Medvedev advances

The clash between Russia’s president and prime minister was no mere incident, and there is more and more evidence to prove this fact. No one is even trying to conceal anymore that the election campaign has already been launched. The extremely centralized power vertical, built by Vladimir Putin, who has until recently taken such pride in it, is now showing signs of things going directly against him. Or, to be more exact, against his possible return as a president.

It is not even the matter of the prime minister having the cheek to contradict his boss. He has done this often, including in the Khodorkovsky case. Many important things have happened behind the scenes. The president has shown an explicit desire to keep to the modernization course, using liberal methods as much as possible. The prime minister has always spoken from conservative positions. This polarization could not remain mere rhetoric for long. The president’s words had to be implemented, otherwise he would turn into a lame duck, a seat warmer.

The elites and the bureaucracy were urging the tandem to answer the crucial question: who is going to run in the next elections, whose colors should they defend, what pace should they move with, and at what distance. Such a long pause has resulted in a total disorientation of the top management and threatened both leading players with irreparable consequences. Talks of a possible third player, a dark horse, arose as a result of the information vacuum. It was not so much the name of the candidate that mattered, as the possibility of an unexpected outcome.

At first the frictions between number one and number two were such an uncommon sight that most commentators took the developments as an acted-out division of roles between “good cop” and “bad cop.” However, that was not the message that Medvedev and his entourage wanted to get across. They needed a measure that would show even the most dim-witted who truly runs the house. And this measure should concern no less than a major issue — the cadre question.

It was to a degree accidental that Yuri Luzhkov was sacrificed for the sake of this initiative. But it was extremely significant. The president was displeased about Luzhkov’s holiday during the massive forest fires, although formally he has no jurisdiction over the capital’s mayor. Meanwhile, on the next day the prime minister received the mayor of Moscow and expressed his full support for him. The smart guys behind the scenes (and not only in the capital) gasped. The leadership of United Russia followed the nation’s leader to express their support for Luzhkov; the Moscow party organization unanimously supported their mayor. It seemed that everything would remain just as it was.

It is hard to say for sure when, at what moment, Putin made up his mind to concede and give up Luzhkov. And the latter would not have stood his ground till his last breath. But he put up a fight to the best of his abilities, hoping for protection from the highest spheres. However, the president won. And it marked the start for swift (by the standards of Moscow bureaucracy) cadre shifts. Moreover, there were explicit promises that they would not stop.

It is generally believed that Putin is supported by the secret police, business circles in the energy sector, and the military industrial complex. The other day several generals in the ministry of Internal Affairs were retired. Among them were a few directors of the ministry’s law institutes, two head inspectors and a deputy director of the ministry’s operational search bureau. Before that, the president had removed more than 20 high-ranking law enforcement officers.

The dismissal of the MIA generals is a clear message and an explicit explanation to all in the police as to who is in charge, whose orders are to be rigorously carried out, and who is responsible for your further career promotion. It should be mentioned that everyone has got the message. So the change of the name from “militia” to “police” was not mere window dressing. Instead, it was a thoroughly prepared step for the substantiation of the cadre shifts.

Here we can list one apparently insignificant rotation, albeit one that is extremely revealing. The State Duma is planning to hear the question on Konstantin Zatulin’s retirement from the post of first deputy chairman of the Committee for CIS Affairs. It is explained by cadre rotation, although Zatulin himself believes that the reason for his retirement was the support he had given to Putin in his implicit controversy with Medvedev over the situation in Libya. If it had been the only matter, no one would have made a fuss. “I do not conceal that I support the nomination of Vladimir Putin for the presidential office. I believe President Medvedev to be a very interesting person, but I cannot agree to some of his decisions,” said Zatulin. And herein lies the rub. Putin’s men are being methodically ousted from power, on all levels and in all branches.

