The Prime Minister and the President have finally settled in their respective roles: one of them scares people and the other calms them down.
Whoever Mr Medvedev had in mind in reality when he used the words "scare-mongering", everybody instantly thought of Putin.
The end of the political season - the last ten days of July - was particularly indicative in that way. Dmitry Medvedev tried to wrap up the decade at a meeting in Gagarin. There he called on government officials of all levels "to stop making life a nightmare for business" and said that his speech was "giving a signal". He firmly believes that signals are very important in Russia. In this way Mr Medvedev neatly summed up the mechanisms of interaction between the Russian authorities and Russian business, the citizens and the world at large. There are two main methods of such interaction: scare-mongering and issuing signals. The combination of scares and signals forms the core of Russian capitalism and of our political life in general.
Be that as it may, the word "nightmare" is an accurate description of the style of Putin's attack on the Mechel group, which marked the start of the final decade of July. Whoever Medvedev had in mind, everybody instantly thought of Putin. It is important to bear in mind that throughout the last ten days of July scare-mongering was directed not only at the metals industry, which the representatives of the classical Putinism have been watching so closely. There was scare-mongering all over the place. It was directed at the Americans and Europeans, at the Liberals at home who were talking about a "thaw", and even perhaps partly at the Kremlin office and Dmitry Medvedev himself.
Attempts to scare the world were massive. Against the backdrop of rumours about Moscow's intention to resume military cooperation with Cuba and send strategic bombers there, a symbolic equivalent of these bombers headed for Raul Castro's Cuba: they were Igor Sechin, a prominent Russian industrialist, and Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the FSB and currently Secretary of the Security Council. They are the people widely seen as Putinism's bogeymen both in and outside Russia. Their political function is to be "worse than Putin". The very appearance in Cuba of Putin's leading Cheka men to the accompaniment of lip service to "relations of trust initiated by the previous generations", was undoubtedly aimed at scaring the Americans by reminding them of the Caribbean crisis.
In the meantime, back in Moscow, an unnamed high-ranking Foreign Ministry official busied himself trying to scare the world. Responding to the US presidential candidate's call to expel Russia from the G8, the source threatened the States to break off all cooperation and bilateral relations. In what should now be called true "Prime Minister's style" the source said that Russia would decide for itself "who to be friends with, who to go to bed with and who to kick out", and issued a stern warning to the Americans to vote thoughtfully in the presidential elections so that they wouldn't regret it afterwards.
But this was not the main message of the high-ranking official. His words to the effect that in the event of further deterioration of relations Russia would not consider itself to be bound by any commitments and would act as it sees fit undoubtedly were synchronised with Messrs Sechin and Patrushev's journey to the Cuban shores. But his words about who today determines the Russian foreign policy sounded in unison with Vladimir Putin's famous remarks about the Mechel group and the health of its CEO.
Vremya Novostei quoted the Foreign Ministry source as saying that "Vladimir Putin may even be more influential in the field of foreign policy as Prime Minister because he is doing real business, he is dealing with what Russia will be like in 5 to 10 years' time. He is more involved in it than the President".
And indeed, whatever the whispering about Putin's fit of temper, hints about Sechin's intrigues, Chemezov's plan and possible restructuring of ownership in the metals industry, the main thrust of the attack on the Mechel group was to demonstrate who does "real business" in Russia today. There is no doubt that in Putin's Russia the man who does "real business" is the one who can dictate to whom goods should be sold and at what prices, what agencies should audit which companies at any point in time, who should merge with whom and who would do well to divorce. Not least, who should be ill and who shouldn't. He is the man who can send a company's shares plummeting 40% within two days because the market knows who calls the shots and decides whether a company will exist or not and how it will exist.
One has to admit of course that the representatives of the new Kremlin-Medvedev brand of Putinism - "Putinism with a human face" so to speak - behaved in a timid but staunch way. They sent signals. They sent positive signals to business, investors and the world community, the very people who were the objects of scare-mongering, but pretending not to notice the scare-mongers as if they existed in a parallel reality and even afraid to look their way for fear of being scared themselves. This, then, was what the last ten days of the season was like: some were scare-mongering and others were signalling.
Be that as it may, ever since the shingles at the Kremlin and at Government House were changed last spring, two questions remained. First, who would lay down the rules for big Russian business and how; in other words, who will hold the keys to the redistribution of property? And second, who and how will determine foreign policy. Under President Putin's system of power both were unquestioned prerogatives of the Kremlin and the main factors of his unchallenged political dominance. It so happened that two unambiguous answers to the main political intrigue of the season were provided "under the wire" in the last ten days of July. They were direct and even crude, with no mincing of words. It was as if somebody was angry that some people still did not get it who was number one.