Over the past week, Dmitry Medvedev has demonstrated that he is capable of making broad gestures.
Almost a year after being elected President, Dmitry Medvedev granted his first pardons. Last Thursday, he pardoned 12 people who had been convicted of crimes along the lines of petty theft. Had he considered the issue a little longer, these people would have been set free without his pardons, because they were serving terms of between one and two years. Yet even this news was perceived by many as a sign of an approaching thaw. Mr Medvedev's predecessor, Vladimir Putin, granted pardons more and more reluctantly with each passing year, effectively eliminating the institution of pardon.
Тhe pardons were the fourth act of a play Medvedev performed last week, thus increasing excitement over the possibility of a thaw. Monday brought the first sensation: Mr Medvedev gave an interview to the Russian printed media for the first time, choosing the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Tuesday witnessed Mr Medvedev's meeting with democratically minded economists from the Institute of Modern Development, which is thought to be the only think tank close to the President. On Wednesday he had a three-hour talk with human rights activists, who voiced strong demands and asked probing questions.
"This is of course no coincidence," says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, the head of the centre for the study of the elite, who was formerly an independent liberal expert and is now a member of the United Russia party. "In reality, coincidences like this do not just happen: Mr Medvedev had decided to demonstrate to everyone that he was more democratic than people had thought, and that on the whole, he was capable of making broad gestures. In fact he devoted a whole week to them."
Monday. Day 1.
The biggest news, of course, was the interview. Mr Putin once said of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya that her murder had caused more damage to the state than her articles. In January, when a young contributor to the same newspaper, Anastasia Baburova, was killed along with lawyer Stanislav Markelov, Mr Medvedev waited before receiving Dmitry Muratov, the newspaper's editor, and former President Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the newspaper's shareholders, at the Kremlin. Mr Muratov says it was Gorbachev who suggested that Medvedev grant an interview, a proposal to which the President agreed. Two months later Mr Muratov received a call from the President's press service.
The meeting took place at the presidential residence in Gorki near Moscow. The interview could be described as a relaxed conversation. Mr Muratov quoted his favourite philosopher, Merab Mamardashvili, while Mr Medvedev quoted David Hume. The editor of Novaya Gazeta believes the Kremlin was pleased that the interview was so informal. "It was an easy and cheerful meeting", he said, quoting his interlocutor, a member of the Kremlin Executive Office. "They wanted the newspaper that does not reflect the official point of view to ask questions that should have been answered long ago," said Mr Muratov, explaining the Kremlin's motivation. He handed the President a letter from journalist Ilya Barabanov, whose colleague and wife, Natalya Morar, a Moldavian citizen, has been expelled from Russia and has not been allowed back. Mr Medvedev did not alter the transcript of the interview. "He changed four words, made four stylistic changes," said Mr Muratov.
After the interview, the President explained that of all the newspapers, he had chosen to grant an interview to Novaya Gazeta, because it had never sucked up to anybody. Mr Muratov regretted having switched off his tape recorder too early, but Mr. Medvedev allowed him to quote him from memory.
Tuesday. Day 2.
Mr Medvedev's visit to the Institute of Modern Development (INSOR - Russian acronym) was devoted to the specific issue of efforts against unemployment. But because it was just his second visit to INSOR after being elected, it was also a gesture of sorts. The first visit took place a year earlier. "The authorities don't only need compliments, don't only need to be sucked up to by the expert community," Medvedev said on that occasion. Since then, INSOR came to be closely associated with the President, and is widely believed to be the think tank that is closest to him.
INSOR considers itself a liberal think tank. Its head, Igor Yurgens, even criticized Mr Putin for last summer's sharp attacks on the Mechel corporation, which caused its share prices to plummet, saying "That is not the way to behave". Liberal economist Yevgeny Gontmakher, a member of INSOR, recently wrote a pointed futuristic article entitled "Novocherkassk-2009", for which he was ostracized by the pro-Kremlin Young Guard movement. On Tuesday, after the meeting, Mr Gontmakher was interviewed, probably for the first time ever, by Channels 1 and 2.
The conversation at INSOR was not made public. One expert who participated in the meeting told Newsweek that Mr Medvedev was in effect presented with a "programme for the country's social modernisation", in other words a plan of action that could be described as the "Medvedev plan". If one remembers that United Russia campaigned in the autumn 2007 elections on a platform of the "Putin Plan", calling something the "Medvedev plan" could be seen as a challenge to Mr Putin.
Wednesday, Day 3.
The first speaker at a meeting of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society was economist Alexander Auzan. He began by quoting from Mr Medvedev's interview to Novaya Gazeta about an alleged unspoken agreement between society and the state: freedom in exchange for sausages. "You have said that a new framework is required that could combine affluence and freedom," Mr Auzan reminded President Medvedev.
The Wednesday meeting lasted three and a half hours, making it the longest of the week's meetings. It was also the liveliest. The human rights activists were vocal in their opinions, and the authorities may have been unaccustomed to hearing many of those opinions. During a conversation concerning the tough law limiting the activities of non-profit organisations that was passed three years ago, Mr Medvedev reassured the activists that, "In a lot of cases their activities have been unreasonably restricted." The President also added that the law should be amended, ordering a commission to be formed for that purpose. Mr Medvedev also said that there was a sense that all the non-profit organisations were enemies of the state, which was not what anyone had wanted.
Human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva asked permission for the opposition to hold its rallies in Red Square, something she has been campaigning for over 40 years, ever since she and her comrades staged a protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Mr Medvedev said he would think about creating something analogous to London's Hyde Park in Moscow. Mrs Alexeyeva later told Newsweek that the President was joking. "Measures should be taken to change the climate in the country," pleaded Alexei Simonov, President of the Glasnost Fund. He was of course referring to the political climate.
Television anchor Svetlana Sorokina, who was also present at the meeting, recalled that Tamara Morshchakova, a former judge on the Constitutional Court, spoke about reforming the judiciary, to which President listened attentively, reacted promptly and promised support. Irina Yasina, an economist and human rights activist, again brought up the issue of Natalya Morar. Svetlana Sorokina discussed the fate of Svetlana Bakhmina, and the problem of granting pardons in general. The conversation drifted towards the topic of mercy. "I would like to hope, like Irina, that we are not living in the most merciless of countries. I dearly hope so," Ms Sorokina told the President.
This week the court will again consider the issue of releasing Svetlana Bakhmina on bail. "When the name of Bakhmina was mentioned, the President's face betrayed no emotions," Ms Sorokina says, "Absolutely nothing. It was the same when the name of Morar was mentioned. I think he has learned to maintain a poker face. But of course he listened attentively." An expert close to human rights activists later recalled how Mr Putin held similar meetings at the start of his first presidential term: "He listened and argued. He defended his opinion. For example, with regard to Chechnya." Mr Medvedev did not argue with the human rights activists at all, which the expert found suspicious.
The following day the Western press came to the conclusion that Mr Medvedev was developing his own policies, and was distancing himself from the politicians with backgrounds in the military or the security services, who are called siloviki in the Western press. Russian political analysts are not so starry-eyed about Mr Medvedev's liberal week. "Hopefully this is not just a bit of theatre," says Olga Kryshtanovskaya.
Maria Guseva, Artyom Zheleznov