Then the ideological offensive followed. The reports came pouring in. First Igor Yurgens, president, Institute for Contemporary Development, made very liberal suggestions not only in the economic sphere, but also in the state system. Given the proximity of the Institute to the president, it is clear that this is an outline of the coming election campaign.

Then came the second report — a draft of Medvedev’s program as a probable presidential candidate. Then they came rolling down in an avalanche. Everyone was appearing with a report: the Center for Social and Conservative Policy (CSCP) of United Russia, and the Center for Strategic Development (CSD). Everyone was speaking about the necessity of modernization. Even the Club of Orthodox Entrepreneurs, reinforced with the Council on Economy and Ethics under the Most Holy Patriarch, also put in its two cents’ worth.

It looks as if the term “modernization” is going to become the main component of the election campaigns: first parliamentary, then presidential. However, the sense they all endow this word with is so different that it is not quite clear why they should speak about it whatsoever. At least, the modernization suggested by CSCP and CSD (and the more so, by the Club of Orthodox Entrepreneurs) is more like the preservation of what already exists, and its protection against any encroachments in the future.

Apparently, Putin’s team has understood what a powerful propagandist charge is hidden in the president’s modernization campaign, starting with his article “Go, Russia!” It is trying to take over the lead — and in case of failure, to emasculate or drown in information noise everything prepared by the rival team.

So far there has been no particular malice in the information sphere. Moreover, the authors of all the reports emphasize that they have a lot in common. Yurgens wrote in Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta: “What I would like to say as I compared those works: in terms of language, methods, and general tendency, they are more or less alike. Textual analysis shows that in some cases, the coincidences can reach as much as 70 percent. Both we and at least the CSD have said that without liberalization and political reforms, the economic ones will either never be implemented, or they will be so halfhearted that they will not address the current situation. All the reports show an understanding that some kind of action is necessary. This awareness and the public opinion urge both politicians and journalists, as well as the entire society as a whole.”

Yet in all likelihood this is the calm before the storm. The ICD reports, in particular, the one on the stages of reform, are to be debated at a Russian nation-wide conference on May 15. All eager to take part are welcome to do so, including the opposition. The other party will doubtlessly act similarly, and then a great battle of reports will start. But even now it is clear that Medvedev’s team is going to act aggressively and swiftly. It will be hard to take the initiative over. Too little time is left for this.

The president’s activity can be illustrated by his trip to Chelyabinsk oblast, where he held a session of the Commission on Modernization in Magnitogorsk. The investment climate in the country is very poor, said Medvedev. “Money abhors our economy: not so many people as we would like believe in the possibility of successful and safe entrepreneurship. Not so many business owners trust us, and we can not put up with it any longer — neither me nor the government of the Russian Federation.”

The measures suggested in the Magnitogorsk theses leave an ambiguous impression, there is too much red tape in them. The president’s demand that government officials leave the leadership of the state companies is much more important. The black list of potential drop-out business people includes the Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, Transport Minister Igor Levitin, Minister of Agriculture Elena Skrynnik, and Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev. Indeed, all Putin’s people.

But it is more important to know who is going to fill their vacant seats. The government is prepared to change officials for independent directors at major state companies, said the Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov speaking on air with the program Vesti v Subbotu (News on Saturday) on TV channel Rossiya. Even now a sharp struggle for the vacant posts is going on behind the scenes, and the winner has every chance to become president.

And last but not least. Over the last week of March there were rumors in the power circles of Moscow to the effect that Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov should lead the party Pravoe Delo (The Right Cause), and that this presidential party would start struggling for seats in the State Duma in the December election. Even the time was named when all of that should take place, early in April. Everything came to a halt at the very last moment — it is said to have happened due to the request from the national leader. Besides, United Russia was virtually panic-stricken: it was clear that in such case all administrative resources would be concentrated in the hands of the president’s party. Then, the new organization would start attracting defectors in the capital and in provinces. And the fact of preparing a political organization to fit the president is just too obvious. This is to happen in the summer or early in the fall.

The political summer in Russia promises to be hot.