Churov stood out among the rulers of the time – both with his good-natured bearded face and the mannerisms of an old-fashioned intellectual.
Vladimir Churov, who died suddenly, was part of Vladimir Putin’s “St. Petersburg team”. “The team” is a collective concept, it included different people, often unrelated to each other, and who were united only by their knowledge of the current Russian president.
Some of its members are “Leningrad Chekists”, Putin’s KGB colleagues – Patrushev, Bortnikov, Naryshkin, Ivanov, Yakunin. Others are colleagues from the town hall, Gref, Kudrin, Kozak, Mutko, Mezentsev. Others are just childhood friends, classmates, like Roldugin, Bastrykin, Rotenberg. Fourth – St. Petersburg businessmen of the 90s, Kovalchuk, Fursenko, Timchenko. But there were also fifth ones – the “inner circle”, Putin’s subordinates in the external relations committee of the office of the mayor of St. Petersburg – Miller, Sechin, Zubkov, Entaltseva, to some extent Medvedev can also give them be assigned. And this group included Vladimir Churov.
Contrary to all of the above, he did not make a special career in Moscow, more precisely, he did not play a significant role in state power, and he aimed least at obtaining positions. The very tenure as head of the Central Electoral Commission was half a cakewalk, half the fulfillment of a personal order from the head of state to “supervise” the elections. Of course, in the domestic politics of that time, Surkov and other officials played a much larger role than Churov. But he held a public position and, by virtue of that, remained in the public eye.
His life was typical of a representative of the scientific and technical intelligentsia of that time. A physicist by training, he simultaneously received training as a journalist, loved history, especially military history (after all, the son of an officer). In 1990, during perestroika, he went into politics, was elected deputy to the Leningrad city council, where Sobchak noticed him and suggested in 1991, during the creation of a commission for external relations in the mayor’s office, to go to work – under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.
Churov worked well with the latter and even served as his deputy for some time. The Committee played an important role, since it was in one person something like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Trade under the office of the mayor. Yesterday’s creator proved to be a diligent public servant. In 2003, Churov was brought to the Duma on the lists of the Liberal Democratic Party, it is clear at whose request, and in 2007, when the question arose of the new chairman of the Central Election Commission, they proposed his candidacy.
Churov stood out among the rulers of the time – both with his good-natured bearded face and the mannerisms of an old-fashioned intellectual. He looked neither like a severe chekist nor like an effective manager of a new formation. And maybe that’s why he’s attracted so much press and public attention.
Send “thank you grandpa for the win” memes and other jokes. Churov, although he himself is a journalist and writer, does not like publicity and thus contributes to the emergence of all sorts of rumors. In addition, then there was a final transition to the current model of the political system, with attempts to “strengthen” as in 2011, and this circumstance influenced the opposition, which found its target in the image of Churov , which looked like Santa Claus.
They were afraid to touch the president or Surkov, but not him. Another important circumstance was that the Duma elections of 2011, which were organized by Churov, became particularly acute and even scandalous due to the dual power at the top. The official president was Dmitry Medvedev, also an old acquaintance of Churov, and the real prime minister was Vladimir Putin. This design with two kings, a junior and a senior, as it was then customary to say, complicated the management of the country, which is why Bolotnaya happened.
And it was Churov who must have unraveled and bumped – a nominal number in many ways. He was even played by prank bloggers who supposedly called him on behalf of the president with a resignation message, he seemed so safe to joke around that way. In 2016, Churov left the Central Election Commission, where he was replaced by another nominal personality, and disappeared from sight, although he was not retired, but in the Foreign Ministry as as roving ambassador.
In general, we can say that Vladimir Churov was a good person, he was very exalted by fate, but he did not become arrogant, did not lose his head, remained modest and self-critical, soberly evaluating himself. He stood out among the rest of the St. Petersburg team with his intelligence, innocent hobbies. If perestroika had not happened, Churov would have worked until old age as a designer of space technologies, and almost no one except family members would have known about him. But fate gave him a chance to change his life, and he took advantage of that chance.
Vladimir Churov dies: from space designer to assistant to the Central Executive Committee, he
