Farewell to epoch? Experts discussed the resignation of Valentin Yumashev

As Novye Izvestiya has already reported, Boris Yeltsin's son-in-law Valentin Yumashev resigned from his post as an adviser to the President of the Russian Federation on a voluntary basis. This news inevitably caused a lot of comments in the expert community, since Yumashev was considered almost the last prominent politician who remained in the current configuration of power from the Yeltsin era. Opinions on this matter vary, but there are those who believe that such public figures as Chubais or Yumashev, who Putin inherited from the Family, simply go into the shadows, delegating their functionality of contacts to non-public figures.

However, analyst Yaroslav Ignatovsky advises waiting for an official statement from Yumashev himself: “The departure of Valentin Yumashev does not mean at all that absolutely all relations with the elites of the Yeltsin era have now been broken. His departure may be related to health problems at all, therefore, before the announcement of the official position of Yumashev himself, all talk about the elites and a break with the past is guesswork.

In general, the increasingly frequent talk about a break with the times and cadres of the Yeltsin period is not entirely clear. It seems that the huge building of the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, financed by the state, the widespread perpetuation of Yeltsin's associates and even the nostalgia for "free times" slipping through some - all this is not noticed by those colleagues who speak of a break with the era and politicians of that time.

We have already written about this, and we can repeat it again: the political elite that grew up under the first president of the Russian Federation still has many levers of government, despite all the rhetoric of opposing the dashing 90s”.

Kommersant's political commentator Dmitry Drize believes that Yumashev's time has already passed:

“People like Yumashev, in fact, are representatives of some past life. At the same time, one cannot say that they embody Western or, even worse, liberal values, that they are democrats or conservatives, conciliators with the government or, conversely, its fierce opponents. It can be assumed that, from the point of view of elementary efficiency, such concepts as freedom, free or independent, albeit in part, are useful for the state, and not vice versa, even if we approach this exclusively from pragmatic positions - this is the first thing.

And secondly, one reality, apparently, is leaving. But what comes to replace it is not entirely clear. And this is the main cause for concern. Although, of course, we understand the complexity of the current historical stage..."

Experts of the Kremlin Mamkoved channel believe that a unique situation is emerging for modern Russia:

“The adoption of amendments to the Constitution destroyed the foundations of the system built by Yeltsin from scratch, and the dismissal of his son-in-law put an end to interpersonal relations, which remained the last bridge to the pre-Putin period.

The current regime has become so autonomous that it has lost the need to rely on time-tested principles. New elites will take the place of the Yeltsin elites, and the collapsed political structure will be replaced by a new model, which is being built right now. The nineties, stretching like a red thread through the entire Putin's twenty years, are in the past..."

Political scientist Sergey Kharisov also sees a significant change in this departure:

“The current System has actually ousted its forefathers, the constitutional referendum buried the Yeltsin constitutional model, and now even personal contact has been destroyed…”

But political scientist Maxim Zharov advises to pay attention to another character left over from the Yelitz era:

“A marker by which one can determine the real position of the Family in all intra-elite combinations in Russia is Alexander Voloshin. It is his departure that will mean that the Family is leaving all intra-elite coalitions and combinations".