institutional and political mechanisms of interaction (1991-1999)

Volgin Evgeny Igorevich ORCID: 0000-0002-9690-448X PhD in Politics Associate Professor, Department of the History of Social Movements and Political Parties, Lomonosov Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov 119192, Russia, Moscow, Lomonosovsky ave., 27/4, office 415 plytony@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

 In modern Russia, political parties hardly represent associations that are ready to show a genuine will to power in the name of promoting and implementing their own strategy of state and social development. However, in the 1990s, the Duma party-political front often forced even the head of state to listen to his opinion. The Administration of the President of the Russian Federation played an important role in ensuring the dialogue between Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of the parliamentary opposition. The study of this "crisis interaction" is of not only scientific, but also practical interest, because it helps to better understand the reasons for the depoliticization of the current "systemic" parties.   

The political and legal status of the Presidential Administration, given the key role played by the head of state in the Russian and global political process, is of increased interest to researchers. Nevertheless, despite the abundance of works devoted to the study of general institutional and legal aspects of the activities of the Presidential administration, the number of publications that highlight the problem of interaction between the President and his Administration with representatives of the party and political establishment in the "Yeltsin era" is relatively small ^{[1, pp. 54-65; 2, pp. 92-100; 3, p. 79-81; 4, pp. 81-89; 5, pp. 90-101; 6, pp. 107-113; 7, pp. 32-44, pp. 28-33; 8, pp. 33-55; 9, pp. 21-30; 10, pp. 151-168; 11, pp. 140-159]}. At the same time, the authors study the process of formation and transformation of the Presidential Administration as an integral institution, and also pay much attention to its direct managers. The purpose of this article is to identify and examine in the general context of the institutional history of the presidential administration those structural units that were responsible for the constant interaction of Boris Yeltsin with the party-political opposition, which took place in a difficult domestic political situation.

The Administration of the President of Russia (hereinafter – AP) appeared on July 19, 1991. It is noteworthy that literally the next day, July 20, Boris Yeltsin signed his famous decree "on de-partization", which became a serious blow to the CPSU. This sequence seems very symbolic. The one-party system that had worked out gave way to a new presidential model, the political significance of which would eventually become quite commensurate with the "sixth article" of the USSR Constitution. Initially, the service of the State Adviser on Interaction with Public Associations was created in the AP, which was headed by Sergey Stankevich (President of Russia [Electronic resource] URL: http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/24 , accessed: 06/21/2023).

A little later, on November 18, 1991, the President, in response to a request from representatives of a number of democratic associations, ordered the establishment of the Russian Socio-Political Center in the center of Moscow" (ROC) The center was supposed to ensure the interaction of socio-political associations with state authorities, provide organizational, technical, consulting, methodological and informational assistance to political parties, train party personnel, etc. The Chairman of the ROC Council was the same S. Stankevich (Yeltsin Center [Electronic resource] URL: https://yeltsin.ru/archive/act/44294 /, accessed: 10/20/2021).    

However, the idea of a "united city committee", which at first seemed very attractive to the "homeless" Russian parties, in practice turned out to be not so productive. The party members were charged such a high price for renting premises that many had to refuse, and commercial structures began to enter the socio-political center. In addition, the activities of the ROC were negatively affected by the changed political views of Stankevich himself. Over time, Sergei Borisovich began to focus "on the sovereignty", which was the defining criterion for the structures instilled in the ROC. "I passed the test of sovereignty ... – it means my own in the board. He turned out to be a black sheep – look for a place in the sun away from the Old Square," the press ironically said (Chuprin V. The party secret of the Komsomol City / / Russian News. 1993, November 17). But the worst thing was that parties and movements that had little sympathy for Yeltsin (the Socialist Workers' Party, the People's Party "Free Russia" and even the Communist Party) eventually settled in the Center.

In February 1992, S. Stankevich was appointed State Adviser of the Russian Federation on Political Issues, and in May of the same year he was demoted to a regular adviser with a sharp reduction in his staff. According to political observers, Stankevich's work in this field had no response. Those analytical materials that he sent to the President were not taken seriously, because they differed in their tendentiousness (Lviv, a fake party in a soap opera // Russian News. 1993. December 17). The Center itself, conceived as an incubator of democratic multiparty system, under the leadership of Sergei Borisovich began to resemble a serpentarium – in terms of the number of dubious organizations of the "patriotic" kind that found a roof under it (Sokolov M. The last of the young and early Mohicans // Kommersant. 1994. September 27).

