Krasnodar is going through a pre-term change in government– the mayor has been removed from office and the chairman of the City Duma has been taken into custody

Nadezhda Kravchenko

The Oktyabrsky District Court of the town of Krasnodar removed Nikolai Priz, the head of the town administration, from office under Article 286 of the RF Criminal Code for overstepping his authority. Meanwhile, at a special session, Krasnodar City Duma deputies removed the chairman, Alexander Kiryushin, from office and demanded the mayor of Kransodar resign.
The mayor is accused of individual decisions to select a general contractor for construction financed from the municipal coffers, thus inflicting, according to the public prosecutor’s office, “damage on the state’s interests in the form of extra budget expenditures.” At the same time, the Territory’s auditing department sent the public prosecutor’s office materials on the mayor’s administrative responsibility for government payroll wage arrears. Alexander Kiryushin, Chairman of the Duma and ideological brother of Priz (both are communists), is accused of signing allocation instructions under which substantial amounts of taxes went into the accounts of private entities and the city budget.

Activists and pragmatists
The removal of the town’s executive and legislative leaders is dramatic end of the scandal that has raged in Krasnodar for almost two months. During this time, the local population has split into two parties. One, made up mainly of pensioner activists, holds meetings in defense of the mayor. They are taken to the center of the town by buses rented by the local CPRF office. Others – the able-bodied and entrepreneurs unhappy with the status quo– organized a 6,000-strong demonstration and demanded the mayor’s resignation.
The crisis in Krasnodar is not unexpected. Back in 2000, when Alexander Tkachev replaced Kuban Governor Nikolai Kondratenko, notorious for his anti-Semitic statements, and Niklai Priz became a head of the town authorities, it became clear that the new governor and the new mayor could would have a hard time working together. Although the communists supported Tkachev in the elections, he is not from the Red camp. He, a pragmatic market adherent, realizes that the Territory is doomed to stagnate without entrepreneurship. And territorial authorities actively addressed the issue of increasing investment appeal of the region, which has already enabled them to revive agribusiness in the Kuban, health resorts, and tourism, as well as wine making and industry.
Meanwhile Priz ruled in the Kuban’s capital. As a true communist, Priz only understood socialist methods of management, and Krasnodar’s city administration turned into a town party committee reminiscent of the Soviet era. Hiring and relations with entrepreneurs took into consideration one sole criterion, party membership. According to members of the public board of directors under the mayor, “their” people enjoyed favorable conditions and had access to budget resources, while “strangers” were even refused information about town programs. I remember one of the first press conferences when I asked Nikolai Priz what investment projects he intended to implement. The mayor gave me a puzzled look and then requested his assistants to bring a development plan for the Kuban River embankment. He used this plan for quite a long time to answer questions about investment programs. To be fair, it should be mentioned that the embankment was actually paved. However, it is still a riddle what this has to do with attracting investments to Krasnodar. Locals don’t even use the embankment for recreation. No business related to the area that would at least pay taxes has emerged either.
Loyalty to the communist party was the factor determining town authorities’ attitude toward the mass media. Sovetskaya Kuban (Soviet Kuban) and Patriot Kubani (Kuban’s Patriot), as well as the privately-owned magazine Kuban, noted for publishing photos of Priz along the line of “the mayor hugs a sweet little girl,” enjoyed the town administration’s support. Kuban even waxed poetic about Priz, writing, “Perhaps our forefather’s eyes shone blue just as brightly when he heaved his adversary toward heaven on a pitchfork.”
Under Priz’s rule, territorial agencies of public self-governance were set up in the town. However, they became CPRF party cells rather than liaisons between district administrations and locals and proved very useful during mayoral elections and when organizing meetings in his defense.

How the governor went to Belgorod
The tension between provincial and town authorities gradually mounted. The outcome was delayed only because the provincial authorities had more acute problems with the mayors of Sochi and Novorossiisk to deal with. On the eve of the elections in March 2004, when asked about Priz’s prospects, Tkachev made a wry face and said, “This guy is at least trying to do something, so we need to back Priz.” As a result, Priz gained slightly more than 50% of the votes and retained his power in the town. However, in late June, Kuban’s governor Alexander Tkachev visited Belgorod Province. The governor and officials of different ranks in his entourage didn’t conceal their admiration of Belgorod’s achievements in urban planning, housing and utilities, and roads. Krasnodar was inferior to Belgorod in all respects. The guests from the Kuban found out that Belgorod Province was not only spending budget funds but also trying to make money from city property and attract non-budgetary funds in every way possible. Krasnodar, on the other hand, accounts for more than 60% of the total budgetary arrears of all towns and districts in the Kuban. By early August, the Krasnodar administration owed a total of 15.4 million rubles to construction workers and housing and utilities employees. On September 1, the governor publicly voiced his stance. He addressed rebellious locals by saying, “Krasnodar’s mayor must resign and not hide behind deceived old folk’s backs at pickets and meetings.” The pro-communist press immediately declared the case against the town authorities political, and communist leader Gennady Zyuganov demanded in an interview on Ekho Moskvy Radio that Tkachev put an end to the “police-state and SS-style” treatment of Priz and Kiryushin. Tkachev retorted, “One should not make hasty sharp assessments, otherwise it would look like an attempt to cover a common criminal act with big politics.”
While Kiryushin was taken into custody, Priz preferred to leave Krasnodar. The town administration’s press service reported that he is allegedly at a Moscow clinic on the verge of a heart attack. Meanwhile, former teacher Galina Kalyagina, his deputy responsible for relations with the City Duma and at the same time the first secretary of Krasnodar Communist Party committee, is ruling the town. City Duma deputies were not happy with this replacement and addressed Tkachev, as the Territory’s highest ranking elected official, requesting the governor to appoint another person as acting mayor. “Galina Kalyagina is governed by political and party criteria for town management instead of solving the pressing problems Krasnodar’s residents are facing,” the deputies’ message states.

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