The next election for the governor of St. Petersburg will take place on September 8, in which Alexander Beglov is expectedly to be re-elected, as he is being opposed only by the technical candidates that are not able to win such an election. This will be his second term as a governor (the first one began in 2019, although he was appointed as de-facto governor in 2018). However, he has been around in St. Petersburg politics for more than twenty years, albeit with interruptions. In 2002, he was even appointed as a vice-governor for a short term.
Despite his lack of any skills of a public politician he had significant achievements during those years: in 2004, he got a job in the Presidential Administration and alternately served as the Presidential Representative in the Central and Northwestern Federal Districts. Regardless of the problems in his public work he always understood the needs of his superiors and managed to fulfill those needs. Perhaps it was the combination of those qualities that made his candidacy the most preferable for the governor of Putin’s hometown. But the decisive factor, of course, was loyalty.
With relentless loyalty, he remains quite self-dependent and is not afraid of an administrative struggle with the members of the United Russia party or the now assassinated Prigozhin. As with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (who is backed by Anastasia Rakova), Beglov was supported by a powerful woman in his office at the time of being elected — Lyubov Sovershayeva, who had managed to work both in previous St. Petersburg governments and in places of great value to the current government, such as in the position of advisor to the chairman of Rossiya Bank, which many investigators describe as the stash of Putin’s and his associates’ wallets.
Beglov has the appearance of being a very “inside” man for the Kremlin, and that is where his main value lies. The same way officials register their most important assets with their closest and most reliable relatives, the Kremlin is ready to give St. Petersburg only to the person who is closest to them. Beglov’s St. Petersburg is being run the way the Presidential Administration would like to see all of Russia governed: without unnecessary noise, fuss, or any opportunity for democratic participation. Internal pluralism, which is typically presented as a banal redistribution of markets, is not welcome.
Internal competition
In the past governor’s election, Beglov’s headquarters was actively assisted by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s structures. According to Prigozhin himself, he invested about two billion rubles in Beglov’s election campaign. Prigozhin’s PR network was not part of Beglov’s official headquarters in the last election and worked rather autonomously, but it actively shared information and resources at the headquarters’ request. One of the reasons for such decentralized organization of campaign offices during elections is the limitations of the current electoral legislation, and currently such a limit for the St. Petersburg governor’s election is about 70 million rubles. Outsourced offices with unaccountable budgeting in this situation are a convenient tool to circumvent such legislative obstacles.
According to an investigation by the Dossier Center, Prigozhin’s team focused primarily on the shady aspects of the campaign: they conducted polls (which Russian political technologists and journalists often describe as “sociology,” even though it has nothing to do with the latter), planned public activities to raise approval ratings, worked to discredit the other candidates, and even attracted opinion leaders, such as Konstantin Khabensky and Alexander Druz, to campaign for Beglov. On the grounds of another infrastructure that was already actively working, the “troll factory,” Prigozhin helped Beglov on social networks, creating the image of an “experienced businessman” and “patriot.” By monitoring social networks and the results of surveys, Prigozhin’s political technologists prepared methodological recommendations for Beglov’s headquarters on how to work both on the public image of the campaign and its internal organization. “Putin’s Chef” actively invested in Beglov’s campaign in anticipation of large infrastructure contracts, as he himself admitted in the same interview, where he spoke about the two billion rubles spent on the campaign, as well as the fact that he hired about three hundred people to work on it at the time.