Meanwhile, the lack of objective monitoring of the socio-political situation, which has been rapidly deteriorating since the beginning of 1992, made it difficult to make adequate decisions. In October 1992, the "irreconcilable opposition" announced the creation of the National Salvation Front (FTS). The President's attempt to prevent the emergence of this association, encountered opposition from the Constitutional Court (CC) (Collection of acts of the President and the Government of the Russian Federation. Further – SAPP RF. 1992. No. 44. St. 2518; SAPP RF. 1993. No. 3. St. 169; Vedomosti of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation.  1993. No. 9. St. 344).

In February 1993, virtually ignoring the decision of the same Constitutional Court, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation announced its restoration. Branches of the Communist Party, despite the ban, began to be revived at enterprises (Amethystov E. Freedom should be with fists // Izvestia. 1996. August 8; The decision on the "CPSU Case" is violated by the Communist Party and is not carried out by officials (interview with the judge of the Constitutional Court T. Morshakova) // Russian News. 1996. № 130). Under these conditions, the President was forced to remind the executive authorities in the center and on the ground of the content of his decree "on departisation" of 1991 (SAPP RF. 1993. No. 18. St. 18).

The presidential side, feeling the lack of objective information about the state of the rapidly radicalizing party-political spectrum, tried to compensate for this gap. In February 1993, the "partapparatchik" Yuri Petrov was replaced as Head of the Presidential Administration by Sergey Filatov, which entailed certain institutional changes. On February 22, 1993, an Analytical Center on General Policy appeared as part of the AP, which was supposed to ensure the interaction of the President with socio-political associations, inform the Chief executive about the position of parties and movements on topical issues of domestic and foreign policy, as well as about the most important events held by these associations ( <url> portal [Electronic resource] URL: https://base .garant.ru/5348048 /, accessed: 10/25/2021).

However, the growing political escalation made interaction between the Kremlin and the "street" opposition almost impossible. The lack of legal mechanisms led to the fact that the President had to fill this gap through other measures. On October 4, 1993, according to Presidential Decree (SAPP RF. 1993. No. 40. St. 3751), the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice suspended the activities of a number of radical parties and movements whose activists were directly involved in street clashes. By his separate decree, Boris Yeltsin did not allow these associations before the elections to the State Duma (SAPP RF. 1993. No. 43. St. 4080).

Meanwhile, an electoral reform was carried out in the country, as a result of which socio-political associations received guaranteed representation in the lower house of parliament, becoming an integral part of the political system and the legislative process. This, in turn, required the presidential administration to conduct a more consistent and systematic dialogue with representatives of the party establishment. On March 21, 1994, a Department for Interaction with Parties and public associations (numbering 15 people) was established in the Administration, headed by Valery Shchegortsov (SAPP RF. 1994. No. 13. St. 987; Labyrinth. Database [Electronic resource] // URL: https://labyrinth.ru/content/card.asp?cardid=21844 , accessed: 10/27/2021).

In December 1993, S. Stankevich left the post of Presidential Adviser on Political Issues. His successor was Georgy Satarov, who in February 1994 was appointed Assistant to the President (President of Russia. [Electronic resource] URL: http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/5443 , accessed 20.10.1994). A graduate of the MSPI Mehmat, head of the INDEM Center for Applied Political Studies, G. Satarov has been a member of the Presidential Council since 1993, where he was invited by First Assistant to the President V. Ilyushin (V. Kononenko, a mathematician will help the president to establish relations with parties and branches of government // Izvestia. 1994. February 11).

In a new capacity, Satarov was involved in the development of the "Agreement on Public Consent", the need for the conclusion of which arose after the dramatic events of 1993 in order, according to Yeltsin, "to remove the shadow of the civil war from Russia ..." ^{[12, p. 409]}. The signing of the Agreement was primarily planned to involve political parties, because, in the understanding of some contemporaries, these organizations were almost the main destabilizing factor (the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation [Electronic resource] URL: http://www.council.gov.ru/activity/meetings/?date=11.04.1994 , accessed: 10/26/2021).

