On June 14, Boris Berezovsky presented the Russian media, who had already prepared to get to know in the summer in the absence of news, a real sensation-retort. During the teleconference with the team of the Kommersant Publishing House, he said that he decided to change the leadership of the ID. According to the oligarch, Kommersant stagnated, and the new leadership is designed to realize the great potential, which the owner found from the most influential print publication of Russia.

Kommersant and oligarch Boris Berezovsky announced the change of leadership to the Kommersant Publishing House

It is obvious to any Russian-speaking person who at least ever looked at the pages of the Russian press, that in 1999, Boris Berezovsky became the owner of not just a large, but the best newspaper of Russia. The Kommersant created in 1989 set the new standard of Russian journalism: its style and presentation were copied, its headlines were quoted, the slogans of advertising campaigns retold each other as jokes, friendly and not very editions tried to get its journalists. In a word, Kommersant was a number one brand. They remained, despite the numerous rearrangements in the leadership and regularly arising rumors about the imminent closure, sale, decay, and then everywhere.

In the distant 99th Berezovsky, who had not yet left Russia, speaking to the employees, said that under no circumstances would intervene in the editorial policy, limiting himself to the modest role of the owner. Of course, for six years, circumstances could change, but last May, holding a traditional press conference with journalists of the publication, Berezovsky said that he considers Kommersant one of the last Russian media, regardless of the Kremlin, and repeated that he was not going to Neither sell Kommersant, nor change the editor -in -chief of Kommersant or the structure of the leading composition of the publishing house as a whole. What has changed over the past year?

If we talk about the ID, then nothing. The newspaper remains the leader of the Russian media, the magazines Power and Money, in the general opinion, are the most authoritative weekly in the country, and neither the updated light nor the Russian version of Newsweek could compete with them. The newspaper also did not come close to the Kremlin – she was not seen in the silence of events, she did not sing praise to Vladimir Putin, and Andrei Kolesnikov’s reports on the life of the president and his entourage are still murderous ironic.

Perhaps only the colossal lawsuit of Alfa-Bank shook the position of Kommersant, however, even from this situation, the publishing house came out with the least losses – after almost a year of proceedings, Alfa-Bank, by a court decision, returned to the publishing house 270 million rubles paid earlier in as compensation. And if this is not called prosperity, but stagnation, then such stagnation can only be wished upon by the majority of Russian print media.

However, Boris Berezovsky, suddenly sensing that fresh blood would not interfere with the publication, decided to intervene in the editorial policy and change the leadership of the publishing house. He even tried to explain his decision by some considerations that Kommersant had begun to lose ground in the media market to Vedomosti. Perhaps he is inferior in some respects, but it is hard to believe that certain feelings that the oligarch has formulated can be the main motive for changing the leadership of the ID.

Versions of why BAB needed this will multiply exactly until the day when Berezovsky announces the name of the new general director, and until then those who know will be silent, and the unknowing will wonder whether Berezovsky is preparing the publication for sale or intends to turn Kommersant into a battle sheet in in the light of the upcoming elections, does he really want to open two more national Kommersants in addition to the Ukrainian one (for example, in Latvian and Georgian) or in such a non-trivial way he decided to once again refresh his modest name in the memory of the readers of the Russian press. All versions will turn out to be delusional precisely because Boris Berezovsky, like no one else, succeeds in multi-way combinations with an unpredictable outcome.

What is clear so far is that Boris Berezovsky is being cunning when he claims that the reason for the change of leadership at Kommersant is the desire to strengthen the new Kommersant-Ukraine, while expressing complete satisfaction with the work of the Russian publishing house. He is cunning, because the satisfied owners of top managers do not change, because the culprit of stagnation is not appointed as the leader of a new project, because fresh blood is usually not needed to win back a business niche, because such positions are not vacated for empty space, finally, because the subsidiary is never more important than the parent company.

The fate of the general director and editor-in-chief of the united editorial office of the Kommersant publishing house has already been determined – Vasilyev will go to Kyiv, but the fate of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Alexander Stukalin will entirely depend on the new leaders, whose names Berezovsky promises to name in a few days. And that name or names will most likely be a big surprise too. On Tuesday, Demyan Kudryavtsev, Vladislav Borodulin, Mikhail Mikhailin, Andrey Kolesnikov, Raf Shakirov, Tatyana Koshkareva and Rustam Narzikulov, and even Leonid Miloslavsky managed to visit the candidates for the place of Vasiliev. However, those very 15 years, which, as it was said, “is not a time limit for a real Kommersant”, showed that no matter who is in the post of general director, Kommersant will survive – apparently, its creator Vladimir put too much margin of safety into this publication Yakovlev.