JOIN USPresidential race: A one-man contest in Russia?
The crowd before him was waiting to find out who would be ruling Russia next spring — Medvedev or prime minister Vladimir V Putin — a question that has paralysed this country for months. Meanwhile, a plane crash had killed this city’s elite hockey team, sending thousands of people, weeping, into the streets.
What would Medvedev do? Cancel the event? Put aside his prepared remarks and speak about the tragedy? Address the year’s devastating series of transport disasters, with their lessons about corruption and decaying infrastructure?
His choice mattered. As the more liberal partner of Russia’s ruling tandem, Medvedev still has power to guide Russia on its path between authoritarianism and reform, though it is dwindling. When the moment came, Medvedev decided to go ahead with his script, a 30-minute discourse on the state’s approach to diversity.
By the time he took his seat, the implication seemed clear: Medvedev was not prepared to fight for his job. “This was not the speech of a president — it was the lecture of a professor,” said Alexander Rahr, an expert on Russia at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “In any other country he would have used this as an opportunity to mobilise people. Either he is not allowed to do this, or he does not want to.”
Russia’s current leadership crisis was set in motion in 2008, when Putin, the country’s most powerful and popular figure, had to step down because the Russian Constitution limits a president to two consecutive terms. The solution was the ‘tandem’: the younger and more pro-western Medvedev became president and Putin moved to the post of prime minister, though he remained the most influential man in Russian politics.
The arrangement has led the political system into a blind alley. Each man has indicated that he would like to run for president in 2012, but the two have apparently not been able to reach an agreement. For months, Moscow has been consumed by the stalemate, leaving no room for discussion of the long-term challenges that Russia faces.
In a brief conversation on the sidelines of the Yaroslavl forum, Vladislav Y Surkov, the Kremlin’s pre-eminent political strategist, said the decision would be made this month.
At the centre of this crisis is the strange spectacle in which Medvedev – whose extraordinary powers are enshrined in the constitution – is forced to wait many months for Putin’s permission to declare his candidacy.
In May, the president gathered 800 journalists for a news conference that had all the trappings of a major political announcement. Then he said he could not make one.
Meanwhile, Putin has been openly gearing up for his own political campaign. These facts have not been lost on Russia’s governing class, which has been sniffing the air like so many bloodhounds. The consensus on who will rule Russia next year has been moving slowly but surely in the direction of Putin.
One of the most revealing details about Medvedev’s event in Yaroslavl this year was the list of officials who were not there — not finance minister Aleksei L Kudrin or economic development minister Elvira S Nabiullina, not even the ministers overseeing transport or emergency situations, who had actually flown to Yaroslavl to take part in a morning meeting devoted to the plane crash.
The only minister visible at the forum was foreign minister Sergey V Lavrov, who gave 1interviews to national television from the lobby at the site but was not shown in the audience when the president was speaking. What is happening, said Aleksei Mukhin, an analyst, is that political camps are gradually coming into focus.
Polarising groups
“The groups around Putin and Medvedev are polarising,” said Mukhin, the director of the Centre for Political Information in Moscow. “This is about an expression of loyalty to their leaders. There is a signalling system. On Staraya Ploshchad and in the White House – where the staffs of Putin and Medvedev have their headquarters — “they already know well who is on whose side. But now it is becoming clear to everyone.”
Nikolai Zlobin, an analyst based in Washington, said his own friends in Moscow were so wary of being perceived as endorsing Medvedev’s candidacy that they did not answer his queries about whether they planned to attend Medvedev’s political forum.
“Nobody wants to make a mistake,” Zlobin said. “And every single thing can be interpreted as pro and contra.”
There are great differences between Putin, 58, who grew up brawling with neighbourhood toughs, and Medvedev, 45, the brainy child of two academics. But Putin singled out the younger man as his successor, in part because of his loyalty. Asked repeatedly why he endorsed Medvedev for the presidency in 2007, he finally said, “I trust him; I just trust him.”
Though Putin has never criticised Medvedev, his campaign activities send the message that he no longer has full confidence in his protege.
Putin formed a new political organisation, the All-Russia People’s Front. He has held campaign appearances, pouring his heart out to steelworkers in Magnitogorsk and riding through Novorossiysk on a Harley-Davidson. Even in Yaroslavl, guests at Medvedev’s political forum were bused past a long series of billboards showing Putin’s face, with the motto “Russia Unites Us.”
Still, it would be folly to declare that Medvedev has no chance of returning as president.
Medvedev’s selection as a candidate in 2007 was similarly opaque and unpredictable. If there was a consensus that year, it favoured his rival, Sergey B Ivanov, who was then a deputy prime minister. Ivanov, a close friend of Putin’s from their days in the Leningrad directorate of the KGB, was so confident that Putin would choose him that he underwent a public-relations makeover, complete with coiffure and haberdashery.
Putin’s manoeuverings, in the end, may simply be attempts to publicly reassert his dominance before extending the tandem arrangement.
But the lesson of this summer is a sobering one: If Medvedev does stay in the presidency under those terms, he will assume a post weaker than the one he has occupied for the past four years.
Medvedev entered his first term with enthusiasm that sometimes verged on delight. Though his supporters understood that his authority was provisional, most expected him to accrue power over time, gradually paving the way for a transition to a system not oriented around Putin.
It is impossible to know whether Medvedev, who as a candidate four years ago denounced Russia’s ‘legal nihilism’ and ‘eternal corruption,’ expected to be permitted to carry out his agenda.
But it was a far more experienced man who took the lectern at Yaroslavl last week, his face a mask of weariness, and delivered a speech devoid of memorable lines.