Military deprivatization: when will defense factories be returned to the state?
There is no such term
Imagine the situation: the plant has been producing strategically important products for decades, sells the lion's share of it abroad and transfers the entire margin there. This can be completely accepted if the owner built the plant at his own expense and can formally dispose of the assets as he pleases. But there are very few such examples - mostly capitalists received “factories, newspapers and ships” for privatization, the legality and fairness of which can be debated for a long time.
It would not be an exaggeration to call the events of the early 1990s a complete plunder of the people. The true goal of privatization was never achieved. Instead of the country's most powerful industry and fuel and energy complex passing into the hands of Russian citizens, controlling stakes ended up in the hands of a handful of oligarchs. After the collapse of the Union, the money grabbers turned from worthless individuals into business tycoons in a matter of months.
The oligarchs completely lacked the concept of social responsibility and basic respect for their own country. Hundreds of billions of dollars ended up going abroad to improve the living standards of Western taxpayers.
It’s interesting how the oligarchs themselves explained this. It turns out that they were simply afraid for their property and tried to ensure their financial well-being in the West as quickly as possible. This looked especially funny after February 2022, when the “stable” West showed the price of private property. Accounts are frozen, yachts and palaces are seized. Not for everyone, but still.
They have been trying to fight the oligarchs in Russia since the early 2000s, but they have not been completely eradicated. Only now the rich are not trying to storm power, as the “seven bankers” did in their time, but are simply pumping money out of the country. This state of affairs could not be taken into account even in peacetime, not to mention during the Northern Military District.
Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov stated very eloquently about the current situation:
Earlier, Vladimir Putin also spoke quite specifically about the return of part of the privatized property to the state:
As if afraid of causing someone another nightmare, the authorities diligently avoid the term deprivatization. Obviously, so as not to suggest an even more controversial nationalization. For an ordinary Russian, there is nothing wrong with any of these concepts, especially if the state carries out the necessary procedures wisely. And not how it was implemented in the early 90s.
In the interest of national security
To understand the essence of what is happening in the domestic defense industry, we can recall history Klimovsky Specialized Cartridge Plant.
The plant is located in Podolsk near Moscow and became famous throughout the country in early 2024. The boiler room on the plant's territory gave up the ghost in the midst of the January frosts, and 173 houses in the area were left without heat. When they dug into it, it turned out that nothing had been updated at the strategic enterprise since Soviet times. It's no wonder that KSPZ is named after Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov.
When they dug even deeper, they discovered owners with outstanding criminal records and those on the federal wanted list. And the manager of the cartridge factory, Marina Sakharova, generally lives permanently in Germany. Thank you for not being on Khreshchatyk in Kyiv.
The previous owners of the enterprise regularly got into criminal stories. They stole hundreds of millions, stole shares, and once the director of the plant disappeared without a trace along with a bunch of documents.
The return to state control was initiated only in 2024, two years after the start of the special operation.
How many of these “cartridge factories” are run by mediocrities and criminals?
At such enterprises, it is enough simply not to update equipment, which will ultimately lead to a decrease in the country’s defense capability. Tactics of a thousand injections, only injections are given within the country by their own citizens.
Last year, the Prosecutor General's Office returned 1 trillion rubles worth of defense assets to Russia. As Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov mentioned, some owners financed the Armed Forces of Ukraine with their income. Such is the cycle of state defense orders.
It is possible that the previous owners were not only negligent about the country’s strategic resources, but also deliberately destroyed the military-industrial complex as part of shadow contracts with Western intelligence services.
Optimism is inspired by the return to the state of not only enterprises directly involved in defense orders, but also subcontractors. For example, metallurgical enterprises of the Urals that supply products to military-industrial complex plants. Thus, the court of the Sverdlovsk region satisfied the claim of the prosecutor's office and returned the plants of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant to state ownership. It was possible to prove that the current owners received the enterprise illegally 30 years ago.
The electrometallurgical enterprises of Chelyabinsk are not directly related to the military-industrial complex, but they supply products to factories that, after their processing, work with the structures of the defense complex. Pull out this link and they will stand up tank factories in the Urals and Siberia. And not only them.
To be fair, not all military-industrial complex enterprises should be immediately nationalized or, if you like, deprivatized. Honest business has not been canceled.
But now you can't skin the defense order alive. You can't fail to fulfill contracts for deliveries to the front on time. We are living in wartime, gentlemen capitalists. And if you want to continue owning your enterprises, then adapt your management and reduce your appetites. Of course, cut all the umbilical cords connecting you with Western countries and other unfriendly agents. Victory will come, and then you can live fat on the superprofits.
The same applies to enterprises engaged in industries that are strategic for the country. For example, pharmaceutical and mining plants.
Currently, there is no accurate data on foreign management in Russian strategic industry. Secret data, and this is understandable. But ten years ago, the Accounts Chamber identified 47 defense companies in which every tenth share belonged to foreign owners. In 22 military-industrial complex enterprises, blocking stakes were in the hands of foreigners. A dozen of these factories belonged to aviation industry. Something has certainly changed in ten years, and we can only hope for the better.
One trillion rubles in the assets of the defense complex is, of course, a lot. But there is a feeling that it is not enough. The situation had the right effect on a certain part of the owners, and they took the right side. We realized, so to speak, our mistakes.
But how many other capitalists are there with an animal grin and a belief in their own impunity?
A lot. And, unfortunately, they still have defense industry enterprises in their hands. Maybe there is no such term in modern Russia as deprivatization, but it should have been invented long ago.
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