On April 28, 1994, the solemn signing of the "Agreement on Public Consent" took place in the Kremlin. More than eight hundred politicians signed the document.  However, not all the leaders of the parliamentary factions found it possible to seal the Agreement with their signature. Among the signatories were V. Zhirinovsky (LDPR), N. I. Travkin (DPR), E. T. Gaidar (Choice of Russia), S. M. Shakhray (Party of Russian Unity and Accord), E. F. Lakhova (Women of Russia), V. N. Lysenko (Yabloko faction). The Agreement was not signed by G. A. Zyuganov (Communist Party), M. I. Lapshin (Agrarian Party), G. A. Yavlinsky (Yabloko) (Rodin I. New "Georgievsky Tract" // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 1994. April 29; The circle of signatories has expanded // Independent newspaper. 1994. May 13). However, it is unlikely that this document, which had moral and political, but not legal significance, could smooth out the deep contradictions that existed in Russian politics.

At the same time, the institutional improvement and personal renewal of the presidential structures responsible for working with parties continued. V. Shchegortsov, appointed in March 1994 as the head of the Department for Interaction with Parties, stayed in this post for no more than five months. Perhaps the reason for such a hasty resignation was the excessive support that Shchegortsov provided to the Party of Social Democracy of A. N. Yakovlev (Shchegortsov himself had been a member of the Democratic Reform Movement since the early 1990s, one of the leaders of which was the "architect of perestroika"). Starting in the summer of 1994, the Presidential envoys on the ground, as well as the heads of regional administrations, began to receive official letters from the Presidential Administration with requests to facilitate the establishment of PSD cells on the ground (Fadin A. The Social Democrats did not reach into their pockets // General Weekly Newspaper. 1994. November 11-17; Ostapchuk A. "Not a spy, but an intermediary" // Moskovskie novosti. 1997. July 20-27).

On August 23, 1994, a unified Department for Interaction with political parties, public associations, factions and deputies of the chambers of the Federal Assembly appeared in the Presidential Administration. The head of this structural unit, whose administrative potential has been significantly strengthened, and the functionality has been diversified, was a graduate of the Moscow State University Faculty of History, Ph.D., Andrey Loginov (who previously headed the Department for Interaction with Deputies). It was Loginov, who actively lobbied for the merger of the two departments ^{[10, p. 157]}, who had to deal with "loosening the soil" for the future "presidential party" (the Collection of Legislation of the Russian Federation, hereinafter referred to as the SZ of the Russian Federation. 1994. No. 18. St. 2068; Rus Team Media [Electronic resource] // URL: https://rus.team/people/loginov , accessed: 10/27/2021; Fadin A. The Social Democrats did not reach into their pockets // General Weekly Newspaper. 1994. November 11-17).

Meanwhile, the party-political alignment in the Duma did not favor the pro-presidential forces much. In December 1994, the main loyalist factions (the "Choice of Russia" and the PRES) split due to the disagreement of their participants with Moscow's actions in the North Caucasus. The Presidential Administration urgently needed to put together a semblance of a new pro-presidential bloc before the end of the Duma's work. In the spring of 1995, three centrist factions appeared in parliament at once: "Russia", "Duma-96" and "Stability", and the latter was formed with the direct assistance of A. Loginov (Who guarantees stability // Moscow News. 1995. March 19-26). At the same time, such manipulations were by no means painless for other factions. The same "Stability" "stole" from the LDPR the Committee on Geopolitics headed by the former Zhirinovets V. Ustinov. Such a demarche caused understandable irritation to V. Zhirinovsky, who accused Loginov and his office "for the collapse of parties" of trying to bribe and split the deputy corps (the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. [Electronic resource] URL: http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/node/3083 /, accessed: 10/28/2021; Arkhangelsk N. There is no love between Zhirinovsky and "Stability" // Kommersant. 1995. April 6).

As the structures of the presidential administration that interacted with the parties and the parliament were being restructured, the idea arose to involve the Russian socio-political center in this work, which was very withered under the leadership of S. Stankevich (at the beginning of 1994, when the restructuring of the Presidential apparatus was just being planned, it was suggested in the press that a special AP service for relations with parties would be created just based on the ROC). September 22, 1994 Stankevich was relieved of his duties as Chairman of the ROC Council. His successor was Alexey Salmin (member of the Presidential Council, Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences). At the same time, the Center received the right to state funding (NW RF. 1994. No. 22. St. 2471; L.T. The apparatus brings itself into line // Moscow News. 1994. January 30-February 6).

