The political tandem is a year old: Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as President and Vladimir Putin became the head of Government in May of last year. Ever since then, the future of the tandem has been a key issue. Some believe that it is about to collapse, some think that such a collapse could never happen...
Diversity of opinion
There are as many opinions as there are people.
One opinion has it that Dmitry Medvedev is a figurehead, and the country is still run by Vladimir Putin.
"Many observers have assumed that Mr Medvedev is a caretaker president, who will stay in power until Mr Putin...wants his job back," as the British Financial Times wrote recently. That will happen no later than 2012. This means that Medvedev's presidency is little more than a ploy to assure Putin's third and fourth terms.
Another opinion has it that Mr Medvedev is gradually gaining political weight, and that "a showdown" between him and Putin will happen sooner or later. "Loyal Putinites" are convinced that if Mr Medvedev decides to sort out "who is the boss", it would be the death of his political career. Mr Putin is stronger, and he will not forgive such disloyalty. "Loyal Putinites" are opposed by "loyal Medvedevites", who, after a year's peaceful coexistence between the two chief executives, have also begun to appear. In their opinion, the sooner the difference is established between "the old and the new", (which refers both to concepts and to people) the better. According to their thinking, Mr Medvedev is a champion of reform, and Mr Putin is a conservative. Reform is better than conservatism, so the future belongs to Mr Medvedev.
In accordance with the latter idea, the only thing that Mr Medvedev has been doing so far is "sending signals to society". All the signals are of a liberal nature without exception, simply because Mr Medvedev cannot rely on anybody but the liberals' support. "Beyond the debate about whether Mr. Medvedev is sincere, there is another issue: does he have the power to carry out significant changes in civil liberties, political pluralism and related matters, especially during the financial crisis?" The question has been posed by The New York Times, which in this case clearly supports the "Medvedevites".
Acceleration and glasnost
There is no doubt that Vladimir Putin himself laid the groundwork for his successor to be perceived as more liberal than he. And he therefore also prompted speculation about the differences between him and his successor, which would grow all the time.
This was the reason behind Mr Putin's electoral speech to United Russia activists at Luzhniki, in which he referred to those who "grovel for hand outs from foreign embassies". To say nothing of Medvedev, after that speech even Mr Putin himself would look a liberal. This is especially true in the West, which seems most of all to be interested in making comparisons between the two men.
And so "Medvedev's liberalism" is the result of Mr Putin's actions. First of all, he selected a person with a corresponding image as his successor (with all due respect for Sergei Ivanov, the First Deputy Prime Minister would not have fit the image). Second, before he left his post as President, he himself said and let others say a lot of "illiberal" things. Third, he gave his heir ample opportunity for "liberal" action. For example, Ms Bakhmina, a former lawyer at Yukos, could have been released on bail earlier, but was released only now; reasonable members of the opposition could have been put on the Presidential Human Rights Council under Putin, but this has been done only recently; 12 convicts could have been pardoned early last year, but they were only pardoned early this year; and the list goes on.
As the American Newsweek correctly observed, "despite the apparent differences between the presidencies of Putin and his handpicked successor, there are few signs of any real disagreement between the two men, personally or politically."
Perestroika
That having been said, Mr Medvedev is no mere "liberal function" of Mr Putin, a kind of "cardboard cut-out liberal". This is not the case.
The whole point is that, as has become abundantly clear during the last year, Mr Medvedev is also a person open to transformations. Only, one should not confuse transformations (reasonable restructuring of existing arrangements) and a "wrecking" of everything. Mr Medvedev is an advocate of transformations in the former sense. And this, contrary to speculation, does not divide the tandem, but probably even strengthens it.
It is worth recalling that Mr Putin admitted on more than one occasion that the system he had passed on to Mr Medvedev was far from perfect. Its two main features are corruption and inefficiency. From that perspective, Mr Medvedev's "liberal signals" do not contradict Mr Putin's "course". It is true that their styles are different. But then Mr Medvedev himself is not a carbon copy of Vladimir Putin. If he were, it would call to mind the hackneyed phrase that ‘history repeats itself twice, the second time as a farce'. Obviously, this was not Mr Putin's aim. Transition of power in Russia should look serious, he reasoned quite correctly. After all, Mr Putin is a very serious man.
The human factor
It has to be said that all the speculation as to "who is more important to History" is only relevant to the elite. The population at large has little interest in the problem of the "unity and struggle of opposites" in Russian politics, and is happy with the official version that "between Putin and Medvedev, everything has been and will continue to be fine".
In that sense, the financial crisis merely deepened people's political apathy. The need to survive and adapt to the new conditions automatically sidelined political topics. It would be naïve to expect that the effects of the financial crisis would prompt people to become more politically active, at least as far as issues concerning its most important figures. One need look no further than the experience of the no less difficult 1990s, when ordinary people went about their daily business and left the political games to the politicians.
In the mind of the average citizen, arguments as to what will happen to the tandem, and whether Putin and Medvedev will quarrel in the medium term are exactly these sorts of "political games".
As one of Mikhail Bulgakov's heroines replied when asked whether she was a man or a woman, "What difference does it make, comrade?"
New thinking
Putin and Medvedev are even less likely to quarrel simply because there are no real reasons for them to do so. By contrast, there many reasons for them to want to be seen as a strong partnership of like-minded people.
It is true that one can point to some minor conflicts between the two men's staffs. But these conflicts have not been between the two men themselves. It is also true that Medvedev looks more liberal. But it would be foolish to think that "Medvedev's liberal steps" in politics, which are largely confined to media echo chamber, can spoil the personal chemistry between the two members of the tandem.
Barring personal attacks of either of them on the other, (which are not in their interests because one of them brought the other to the Kremlin, and the other is a pupil of the former and has himself appointed him Prime Minister), a rift between them is unlikely.
In addition, it has long been noted that Mr Putin does not see politics as a battle of ideas. He approaches an issue either technically or personally (hence the imputed division of people into "friends and foes", "team members and outsiders", etc). Judging by everything, it seems that Mr Medvedev is no Yeltsin of the late 1980s: he will not burn the bridges that link him with the team that has nurtured him and the leader of said team. Being a pragmatist, Medvedev sees no point in that.
So, the "Medvedev thaw" is not a mild rejection of Putin's legacy, but rather the result of coordinated action. That is, action to which both members of the tandem agree.
Mr Medvedev's liberal image, far from threatening Putin, is useful for him. Especially since one cannot come to power in Russia and stay there by being liberal. The siloviki will see him as an alien, "another Gorbachev who surrendered everything", and the liberals, as is always the case in Russian history, will accuse him of being insincere and half-hearted.
* * *
"Medvedev's liberalism" is first and foremost the result of Putin's own action. That image, far from threatening Putin, is useful for him.
Vladimir Rudakov