Ruling United Russia party replaces its disgraced ideology chief

Duma Session file photo

(Interfax – Moscow, November 13, 2013) The issues of ideology in the United Russia party will be now overseen by deputy secretary of the party’s general council and a deputy speaker of the State Duma, Sergey Zheleznyak, instead of Andrey Isayev.

“By the decision of the presidium of the general council, which met today, our commission for preparing party cadres, programme and ideological work as well as promotional and propaganda work,” the secretary of the general council of United Russia, a State Duma deputy speaker, Sergey Neverov, told Interfax on Wednesday [13 November].

The membership of Andrey Isayev in the presidium of the general council was earlier suspended. He also stepped down as a deputy secretary of the general council in connection with the widely published incident in St Petersburg airport, where his drunken aide was taken off an aircraft.

Neverov noted that Zheleznyak had for a long time headed one of the ideological platforms of the party and is taking part in developing decisions adopted by United Russia. “He is a creative person,” Neverov stressed.

In addition to this, a decision was taken on Wednesday that the role of the coordinator of the party project Civil University will go to the head of the State Duma education committee, a member of the Supreme Council of the party, Vyacheslav Nikonov.

Neverov said that Vyacheslav Nikonov can certainly build the process of teaching in this university from the organizational and methodical point of view as he not only heads of the Duma committee for education but also heads a department at the faculty of state administration in the MGU [Moscow State University].

“In addition to this, Nikonov is one of the leading political scientists of the country and could bring the most modern content to the project,” Neverov said.

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