However, the activity of the renewed Russian socio-political center in the field of "state-political consulting" could hardly be called effective. According to extremely stingy press reports (which is a characteristic indicator of the inefficiency of the Center), commercial structures still rented the ROC area, and political associations and non-governmental organizations were often evicted. In the summer of 1995, Boris Yeltsin ordered the transformation of the Russian Socio-Political Center into a foundation of the same name, one of the co-founders of which was the Presidential Administration. In March 1996, the ROC lost state subsidies. In such an organizational and legal form, the Russian Socio-political Center (ROSPOLITIKA) has survived to the present day (SZ RF. 1995. No. 27. St. 2548, No. 47. St. 4519; Docs.cntd.ru . Electronic fund of legal and regulatory documents. [Electronic resource] URL: https://docs.cntd.ru/document/9016989#6520IM , accessed: 29.10.2021; Russian Socio-political Center "ROSPOLITIKA" [Electronic resource] // URL: http://www.rppc.ru /, accessed: 29.10.2021).

Meanwhile, the elections to the II Duma were approaching. On the eve of the vote, the presidential election headquarters relied on two main strategies. The first stratagem was the creation of center-right (V. S. Chernomyrdin) and center-left (I. P. Rybkin) electoral associations so that, having achieved success in the elections, they would later become the basis for a stable two-party system. The second approach did not seem so noticeable and was associated with attempts to divide the protest electorate through deliberate deterioration of the quality of electoral legislation ^{[13, p. 168-193]}.

But hardly both of these strategies have worked. On December 17, 1995, the center–right movement "Our Home is Russia" received a little more than 10%, taking only third place (the "Ivan Rybkin Block" failed). As for attempts to "smear" the votes of the protest electorate among an excessive number of voting participants, the implementation of this plan led to the fact that 49% of the votes cast for the lists of associations that did not overcome the electoral barrier were distributed (according to the rules of proportional voting) among the four winning parties, three of which were opposition (Communist Party, LDPR and Yabloko). Thanks to this aberration, the anti-presidential forces have only increased their presence in Parliament.

In January 1996 S. Filatov was dismissed. Nikolay Egorov, Assistant to the President for Interethnic Relations (former Governor of the Krasnodar Territory, ex-Minister for Nationalities and Regional Policy), took the position of Head of the AP. Under his leadership, just four and a half months before the start of the presidential campaign (January 29, 1996), a large-scale reorganization of the Administration was carried out, the meaning of which was to reduce and consolidate structural units. On the eve of the presidential election, when a struggle for power and influence broke out in Yeltsin's inner circle, this restructuring (carried out not without the participation of A. Korzhakov) was aimed at reducing the risks of leakage of confidential information ^{[10, p. 160]}.

The reorganization affected the Department for Interaction with Parties, on the basis of which (as well as a number of other reorganized structural units) the Main Presidential Directorate for Domestic and Foreign Policy of the state appeared. However, such "coagulation" hardly showed its effectiveness on the eve of the elections. Anatoly Chubais, who headed the Presidential Administration in July 1996, had to correct institutional distortions after the end of the presidential campaign (Federal Law of the Russian Federation. 1996. No. 11. St. 1029, No. 29. St. 3488; Spolokhov F. "We are the apparatus, we need to move the paper" // Kommersant. 1999. March 12).

A. Chubais carried out a large-scale reform of the Administration, during which the political bloc was significantly strengthened ^{[11, p. 141]}. On August 13, 1996, the Department for Interaction with Political Parties, Public Associations, Factions and Deputies of the Federal Assembly (42 people) headed by A. Loginov reappeared in the AP. The recreated structural unit, among other duties, was supposed to involve public associations in supporting the presidential political course. At the same time, according to Loginov, extremist and non-systemic organizations were excluded from the dialogue with the Kremlin. The Department also provided legislative initiatives of the President, which related to the activities of political parties (Federal Law of the Russian Federation. 1996. No. 34. St. 4074, No. 34. St. 4119, No. 41. St. 4689, No. 43. St. 4882; Dunaev S. Andrey Loginov: "We are technologists of dialogue" // Independent newspaper. 1998. March 3.

