MOSCOW, Russia -- Sometimes you have to admire the candour of Russian leaders. Whereas Kremlinologists love conspiracy theories, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, and Vladimir Putin, its prime minister, tell things how they are.
On September 10th Mr Medvedev published a manifesto on gazeta.ru, a Russian website, highlighting Russia’s failings. He wrote of a primitive, oil-dependent economy, weak democracy, a shrinking population, an explosive north Caucasus and all-pervasive corruption. His critics would not disagree with this stark diagnosis, even if he offered few answers. A day later Mr Putin told the visiting Valdai club of foreign journalists and academics that he and Mr Medvedev would decide between themselves who is going to be president when Mr Medvedev’s first term expires in 2012. Most Russians already assumed as much.One subject both leaders avoided was how this tallies with Mr Medvedev’s lament about the weakness of democracy. Nor do they explain what they have been doing in their past ten years in charge. Mr Medvedev’s article reads like a cry of desperation, an attempt to appeal to Russian progressives over the heads of corrupt bureaucrats. “The global economic crisis has shown that our affairs are far from being in the best state. Twenty years of tumultuous change has not spared our country from its humiliating dependence on raw materials,” he notes. He predicts optimistically that Russia will develop a knowledge-based economy and lead the way in new technologies, which may in time lead to an open and flexible political system that fits the requirements of a free, prosperous and confident people.In politics, however, Mr Medvedev is more cautious. “Not everyone is satisfied with the pace at which we are moving in this direction. They talk about the need to accelerate changes in the political system. We will not rush.” He ends with a dramatic flourish. “Influential groups of corrupt officials and do-nothing entrepreneurs are well ensconced. They have everything and are satisfied…But the future does not belong to them—it belongs to us. And we are an absolute majority.”Mr Medvedev’s article evoked memories of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika speeches in the 1980s; he said this week that what went wrong with Mr Gorbachev was that he began but failed to complete his reforms. Mr Medvedev, however, has not ever started. But cynics also saw an echo of Mr Putin’s first state-of-the-nation address as president in July 2000. Mr Putin talked then of a shrinking population, a backward economy and the importance of freedom of speech and human rights.So it is not surprising that many Russians were unimpressed. As one website visitor commented: “Mr President, your mostly correct words have nothing in common with what is happening in the country of which you are the leader. I don’t believe you. Do something first, something that would illustrate your readiness to modernise the country and move it forward. Fire the government or let Khodorkovsky out. At least do something!”The problem, argues Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, is that the economy cannot become dynamic and progressive if the political system is not fair and free. But Mr Medvedev’s liberalism is virtual not real. In 18 months of his presidency, the Russian media has not become any freer. Political opponents have not gained access to television. The number of murders and attacks on human-rights activists has gone up. And the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once one of the country’s wealthiest oligarchs, has turned into a showpiece of political repression.Mr Medvedev’s article and Mr Putin’s comments on 2012 may reflect a tension between the two men and their teams that has brought Russia into a state of inactivity caused by competing forces. Stasis is certainly visible in Mr Khodorkovsky’s trial. In what looks like the theatre of the absurd, prosecutors have for weeks been senselessly reading out pages from their multi-volume case, often confusing pages and repeating passages twice. Their aim seems to be to drag out the case while the powers-that-be decide what to do.In the past few months some of Mr Medvedev’s supporters have defected to Mr Putin’s camp, arguing that modernisation is possible under the prime minister’s leadership. Others, such as Gleb Pavlovsky, a weathered Kremlin spin-doctor, have been trumpeting Mr Medvedev’s emergence as an independent and powerful leader. Mr Medvedev’s new-found ambition may also have been boosted by Barack Obama. The American president went out of his way during his July visit to treat Mr Medvedev as the real leader. Mr Medvedev talked to the Valdai club about the joys of spending eight hours with Mr Obama, whereas Mr Putin reminisced more about his old friend George.Mr Putin’s words about 2012 undermine Mr Medvedev, making him a lame duck 30 months before his term runs out. Mr Medvedev has spent most of his career as Mr Putin’s subordinate. It was his loyalty, not his independence, that qualified him for the top job. As president he has largely followed Mr Putin’s policies, including in last year’s war with Georgia. He visited South Ossetia and introduced a new law that makes it easier to deploy Russian forces outside the country. And it was Mr Medvedev who sent an aggressive and insulting letter to Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s president, blaming him for supplying arms to Georgia and falsifying history.Indeed, January’s presidential election in Ukraine may be the key event in Russia’s new political season. Five years ago Mr Putin suffered the biggest embarrassment of his presidency when he rushed prematurely to congratulate Viktor Yanukovich as winner, only to see him pushed aside in the “orange” revolution. The election offers him an opportunity for revenge. Gazprom, Russia’s gas giant, is already muttering belligerently that Ukraine may be unable to pay its gas bill after the vote.As Mr Medvedev’s letter to Mr Yushchenko shows, he fits in with the Kremlin’s policy of confrontation and the search for enemies, particularly at times of crisis. The tension at the top of the government does not seem to make Russia any friendlier towards the West. Although his article said that Russian foreign policy should be defined by the goal of modernisation, Mr Medvedev shook hands with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez on an arms deal (see article). “We will supply Venezuela with the types of arms it asks for, acting in compliance with our international obligations. We will certainly deliver tanks too, why not? We have good tanks.”On September 14th, at a conference on global security in Yaroslavl, Mr Medvedev again lambasted America for causing the global crisis. He also called for a new European security architecture that would give Russia greater influence, particularly in the former Soviet space. For the moment, though, European and American security experts are more interested in another matter: what cargo a Russian vessel, Arctic Sea, was carrying when it vanished in closely monitored European waters, why a journalist who alerted the world to its disappearance had to flee Russia and why Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, paid an urgent and secret visit to Moscow just a few days later. True to form, Mr Medvedev’s article gives no answers to any of these questions.
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