However, the alliance between Prigozhin and Beglov did not last long. After just two years of official governorship and shortly before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in December 2021, Prigozhin’s media and “troll factories” began actively criticizing Beglov on social media for poor snow cleaning and city management. The very same media and accounts that had praised Beglov during his election campaign began to harshly recall all the organizational failures of the new administration, including the traditionally poor street cleaning in winter. In January 2022, Prigozhin’s pocket musician Sergei Shnurov recorded two songs with his band Leningrad, where he criticized the cleaning and Beglov personally, as well as implied his possible corruption. Six months later, already after the official start of Russian invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin came out with an open criticism of Beglov and his government. The Nevskie Novosti, a newspaper controlled by Prigozhin, published his interview entitled “As you know, St. Petersburg is run by a mob of people who fill their pockets and don’t keep their word,” in which he reminded Beglov of his unfulfilled promises to repair the Begovaya and Dunayskaya metro stations, and also made claims about broken agreements on the construction of the Gorskaya Transportation Hub and the reconstruction of the Konyushennoye Department (it is important to understand that in the modern sense of the city authorities in Russia, a transport hub is just a shopping center on a “fishy” place of transport interchanges, and therefore a tremendous source of money). Prigozhin spent 2 billion rubles during the gubernatorial election precisely for the exclusive access to major infrastructure contracts with the administration, but in fact he was “screwed” by Beglov’s administration, because Beglov gave away the biggest projects to people closer to him.
Most probably, the clash between Prigozhin and Beglov had started to build up actively even before this period. In the 2021 regional Legislative Assembly elections, Prigozhin failed to negotiate with Smolny (the St. Petersburg government) to support its candidates in the elections (they were running as Rodina party candidates). This led to the city’s outdoor advertising operators being banned from selling Rodina placement on billboards and other types of street advertising. Rotonda claims that domestic policy supervisor and vice-governor Alexander Belsky, who was once also in the catering business like Prigozhin, may have influenced the decision. The final trigger for the conflict could have been the opening of a criminal case against Alexei Barabanshchikov, the head of St. Petersburg’s social nutrition department. Prior to St. Petersburg, Barabanshchikov worked in the government of the Moscow Oblast and with his help Prigozhin’s structures won contracts in the region. The prosecution ruled that in August 2020, Barabanshchikov and several other individuals (including Oleg Lukin, one of the top managers of Prigozhin’s Concord group) were guilty of forgery in tender deals. At first the measure of punishment was imprisonment, but after a few months it was replaced by a ban on certain actions, and in October 2022 the case was dropped altogether. By that time, Beglov had appointed a new vice-governor, Moskalyov, to replace Barabanshchikov, and did so without consulting the Legislative Assembly. Thus, Prigozhin found himself removed not only from new infrastructure projects, but also from his traditional niche as a caterer of public sector. After a public conflict with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and a military mutiny, fears on the part of the administration about the concentration of power in the hands of this man would seem to be justified.
Prigozhin is not the only political heavyweight in the region whom Beglov has dealt with during the administrative struggle. Since the early noughties, the city has had a kind of dual power between the city government (Smolny) and the parliament (Legislative Assembly), which might seem characteristic for Western liberal democracies, but looks unusual in comparison with the power structure in the rest of Russia’s regions. Back when Beglov was the acting governor, he ran away from a Legislative Assembly session after a speech by Yabloko deputy Maksim Reznik that the city did not need such a governor. Opposition deputies of the pestered Beglov with uncomfortable questions for the rest of their term, but paid for it later: Maksim Reznik, who criticized him in winter 2019, was criminally prosecuted for drug possession, and Boris Vishnevsky, a popular opposition deputy from Yabloko, was “mopped up” with the dirtiest political technologies imaginable in an election at this level.
The purge of the “non-system” opposition part of the city parliament was an expected action on the part of the Beglov administration, and the main question regarding it was more about timing and methods. The “street” opposition was treated most harshly: the 2019 and 2021 rallies in St. Petersburg were dispersed with beatings and the use of tasers. However, Beglov also saw enemies in his fellow party members, specifically in parliament speaker Vyacheslav Makarov, whom Beglov saw as the mastermind behind the opposition’s attacks on him. Moreover, Makarov was a strong political figure in the city — the governor before the past governor, Valentina Matvienko, was called “mum” by him, and under the past governor Poltavchenko (as publicly weak as Beglov) he was in charge of the latter’s political image and rating. As Meduza notes, Poltavchenko had a similar biography to Beglov as a bureaucrat with a history of working in the Presidential Administration, so Makarov and other officials expected the same level of activity from him in dealing with political issues (which is to say no activity at all). However, Beglov turned out to be less controllable, in large part because he had an independent figure in his office seeking political control — the already mentioned Lyubov Sovershaeva.