The Department ensured the activities of the Political Advisory Council under the President. The Political Advisory Council, which included representatives of parties and movements that lost the 1995 parliamentary elections, appeared in July 1996 as a kind of alternative to the "red" Duma. The outsider I. Rybkin became its chairman. The activities of the Council were supervised directly by the Head of the Administration himself, i.e. E. A. Chubais, who was at that time in the Democratic Choice of Russia party, which also lost the Duma elections. However, the activities of the Political Advisory Council, despite the patronage of the presidential administration, could hardly be considered effective. According to political scientists, the PKS, being a "bunch of losers", only imitated work with parties at the federal level (Chugaev S. The new fun of Kremlin politicians is a parallel parliament // News. 1996. July 13. Rodin I. The fifth congress of the DIA was held without sensations // Independent newspaper. 1996. September 24; Tsukanova L. New political initiatives // Russian News. 1996. No. 180; Harichev I. Russia: power without society // Independent newspaper. 1998. July 1). 

The permanent crises that shook the country in the second half of the 1990s sometimes required the President's personal participation in quenching conflicts with the participation of the parliamentary opposition. So, in October 1997, Yeltsin, having made significant concessions, saved the government of the "young reformers" from a Duma vote of no confidence. In December of the same year, the President personally appeared in the Duma to ask deputies to approve a "tough" budget for 1998, promising new concessions to the Communists in return. Finally, in April 1998, in order to push through the "impassable" candidacy of S. Kiriyenko for the post of prime minister, Boris Nikolaevich, according to him, "stepped over himself" and called G. Zyuganov, with whom he had not communicated for many years (Boris Yeltsin stepped "over himself" and through the Duma // Today. 1998. April 24).

At the same time, periodically "humiliating himself" in front of the parliamentary fronde, the President simultaneously hatched insidious plans to completely abandon the elections on party lists. According to some reports, he was pushed to this step by S. Shakhray and G. Satarov, who proved that the rejection of the proportional system would allow the formation of a more manageable parliament. In December 1997, in the midst of the Duma's work on a new law on the election of deputies, the President's negative opinion on the bill that had not yet been adopted was published. The Head of State pointed out, in particular, that the existing electoral system violates the representative character of the lower house, since half of the mandates "belong to one party that received less than a quarter of the votes." To correct the known imbalances, the President proposed to proceed to the election of the Duma entirely on the majority basis of an absolute majority (To the Duma – by order? // Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 1997. December 30). 

After the head of state outlined his position, the rest of the Administration representatives began to relay the instructions of their boss. Following Yeltsin, the inferiority of the proportional system was proved by A. Loginov, N. Medvedev (deputy, former head of the AP Department for Work with Territories), A. Kotenkov (presidential representative in the Duma), I. Rybkin, etc. (Loginov A. Party lists infringe on the interests of the voter // Moscow news. 1998. January 11-25; Medvedev N. Kitchen for baking legislative pancakes // Nezavisimaya gazeta. 1996. April 12. Kotenkov A. Every candidate for deputy must present before the eyes of the voter // President. Parliament. Government. 1998. No. 2. p. 11; Svetlanov I. Rational proposals to the electoral system // Independent newspaper. 1998. October 10). However, at the beginning of 1998, the Kremlin, having gone through many options for electoral reform, abandoned its plan (Cherkasov G., V. Shpak V. The Kremlin abandoned the majority system // Kommersant. 1998. March 4). Obviously, the President and his entourage were alarmed by the too zealous support of well-known electoral initiatives from the Federation Council. The senators, who initially opposed the federal party lists, wanted to fully control the nomination of candidates in their regions and, thereby, influence the lower house. Given the then state of Russian statehood, it was not difficult to guess what the appearance of the "second" Federation Council would have turned out for the fragile Russian Federation ^{[14, pp. 116-142]}.

