There are signs that Russians are growing tired of their leaders writes CHARLES CLOVERand CATHERINE BELTON
RATHER THAN heralding a westward, liberalising trend in Russia’s post-communist history, Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency looks to be little more than a footnote in the decades-long “Putin era”.
Vladimir Putin, who served as president from 2000 to 2008, could now rule for two more six-year presidential terms, giving him a quarter-century reign in power, as long as Josef Stalin or Leonid Brezhnev.
The manner of Putin’s return, in a backroom deal with Medvedev, both shows his political omnipotence and undermines the existence of political institutions in favour of a cult of personality set to flourish for 12 more years.
Putin will run against token opponents and will almost certainly win next year’s election.
He has been at pains to break with the past and reinvent himself as an economic moderniser and interlocutor whom the West can trust, rather than a symbol of confrontation and authoritarian rule.
But his silence on liberalisation – which would threaten his absolute power – indicates this is a step he is not prepared to take.
The Russia Putin will inherit is not the one that breathed a sigh of relief when the hardline ex-KGB colonel first assumed the presidency 11 years ago. Then, it was reeling from a decade of chaos under Boris Yeltsin. Ordinary Russians craved stability and order, to the point of sacrificing democracy to get it.
Today, after a decade of rising oil prices, Russians are more prosperous, with doubled real incomes, but are looking for more say in governing their country.
Mikhail Dmitriev, president of the Center for Strategic Research, a Moscow think tank, calls the growing urban middle class – which he estimates forms 40 per cent of Moscow’s population and 20 to 30 per cent in other big cities – “a political detonator which cannot be unscrewed”.
"The lack of genuine political representation has led to stronger feelings of protest, more radical opinions and widespread unconstructive opposition to the government," he wrote in the Vedomostinewspaper earlier this year.
Patience with a one-choice system, according to Dmitriev and other sociological research, is running thin. The system faces a “crisis of legitimacy” which could soon result in a growing protest movement.
Putin will have to take steps to dismantle a system of cronyism that has flourished, as little-known allies and friends have captured a swathe of the country’s cash flows and secured access to choice assets.
Otherwise, bankers and businessmen say, he could face a mounting backlash.
“The key question is whether he is going to rein in the massive corruption. There are people very close to him that . . . used his name to become incredibly wealthy,” said one senior western banker speaking on condition of anonymity.
If he does not move to change, “some very smart people are just going to leave the country”, he said.
In any case, Putin’s and Medvedev’s ratings have slipped since the start of the year. That is a sign, says Sergei Markov, a parliamentary deputy from the hegemonic United Russia political party, that the public is growing tired of them.
Markov says the falling popularity of the Kremlin’s machine was one of the reasons Putin chose to return.
“Medvedev’s popularity was falling, and this might have been seen as dangerous,” he says.
With a keen eye on popularity, Putin has undertaken a sometimes bizarre PR makeover, once riding a Harley Davidson motorbike and then, last December, singing Blueberry Hill live and off key by a piano.
Instead of democracy, Putin has applied a veneer of pluralism and choice using skilled spin-doctors, pollsters and television professionals collectively known as “political technologists”. Their craft is epitomised by his job swap with Medvedev: a backroom bargain presented as democratic choice.
But despite the Kremlin’s desire for a tidy stitch-up, the rest of Russia may not play along as public frustration with Putin’s dominance bubbles to the surface.
The intriguing Kremlin “corridor games” between Putin and Medvedev may turn out to be a sideshow compared with the new forces emerging in the Russian political scene. They may demand their own voice in the way the country is run. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)