Beglov was not satisfied with Makarov’s strong positions and the “sprouting” of his people in the city, and he decided to push for Makarov to be sent to Moscow, to the State Duma. Makarov agreed, although not without some resistance — back in the spring he wanted to be re-elected to the Legislative Assembly elections, which were held simultaneously with the elections to the State Duma in 2021. In addition, there were a lot of candidates loyal to Makarov, whom Vice-Governor Alexander Belsky did not want to see in the new convocation. Therefore, Smolny began to actively interfere in the election campaign, which led to administrative candidates fighting against United Russia, as was the case with Denis Chetyrbok in District 17, against whom Smolny put up a candidate from the “New People” party (which was also at the top of the party list on the ballot). As a result, United Russia received a 33 percent result, compared to 41 percent in the last election under Makarov. Despite Smolny’s opposition, some of Makarov’s people managed to get re-elected, and his daughter Marina Lybaneva was elected to the parliament, and immediately changed her passport name to Makarov after being elected. Some believe that this was Makarov’s signal that he was not going anywhere and would continue to struggle for power in the city.
Elections
This year’s gubernatorial elections have followed a tested algorithm: the campaign is conducted in a minimal manner, citizens are not informed about the elections, and only candidates who are unable to win under any circumstances are allowed to appear on the ballot. Many people mistakenly call them spoiler candidates, but this is a misconception, because the task of these candidates is not to draw votes from others, but in no case to attract them to themselves. Even the CPRF, which actively participates in all elections, decided not to nominate a candidate in this election, which resulted in a split in the party’s faction in the Legislative Assembly. The more loyal Just Russia did not nominate a candidate either: Beglov is facing only candidates from the Greens, the LDPR, and the CPRF spoiler, Communists of Russia.
The creation of such conditions has a certain objective, namely to ensure a first round victory. Smolny has all available resources for campaigning in the case of the second round, but victory in the first round has a symbolic meaning: firstly, to show the federal center that the situation is under full control; and secondly, to make the demonstration of the results to the public seem more legitimate. The result of the election is much more important than its procedure, since it will serve as the main argument in answering the question of why a man like Beglov is in the governor’s office — because he received the highest percentage of votes in the “election.”
Beglov’s administration has also successfully imported Moscow’s experience in organizing virtual plebiscites. In the last gubernatorial election, he promised to actively expand interaction with residents through appeals in social networks and city electronic portals. As in Moscow, the St. Petersburg authorities have started to hold online referendums to approve landscaping and other issues. The success of this project in Moscow can be seen by the current result — already at this year’s elections, paper ballots will be canceled at Moscow polling stations, and to receive them it will be necessary to submit a written application to the commission in advance. The complete conversion of voting to electronic format remains the only method available to the authorities to preserve power for the ruling party, as the increasing repressiveness makes electoral protest even more visible. To banish people from polling stations and transfer the whole procedure into a format that is not controlled by the public is in this case an objective necessity for the ruling party.
In the conditions of an open electoral struggle, he would stand little chance, because even in the governor’s post after two years of war national pollster VCIOM gives him an approval rating below 50%. Even with a horde of highly paid PR specialists, he continues to call for raising children to pay for pensions and running away from meetings of the Committee on Urban Planning to eat pirozhki with State Duma deputies. On the other hand, Beglov himself understands that ratings and percentages are his last thing to worry about, so these actions may turn out to be quite sensible, because they manifest a noticeable distance between the authorities and the citizens: while some are afraid to repost anything excessive to their accounts on social networks, others can get away with any stunt that disregards the public. The fact that Beglov was re-elected after all these offenses will only reinforce the declaration of such a distance between people and the authorities. In this situation, the case of Boris Vishnevsky at the elections to the legislative assembly in 2021 is illustrative: then, with an obvious mockery, pro-government PR specialists nominated two spoilers to one of the most opposition candidates in the city, and the spoilers themselves were forced to change their passport name to the name of Boris and even made them look like the real Vishnevsky. This was likely a signal to the regular participants of the elections that the authorities could do whatever they wanted with them.
