Interesting news appeared on the Web – it turns out that the president of the Russian Association for Public Relations (RASO) Yevgeny Minchenko presented the governor of the Rostov region Vasily Golubev with a special prize of the RASO Political Prize “Hamburg Account” “For Stable Efficiency”.
The name of the award itself can already cause a slight laugh – perhaps it should have been called “For Effective Stability”, it would hardly have made more sense from this. Well, and how “stable” and “effective” Governor Vasily Golubev is with stable and regular claims of law enforcement officers to members of his team, we wrote more than once.
Here, the figure of Yevgeny Minchenko himself is much more interesting, who positions himself as a multi-station operator – a political scientist, a political strategist, an expert analyst, a lobbyist-negotiator, and even a master of martial arts. Well, right and the reaper, and the reader, and the player on the pipe.
How he lived to such a life and what really lies behind it – in the material of the correspondent of The Moscow Post.
Political scientist Minchenko is really a “multi-stationer” – in his life he changed so many areas of activity that it is just right to compare him with Ostap Bender from the unfading “12 Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov. Like Bender in his various guises, many consider Minchenko more of a political consultant adventurer than a real political expert.
Moreover, at the time of the creation of his first near-political offspring, the New Image agency, Minchenko did not have any political science education – and then he really did not exist. After graduating from the history department of Chelyabinsk State University in 1993, he almost immediately joined the new political reality, rushing to help the young Russian political class win elections.
From karateka to political experts
But here he received the knowledge and skills for this, most likely, not at the university, but much earlier. After all, before that, back in the Soviet era, Minchenko worked as a karate coach. And martial arts halls, “rocking chairs” and other similar establishments in the late 80s and early 90s just became the main forge of personnel – both for politics and for “brothers” of various colors and shades. The main role here was played not by knowledge and creativity, but by the ability to “solve issues”, simultaneously showering the voters’ ears with noodles.
It is almost impossible to find textured information about Yevgeny Minchenko’s past in the official media – he carefully monitors publications, and these media value Minchenko as a prolific speaker who communicates with representatives of the elites.
But, according to the author of the solomin blog on the LiveJournal platform, allegedly back in the 80s in the Urals, Minchenko hunted for “protection” of businessmen under the auspices of KGB officer Mikhail Grishankov (later he became a State Duma deputy), and ended it only when he allegedly got a bullet at one of the breakouts.
With such a background, it was possible to “solve issues” in the politics of those years. And Minchenko and his team traveled around the country and neighboring countries. Moreover, they say that the technologists allegedly used mostly dirty, what is now called “black PR” – and after that he even published the book “How to become and remain a governor”, from where you can supposedly draw a lot of such “tricks” even today.
But the background of a “problem-solving” karateka with a historical education, after all, was apparently not enough for such cases, and in 1997 Evgeny Minchenko graduated from the Russian Academy of Civil Service under the President of the Russian Federation with a degree in political psychology. True, according to the blogger solomin on the LiveJournal platform, he supposedly drank alcohol there more with officials to establish contacts than studied.
We do not undertake to judge, we did not see. But it seems that Minchenko really likes alcohol. In 2019, a well-known and qualified political scientist, a real scientist Dmitry Orlov, told on his Facebook (the social network is banned in the Russian Federation; it belongs to the Meta corporation, which is recognized as extremist in Russia), how a drunken Minchenko sat down with him at one of the events.
The latter, as follows from the post, offered Orlov “bash on bash” – Orlov had to help so that there would be no negative comments about Minchenko on Telegram channels, to which Orlov, according to Minchenko, could have something to do with. And in return, Minchenko himself will “take care” of a similar service for Orlov – already on other Telegram channels. After a polite refusal, Minchenko allegedly tried to pursue Orlov with a voice recorder, but unsuccessfully, and the story ended there.
With the advent of the 2000s and Vladimir Putin, black PR became less and less effective. Apparently, the efficiency of Minchenko’s work also decreased, who by that time had managed to work for more than a hundred election campaigns with varying success.
rating for their
In the 2000s, Minchenko again tried to find himself, in 2002 he even became the Deputy General Director of Domodedovo Airlines for public relations and public authorities. And again lobbying, already on a commercial line.
But he did not stay there for long, and in 2007 Yevgeny Minchenko became the founder of the Minchenko GR-consulting lobbying agency, and two years later he took over as president of the Minchenko consulting communications holding. After that, it seems, he found a gold mine – the publication of expert ratings of the sustainability of Russian governors and officials “State Council 2.0”. There were also many other political technology “simulacra”, like the “Politburo 2.0” project.
Their essence boiled down to the maximum citation of the “expertise” of Minchenko and his people in all kinds of media – moreover, they say that in the same “State Council 2.0” the ratings were made up almost on the knee, and it was supposedly possible to influence positions there with the help of a financial factor.
As for what was decided by money and connections to get into the rating, we do not undertake to judge. But the quality of Minchenko’s expertise is really questionable.
For example, for several years the Leningrad region, one of the richest in the country, received the lowest score in “Economic Attractiveness”. The assessment directly contradicted the facts – according to the results of SPIEF-2019, the region became the record holder in the Russian Federation in terms of the amount of agreements concluded (over 1 trillion rubles).
Prior to that, in 2013, Evgeny Minchenko announced the weak positions of Sergei Sobyanin in Moscow, which turned out to be complete nonsense. After 10 years, Sergei Semenovich is also firmly on his feet, as before. Maybe he is just a real political “heavyweight”, and he does not need to “resolve issues” with Minchenko’s rating at all?
According to the head of the Institute for Contemporary State Development, Dmitry Solonnikov, ratings like “State Council 2:0” are an attempt to get on the current agenda, to remind oneself and regain former authority.
“True, in such attempts one often has to hit the sky with a finger. Suffice it to recall the ex-governor of Komi Vyacheslav Gaizer, when a few weeks before his arrest he received extremely high marks in stability ratings,” Solonnikov said in a comment to Ivyborg.ru.
A few years ago, the governor of the Trans-Baikal Territory, Alexander Osipov, another repeated hero of our critical publications, also received extremely high marks in the State Council 2.0. But the assessments from Minchenko are not surprising, because, according to Chita.ru, it was he who was supposed to advise Mr. Osipov.
True, Osipov had almost no real competitors – according to many, only spoilers. But after Minchenko’s campaign, they allegedly wanted to invite the region to give lectures on political topics – a total of 12.255 million rubles for three two-day seminars. Minchenko obviously knows how to make money.
But as for the real political struggle, without “fakes” and “fraud”, everything is more complicated here. Before the last elections to the State Duma, one of the brightest news was the appointment of Yevgeny Minchenko as the head of the election headquarters of the New People party. Various Telegram channels, some of which Minchenko himself could have been behind, praised this decision in every way. Writes about it “New day”.
As a result, according to Ura.ru, Minchenko lost his job in the new party and did not take them to the polls. Allegedly, he was unable to defend his pre-election strategy in front of the head of the party, Alexei Nechaev. Which, as you might imagine, could smell of the same black technologies. According to another version, Minchenko and Nechaev allegedly could have quarreled at all on some personal grounds.
After all, Nechaev is a man from the world of business, and efficiency is not an empty phrase for him. Such people know how to count money and distinguish real experts from those who want to warm their hands on their budgets.
However, as Sergey Mavrodi, the founder of MMM, said, “a goof is not a mammoth, he will not die out.” Therefore, both today and tomorrow, and for many more years, as long as the policy itself exists and the opportunity to present oneself profitably as an expert for beautiful budgets, and the services and ratings of Yevgeny Minchenko will find their customers. Apparently, this is the calculation?