The arrival in the Administration of Valentin Yumashev, who also tended to institutional consolidation, affected the Department for Work with Political Parties, which in August 1997 was transformed into the Department for Internal Policy (58 people). According to A. Loginov, then it was only about "changing the signboard", because the functions of the new division remained the same. However, according to experts, the name change meant the expansion of functions. So, during the first campaign for the election of governors, it was the Department for Internal Policy that oversaw the electoral process on the ground (Federal Law of the Russian Federation. 1997. No. 34. St. 3951, No. 36. St. 4135, 1998. No. 7. St. 827; A new department was created in the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation // Izvestia. 1997. September 3).

In August 1998, the Management function was supplemented with the duty to inform the President about the main initiatives of the members of the Federation Council and, at the same time, to explain to representatives of the upper chamber, as well as to the authorities of the constituent entities of the Federation and regional public associations the meaning of the policy of the head of state. In addition, the Department had to analyze and predict the development of political processes on the ground, consult with the authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and public associations, prepare relevant materials for the President and the Head of his Administration. The strengthening of the "regional component" was associated with the sharp activation of the governor's corps, whose representatives in the conditions of the growing crisis of the federal center did not hide their political ambitions (Federal Law of the Russian Federation. 1998. No. 33. St. 3958).

  A little earlier, on December 7, 1998, the President dismissed V. Yumashev. The new head of the Administration was Nikolai Bordyuzha, a colonel-general who combined his post with the post of Secretary of the Security Council ^{[11, p. 150]}. The new appointee was predicted to have a great political future, but on March 19, 1999, Bordyuzha was dismissed. The reason for such a hasty dismissal, according to some reports, were major political miscalculations. The President's office was headed by Alexander Voloshin, who at one time was "brought to the Kremlin" by B. Berezovsky. Large-scale personnel changes did not bring anything significantly new to the institutional design of the Administration units responsible for interaction with the party-political spectrum. Only in June 1999, on the eve of the election campaign, the Political Planning Department was created in the AP, whose duties included organizing consultations with representatives of parties and other public associations (RF Federal Law No. 24. St. 2957; Profile. 1999. February 22 // URL: https://profile.ru/archive/kremlevskiy-rezident-104466 /, accessed: 4.11.2021); Federal Press [Electronic resource] // URL: https://fedpress.ru/person/1685485 , accessed: 4.11.2021; Alexander Voloshin is a mysterious man of the Kremlin. IA Realist [Electronic resource] // URL: https://realtribune.ru/news-authority-2257 , accessed: 4.11.2021).

By the end of the 1990s, the construction of the presidential administration building was mostly completed. Now the apparatus had to ensure the transit of power. And with this task, as subsequent events showed, he successfully coped. But it would be a mistake to attribute the success of the entire operation "Successor" (an integral part of which was the confident victory of the pro-government bloc in the 1999 elections) to one or even several influential figures from Yeltsin's inner circle (as some contemporaries often do). Practically the entire Kremlin "team" was involved in the implementation of the well-known strategy, many of whose representatives were vitally interested in further political survival ^{[15, p. 167-194]}.

So, interaction with socio-political associations was by no means the main activity of the Presidential Administration in the 1990s. Until 1994, the apparatus of the head of state did not imply the existence of a special department for working with parties at all. And there were practically no influential parties themselves in Russia after the prohibition of the CPSU. The numerous groups that called themselves parties in the early 1990s were in fact only marginal fragments of Russian society, fragmented by the Gaidar reforms. Only after the restoration of the Communist Party, as well as the election of communists and other anti-reform forces to the new parliament, a certain department appeared in the Administration, overseeing interaction with the parliamentary opposition. Further institutionalization of this structural unit was connected with the general process of formation of the presidential administration. The main task of the "department for work with parties" (despite the frequent change of names, staffing and functional responsibilities) was to participate in the implementation of a common strategy for the political containment of anti–presidential (primarily communist) forces in a crisis situation. It is not surprising that A. Loginov himself compared the activities of his department's employees with the work of signalmen at the front, "who are sent to each other when a truce is established" (obviously, a high–ranking Kremlin official meant parliamentarians) (Dunaev S. Andrey Loginov: "We are dialogue technologists" // Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 1998. March 3). At the same time, the activities of the department for working with parties in the context of the general anti-communist strategy were mainly auxiliary in nature, whereas truly major political issues were resolved by the top officials of the opposing sides at a personal (behind-the-scenes-informal) level.