Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill once described viewing the Kremlin’s political machinations as like watching a fight among bulldogs under a carpet; outsiders hear plenty of growling but have few clues about the outcome until the victor emerges. Soviet times or no, the analogy was present in the minds of those who tried to make sense of the twists and turns – and surprises – ultimately leading to the nomination of Dmitri Medvedev by the incumbent president to be his successor – with the Russian electorate offered the chance to cast – or withhold – a vote on 2 March 2008. In the case of Dmitry Medvedev, once he had been anointed in mid-December 2007 by Putin, public consent was less of a drama. Medvedev, when running for election, was in a one-horse race. Putin’s backing virtually assured Medvedev of the chief prize. In addition the Kremlin made sure, through applying gentle and not so gentle pressure by the police and the internal intelligence services that the media were restrained and that no outsider had much of a chance in the run-up to the electoral contest.
In fact the elections were stage-managed but not manufactured. Russian imaginations were hardly set alight. Apart from Medvedev, the other candidates on the ballot paper were communist and nationalist has-beens and a little known liberal who praised Medvedev. There were no serious competitors; those who were on the list only served the purpose of underlining the reasonableness of the Kremlin’s official candidate. A few weeks before the elections Mikhail Kasianov, until 2004 Putin’s reform-minded prime minister and the best hope for Russia’s marginalized liberals, had been barred from taking part on a formality: the authorities insisted that some signatures on his list were forged. Kasyanov spoke of a ‘coordinated campaign of pressure’. To preserve a façade of public enthusiasm the Kremlin put pressure on people to go and cast their vote, thus underlining the popular character of the elections. In the end, Medvedev collected close to 70 per cent of the vote – a far cry from the hollow 99 per cent usually announced after Soviet ‘elections’. The pessimistic interpretation is that the elections were a demonstration of Kremlin control over hearts and minds. The optimistic interpretation would be that Russia is in transition, that ‘administered democracy’, as the Kremlin coined the phrase, is better than no democracy and that at least the basic principle of democratic legitimacy had been upheld. Only time will tell which interpretation carries more truth.
But stating that the elections did not spring any surprises is not to say that what comes after the election in terms of policies and personalities will be a foregone conclusion. Putin himself, when asked about becoming prime minister, had answered: ‘Quite a realistic proposal.’ But to Russians and non-Russians alike the idea of having the Tsarevitch in the Kremlin and the Tsar in the White House sounds unlikely, and is indeed fraught with uncertainty. The last thing Russians want is to put at risk the precious stability they have gained over the last eight or so years. The newfound well-being is mostly a function of soaring oil prices. But in the imagination of most Russians it is, above all, a product of Putin’s statesmanship. Dual rule? For most Russians this would herald a new time of troubles.
Who is Mr Medvedev?
Medvedev himself seems to have felt this unspoken question when, immediately after thanking the President for his nomination he added that, surely, once elected, he would need advice and support from Vladimir Putin. Was this an excessive measure of humility, or the indication of an early deal to step down after a while and make room for the predecessor to be his own successor? Or, most likely, was it simply an indication that even the masters of the Kremlin were not sure of what would come next? Before and after the election, the opaque nature of Russian politics keeps Russians guessing – and the rest of the world too.
The battle for the presidency could have been cut short by the incumbent himself had he followed earlier suggestions from United Russia activists simply to manufacture a two-thirds majority in the Duma, change the letter of the constitution – perfectly legal if a two-thirds majority so wishes – and allow himself a third term, possibly of long duration. This would have answered the universal call for stability, prevented any scramble to succeed the incumbent and answered the question on everybody’s mind as to what the former president would do after leaving the innermost sanctum of the Kremlin: not leave the Kremlin.
Throughout 2007, speculation about who would succeed Putin as president concentrated on two candidates: Dmitri Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov. In early summer 2007 Ivanov was promoted from defence minister to first deputy prime minister with responsibility for setting up Russia’s future industrial policy – nanotechnology capturing much imagination and most of the funds – creating national champions, inviting foreign direct investment and know-how but also for keeping foreigners away from the keys of industrial power.
Medvedev, a jurist by training, once leapt to Putin’s defence when he was under investigation in St Petersburg for some shady real estate transactions. Easy-going, soft-spoken and elegant in appearance – the Boston Globe newspaper named him best-dressed politician, and with style – Medvedev is well versed in the world economy and seems to understand Russia’s role in it. At the Davos World Economic Forum in February 2007 he pronounced every article of the liberal credo. Medvedev also set himself apart from Putin by insisting that he believed in democracy without any specifications – distancing himself from Putin’s Russian-style ‘sovereign democracy’ – and that he ultimately believed in the regulatory power of the markets over the wisdom of the state bureaucracy. This should not be taken as a flirtation with rebellion but as an indication that Medvedev could be more than his master’s voice. His experience in addressing the paramount needs of people across the country must have informed him about the real state of the country beyond the deceptive glitter of Moscow and St Petersburg. In Davos he spoke about the need to diversify the economy, to restore run-down infrastructure, to develop human capital. He knows that this cannot be done by fiat, and that it will take time and a lot of energy, not to mention serious cooperation with the West. He mentioned the danger in Russia’s one-dimensional dependence on energy production and energy prices. On the scourge of corruption he was as brutally outspoken as Putin – and as bewildered as Putin. In all of this, the decline of the Russian population, and what to do about it, will be his greatest worry.
Surely, Medvedev presented himself not as a Eurasian ideologue but as a Western-type businessman. If Davos man had had a say in the Kremlin’s appointments policy here was the man who seemed to share his language and his pro-business philosophy, wearing elegant suits flown in from Berlin and English shirts, soft spoken and intelligent, with pleasant manners, liking heavy metal and presenting the civilized, European face of post-Soviet Russia. Had a vote been taken at Davos, Medvedev would have won hands down.
But what carried the day at Davos needed a Russian translation, and Medvedev gave it, a fortnight before he was to be elected president, at Krasnoyarsk, a well-to-do city in the very heart of Siberia, not far from Novosibirsk. There he outlined what in the West would pass as an election; he shied away from precise commitments but indicated the general direction for Russia, provided always that world energy markets would continue to fuel for Russia’s economic miracle. He talked about the ‘Four Is’: Infrastructure, Innovation, Investment, Institutions. While it took Medveder forty-five minutes to outline his programme, Putin took away the limelight by holding, live on national TV, a four-hour presidential press conference – his last one, for the time being. Medvedev, most likely, was not amused.