Unlike the last election, where Beglov ran as a “self-nominated” candidate, in this election he is nominated by the United Russia party. Registering the government’s candidates as self-nominees has been part of the government’s political strategy in 2019 in both Moscow and St. Petersburg. In that year’s Moscow City Duma elections, all United Russia candidates were registered as self-nominees and members of public associations, and in the St. Petersburg gubernatorial elections Beglov was also registered as a self-nominee. The main reason for this was the overwhelming anti-rating of the party in both capitals and the difficulties in campaigning associated with this fact. But after the outbreak of war this luxury became unavailable to candidates for important elected bodies — in the new ideology of military life it is crucial to show both administrative and public unity with the party, which is widely perceived as presidential. In fact, the authorities are gradually implementing the famous fascist slogan “One Party — One People — One Ruler.” In a political system such as Russia’s today, multipartyism and individual initiative are impossible even in the fictitious form in which they were developing during the pre-war period. Beglov should be the uncontested winner on the ballot, as he is perceived precisely as a protege of the Kremlin and Putin personally. This is an important signal not only to the general public, but also to the internal vertical of power, which must itself be assured of the system’s stability.
The public declaration of the stability of Beglov’s figure in the city government is also an important detail for financial arrangements with big business and property developers. The city budget continues to allocate huge amounts of money to finance new projects and subsidize existing ones, and money for landscaping is actively redistributed among contractors. In “ordinary” logic, during a war situation, budget expenditures should be reduced and redirected to the war economy, but in reality, the war becomes an excellent cover for bureaucrats to line their pockets even more than in non-war times — all the more so because there is far less need to worry about the unpopularity of such measures. Large amounts of money are being channeled not only to sign new contracts, but also to expand existing ones: for example, the cost of the M-32 highway has risen by almost a third since 2022 — from 18.4 to 23.8 billion rubles. At the annual and last for the current convocation report to the Legislative Assembly Beglov reported the construction of 17 million square meters of new housing in the city — this is more than 10% of the total housing stock at the beginning of his gubernatorial term in 2019. At the same time, the average price per square meter has almost doubled in that time, which suggests that all these new square meters have been more likely to help developers and investors than to increase the affordability of housing for the population. New construction projects are often based on existing historical buildings, and old buildings are often demolished in favor of building new houses. In 2024, a new peak of absurdity was reached: for the sake of new construction, the building of the Imperial foster home was moved 52 meters to free up expensive space on the embankment (however, the procedure of moving the house also cost money from the city budget). But this case is rather an exception: for example, the developer PIK now has plans to develop the Kuibyshev Carburator Plant in Leningrad. It is expected that the volume of development will only grow — despite the fact that about 60% of new construction remains unsold, real estate in times of war remains one of the most reliable means of keeping money, and it is unlikely that this trend will change without the influence of external factors.
“The Beglov era” in St. Petersburg perfectly encapsulates today’s Russia in general: horizontal ties and pluralism are being destroyed, public organizations and political opponents are being eliminated, elections are being rigged, and all this is accompanied by a struggle for “cosmic” budgets: multi-billion dollar construction and landscaping contracts, subsidies for manufacturing and business, etc. The citizen in St. Petersburg as a citizen in Russia is turning into a kind of cash cow — he or she is expected only to participate in trade and economic relations and pay taxes, but in no way to be a political subject or aspire to independent participation in politics. An administrative-partisan “oprichnina” is taking place: an impassable gap now lies between those who can exert influence on the collective destiny through urban governance and political participation, and those who are not allowed to do so in any way. Time will tell whether the citizens of St. Petersburg and the citizens of Russia will be able to get along with such a system.
