The Meaning of Medvedev

By Dmitri Trenin
Wall Street Journal, 04/04/08

(Mr. Trenin is a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and deputy director of its Moscow Center. He is the author, most recently, of "Getting Russia Right" (Carnegie, 2007))

Russians voted for a new president Sunday, but the true election of course occurred in December when Vladimir Putin publicly anointed his successor. Not that what happened on Sunday, when Russians overwhelmingly approved of Mr. Putin's choice, Dmitry Medvedev, is irrelevant or unimportant. The country's fifth presidential vote in 17 years has several meanings.


Above all, this election seals the rule of a two-term limit on the head of state. Six months ago, it was not clear whether that constitutional norm would stay. Mr. Putin could have relied on his widespread support among the electorate to stay in the Kremlin indefinitely. Today this notion is history. Orderly rotation at the top of the Russian power structure is now assured by an emerging tradition, not just a law which could be amended.

Unlike any previous Russian poll, this has been the election of a tandem. Mr. Medvedev will be flanked by Mr. Putin, probably as prime minister. The coming power-sharing will represent a material change of the living constitution, which until now, if reduced to one key provision, stipulated that "all power in the Russian Federation shall be vested in the President of the Russian Federation." Now, Messrs. Putin and Medvedev have supported the literal reading of the Basic Law, which refers to the premier as the chief executive while making the president responsible for national security, defense and foreign affairs, and, of course, the integrity of the constitution.

No one, most likely including these two protagonists, knows how this tandem will function in practice. Despite having the double-headed eagle for their state emblem, Russians have traditionally dreaded duality of power as a harbinger of intense struggle at the top, or even civil war. Even a vice president proved too divisive: Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were plotted against by their respective No. 2s, and the post was abolished in 1993. Yet the situation in which the president himself is the country's only functioning political institution is inherently unstable and increasingly dysfunctional. Building up the prime minister and the cabinet as another institution would be a step in the right direction.

That won't be easy, despite the obvious mutual empathy between Messrs. Putin and Medvedev. Their senior aides may find it difficult to demarcate the new boundaries of their respective power and influence. But, given competent arbitration, a more or less stable arrangement does not look impossible over time. Eventually, other federal bodies which now exist as mere agencies of the presidency, from the two houses of parliament to the high courts to the established political parties, may gain more autonomy and evolve into institutions in their own right. If so, Russia's top establishment would acquire a structure, making the system as a whole more resilient and thus more stable.

Mr. Medvedev's arrival at the Kremlin is billed as the continuation of the Putin course. In reality, Mr. Putin's "stabilizing" tenure secured the gains made under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Vladimir Putin was the end of one era; Dmitry Medvedev opens a new one.

Mr. Putin's principal achievement has been pulling the country together again and making sure that capitalism triumphs in Russia. Mr. Medvedev's task is twofold: to make decisive progress toward the rule of law, and to improve Russians' health, housing and education standards, even as the country moves past its commodities-driven economy and builds a foundation for economic innovation.

The new cycle will probably extend well beyond Mr. Medevdev's time in office, but the next four years will be crucial. Not only are public expectations very high. Virtually across the board, Russia has reached the limits of the current economic model. Further accumulation of petrodollars brings growth but no development. Further centralization of state control stifles the economy. Courts that cater to the interests of the powers-that-be -- or those who pay to ruin their competitors -- make property rights conditional.

Any real progress toward a more open and innovative economy will have to come at the expense of well-entrenched bureaucrats. Many of them believe they have just hit a bonanza in the form of state corporations, and they won't cede ground easily. Yet the Kremlin has been spending more time blasting its political opponents, particularly liberals from the "damned '90s," than reaching out to Russia's best and brightest to engage in a joint modernization effort.

Even when left to their own devices, Russian liberals have fared badly, bickering among themselves. For years, many of their leaders have looked like walking monuments to the time when they were young and full of spirited energy. The Kremlin, their nemesis, added insult to injury when it fielded a fake liberal candidate, the virtually unknown Andrei Bogdanov, to contest Sunday's election on behalf of the liberal electorate. (He received just over 1% of the vote.)

However, liberalism in Russia is far from dead. It is assuming a new face and drafting a new agenda. It includes businessmen and professionals who demand more economic freedom and want to trim the powers of the corrupt bureaucracy. It includes middle-class people who are increasingly working together to protect their rights as citizens and property owners. And it includes liberal-minded top bureaucrats and technocrats who realize that, without freedom and accountability, Russia will utterly fail in a competitive, globalized environment. In the future, the old liberal-democracy and human-rights crowd may be succeeded by a sturdier bunch of national liberals who would eventually be able to share power with the dominant conservatives and the emerging social democrats.

This is a long-term prospect at best. For now, the world would be right to see Russia, still essentially authoritarian, making moves toward constitutionalism and wish it well.

As for foreign policy, its style may change under President Medvedev, but its substance will remain the same. Today's Russia is a lonely great power, practicing realpolitik amid globalization. Ukraine is a good example: Moscow no longer fancies it as part of the realm, but it has stopped subsidizing it with cheap gas and has learned to play its principal political clans off one another. Russia is resolved to compete for economic advantages, political influence and cultural impact, but it is willing to cooperate when the terms seem to be right.

European by birth but culturally non-Western, Russia is gradually transforming itself into a Western-type society and economy, while politically standing very much apart from Europe. It is a country to watch closely. Dmitry Medvedev comes at an interesting time.