The situation gave rise to the rebirth of Kremlinology, long dead since the days when people like me used to pore over photographs of Politburo line-ups on Red Square, or count how many words Pravda dedicated to various up and coming Soviet leaders. It did not escape attention that in January 2007 Medvedev received a warm welcome for a relatively liberal-sounding speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, nor that it was just five days after accompanying Putin to Munich in February that Sergei Ivanov was promoted to the same rank as Medvedev.
The new Kremlinologists, including those working in the Kremlin itself, fearful for their own futures, avidly debated the merits of the two contenders. Medvedev was seen as perhaps too liberal or weak (though, on the other hand, that might be exactly what Putin was looking for, to project a softer image abroad). Ivanov was a silovik, surely closer to Putin, who had promoted so many spies and military men in the past years… but then again, perhaps he was too strong, too much of his own man, too much of a threat. Might Putin even allow them to stand against each other, representing different facets of the establishment? Or would Putin finally change the rules and run for a third term?
It was Ivanov who seemed to be being groomed for the top job, shown more often on television, travelling more often with Putin, haranguing the West in Putin-like tones. Opinion polls, to the extent that they could be believed, put Medvedev marginally ahead of him until June, when the ex-spy pulled ahead by about four points.
Suddenly, on 12 September, Putin pulled off an excruciatingly bad piece of political theatre, in which the prime minister Mikhail Fradkov was shown on television walking into the president’s office and falling – metaphorically and rather clumsily – on his sword. ‘In view of the political processes going on at the moment,’ Fradkov mumbled, ‘I want you to have complete freedom in your decisions and appointments. So I want to take the initiative and free up the position of prime minister so that you have a free hand in configuring your cabinet as you see fit.’ That was code for: obviously I am not going to be the next president, so I will resign and let you appoint the person you want. (This was based on the assumption that Putin, like Yeltsin, would appoint his chosen heir as prime minister.)
‘I completely agree with you,’ said President Putin, pretending to have had no say in the cabal, and immediately appointed a new prime minister. But it was neither Medvedev nor Ivanov. Instead Putin nominated an old colleague from St Petersburg, Viktor Zubkov. He was as grey and uninspiring as Fradkov, but for most of the Putin presidency he had headed a powerful anti-money-laundering unit, the Financial Monitoring Committee, which made him privy to the financial secrets of the elite. Few people had heard of him, yet within days the 66-year-old declared that he might indeed run for president.
It wasn’t just outside observers that were shocked. I happened to be with the Valdai group in Moscow that day, and we had an appointment with Ivanov just two hours after he received the news that he was not, after all, heir presumptive. He laughed it off as best he could, but it was clear from his demeanour that the news was as big a shock to him as to everyone else. His soaring career had suddenly belly-flopped. He said Putin had not even discussed the move with him.
So was Zubkov the next president? Only if Yeltsin’s manoeuvring was seen as a precedent. But Putin was inventing new ways of doing things, and unlike Yeltsin he had no intention of anointing a successor and then obligingly stepping out of politics. Two days later Putin opined that there were ‘at least five’ viable candidates. Kremlinologists assumed he meant Zubkov, Ivanov, Medvedev, and… two others. I understood from a Kremlin source that this was not merely flak thrown up to disorientate the pundits: Putin himself had not yet decided.
It was only after the elections to the State Duma on 2 December that Putin finally revealed his choice – not that the result, which unsurprisingly gave his party, United Russia, 64 per cent of the votes, affected his decision. It was neither Zubkov nor the former KGB man Sergei Ivanov, on whom the dice fell, but the man who it seemed had been pipped at the post, Dmitry Medvedev.
Again, it was a staged event, a pretence at democracy. The leaders of four parties, just elected to the Duma, came to Putin and put forward Medvedev’s name. Putin feigned surprise, and turned to Medvedev, who happened to be present: ‘Dmitry Anatolievich, have they discussed this with you?’
‘Yes, we had some preliminary discussions,’ replied the candidate.
‘Well,’ Putin had to agree, ‘if four parties representing different strata of Russian society have made this proposal… I have known Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for more than 17 years, and we have worked closely together all these years, and I fully and completely support this choice.’
The following day, Medvedev declared that if he were elected he would nominate Putin for the post of prime minister. After months of confusion and manoeuvring, the way forward was suddenly clear. Putin would ensure his political longevity by transforming the post of prime minister (without so much as touching the constitution) from the quiet back-office occupied by Fradkov and Zubkov into the country’s real power-base.
Though born in the same city as Putin, and a graduate from the same law faculty, Medvedev was 13 years younger and had a very different background. Born in 1965, into an intellectual family, he graduated in 1987, at the height of Gorbachev’s efforts to democratise the communist system. The zeitgeist of the time was all about debunking the KGB that Putin had chosen for his career. Medvedev helped run the campaign of the liberal reformer Anatoly Sobchak (one of his law professors) in the first genuine elections of the late 1980s. Sobchak later became mayor of St Petersburg and hired both Medvedev and Putin to work in his external relations office – this was when the two men met. Medvedev later followed Putin to Moscow, becoming his deputy chief of staff in 1999 and running his election campaign in 2000. As president, Putin appointed Medvedev as chairman of Gazprom, and later as his chief of staff.
There were several reasons why Putin may have decided Medvedev was preferable to his main rival, Ivanov: he was less charismatic, had no power-base of his own, was less of a threat than a fellow silovik (who might be tempted to ease Putin out of the way) and – not unimportant for a small man – was even shorter than Putin. All in all, he was much less imposing and threatening than Ivanov, the tall cavalier who had once swept Condoleezza Rice off her feet. And there was the added benefit that with his liberal reputation, Medvedev would go down well in the West, perhaps acting as a lightning rod and removing the strain from Putin for a while. The task for the next four years would be to keep Medvedev on a tight leash, and at least leave the door open for Putin’s own return to the presidency.
We in the Kremlin’s hapless PR team saw another opportunity to impress the West evaporate. An election between two establishment candidates with different views on how to run the economy would have been the same as in most Western democracies. But the Russian people were not to be asked for their opinion. Putin’s choice was the only one that mattered, and as the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov – a friend of Putin’s appointed less than a year earlier – stated, ‘Churov’s First Law is that Putin is always right.’
State television gave Putin’s choice blanket coverage, and Medvedev was duly elected on 2 March 2008 with 70 per cent of the vote. The Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, won almost 18 per cent, and the nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky 9.5 per cent. The former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, the candidate for the ‘democratic’ opposition, was registered as a candidate but later disqualified on the grounds that too many of the signatures gathered in his support had allegedly been forged.