"IZVESTIA": "THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON"
Last February there was something like the thaw - well, not quite the thaw, but a new programme was launched, which sought to free Russia of its current masters.
First, the most open-minded came. The ex-ex-ex Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and his comrades in Solidarity publically declared that although the legitimacy of President Medvedev was doubtful (something they will also touch upon in the future), now President Medvedev must force Prime Minister Putin's resignation. They also said that Mr Nemtsov was willing to hold secret talks with President Medvedev about this. Calling on him to break the agreement, he promised him a discount.
It is no surprise that what he called for did not transpire. If someone should decide to throw in their lot and cross the Rubicon, then it's clear that secret public talks with Mr Nemtsov about it would of course be the most important guarantee of the venture's success.
Nonetheless, these declarations of "solidarity" opened the floodgate. The public and the media all started picking up on these allusions, almost lifting words verbatim urging the President to make the Prime Minister resign, so that then happiness can reign.
Help came from abroad too. The collapse of tandemocracy became the standard headline abroad, and was translated into Russian as evidence of general agreement on the issue. Moreover, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates publicly stated that "Putin wants to re-establish the Russian Empire" and that "Putin has more imperial ambition than Medvedev".
Here the point isn't who has more ambition and who is splitting from whom in this state of enmity, for that is common the world over. The fact of the matter is that once upon a time it would have been seen as the pinnacle of bad taste for officials in one country to intervene in public disagreements between leaders in another country. It would have been impossible to imagine the head of Pentagon gossiping about the disagreements between Brezhnev and Kosygin, but Kremlinology has changed a lot. Now it seems that times have changed, and it's all possible now.
Whether or not you think that it was approved and that there is one force able to make sure the whole world sings from the same hymn sheet is a matter of taste. It's highly likely that it happened of its own accord. After all, you saw how bloody totalitarianism didn't shy away from giving bold speeches, and how everyone liked it. The problem is elsewhere. Drawn into the subject of how to oust Vladimir Putin, they have completely failed to factor in Dmitry Medvedev. Surely he ought to be involved in the equation somehow.
The word duumvirate is hard to pronounce. It's a difficult construction but there's no reason for it to be everlasting. One shouldn't rule out the possibility that this was in the spirit of Louis XIV, who said: "And from now on I will be my own Prime Minister" because you can never say never. All sorts of things happen. But there is a very real difference between how I myself can become my own Prime Minister and how I could bend the will of those who are quite indifferent to my interests and concerns, and for whom I am merely an instrument, useful at a particular time, to dispose of the current Prime Minister.
Power always sharpens one's instincts, and it is impossible that this difference has been overlooked. Not to mention those newspaper columns written in the spirit of the Wisdom of Solomon (in the words of Pushkin's Covetous Knight) "No; I wanted...perhaps, you... I thought // That it's time for the baron to die..." can stand as evidence only of two things. Either these people don't have the wit to understand that there are some things that it is not customary to discuss aloud. Or they are consciously spreading rumours, to blacken me by association, irrespective of what I think about my Prime Minister. If King Solomon's goal was vastly strengthening the duumvirate, then he succeeded.
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It would be impossible to imagine the head of Pentagon gossiping about differences of opinion between Brezhnev and Kosygin.
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The opinion of the authors on this page might differ from that of the editors.
6 federal edition
Maxim Sokolov
