And now that President Vladimir Putin has named Medvedev as the preferred successor, Medvedev at 42 will be the youngest incumbent of the Kremlin throne since the last czar.

He is married to his childhood sweetheart, Svetlana, who he met at the age of 7 in their native St. Petersburg. His wife now chairs the council of trustees of the faith-based program Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia's Younger Generation. Launched with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy, it promotes the establishment of Orthodox Church orphanages, educational and research expeditions for young people and pilgrimages to Russian patriotic and religious shrines.

Welcome to the new Russia, which is starting to look like a modernized version of the old Russia before the Communists took over and the revolution of 1917 toppled the czar and marginalized the Orthodox Church.

It is not yet known whether Medvedev shares the startling view that Putin expressed in his 2005 state of the nation address that "the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century."

"For the Russian nation it was a genuine drama," Putin went on in that memorable speech. "Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the capitulation that followed damaged the country's integrity. Oligarchic groups -- possessing absolute control over information channels -- served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere."

Putin's achievement, and the explanation for his 70 percent approval ratings, is that he solved some of these problems. The economy has recovered, and Russians have savings once more in a strong and rising currency and stable banks to put them in. The oligarchs have been tamed, and the terrorist attacks that were blamed on Chechen extremists have been sharply reduced.

The picture is not universally rosy, and what Putin calls "the social sphere" features some very serious challenges for his successor. Crime remains high, and the murder rate worse than it was under Boris Yeltsin. The birth rate is frighteningly low and the death rate among males extraordinarily high, and the economy is still dangerously dependent on oil, gas and mining the country's abundant raw materials.

In this context, and putting to one side the potential difficulty of Medvedev's presidency being overshadowed by Putin as his chosen prime minister, it is striking that Medvedev does seem to have rather more democratic and rather less authoritarian instincts than Putin. He has called for a genuine multiparty system and for the parties to represent real policy choices. Political scientist Igor Bunin of the think tank Center for Political Technologies calls Medvedev "our greatest liberal in the government."

It's not easy for observers to interpret this. Closet liberals do not usually thrive in the higher reaches of the Kremlin, and Medvedev's loyalty to Putin seems absolute. There may, however, be a clue in Medvedev's first experience in politics.

Putin and Medvedev met in the closing phase of the Soviet Union, when a St. Petersburg democrat and reformer called Anatoly Sobchak began campaigning to be elected mayor. Medvedev joined Sobchak in 1988, very early, when such a commitment carried real risks in the event of a Soviet backlash. Putin came aboard two years later, and both men were with Sobchak when he rallied mass protests in St. Petersburg against the coup that tried to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.

Medvedev also understands the problem of building a real industrial economy, beyond oil and gas and minerals, and of Russia's grim demographic outlook. He has been discreetly critical of what Dmitri Oreshkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences calls "the state of 'burness.'" It is a word he coined from "bureaucracy" and "business" to descried the current economic-political system.

"It is when bureaucrats sponsor business and receive altogether serious advantages from them, while business in turn enjoys the support of the bureaucracy to fight competitors," Oreshkin told Izvestia this week. So far, Medvedev seems to have been careful to make himself acceptable to business and bureaucracy alike.

Medvedev believes the economic role of the state should be limited, arguing publicly that it should intervene "only where it was needed." More dramatically for the head of the Gazprom energy giant, he has also declared publicly that "Gazprom will not be able to digest all of Russia's energy resources ... and thank God for that. Otherwise Gazprom would become the Ministry of Energy, and we have been trying to pedal away from this."

With oil prices falling and the crisis deepening in global financial markets and the United States flirting with recession, Russia is likely to need all the economic expertise at the helm that it can get. Next year is likely to see either oil prices dropping toward $60 a barrel or continued high energy prices bringing more inflation. Food prices have risen by 20 percent in Russia already this year, and industrial unrest is on the rise, with teachers and medical staff demanding more pay and more than 2,000 workers going on strike at St. Petersburg's Ford plant this week demanding pay rises.

Maybe Medvedev's blend of old and new, a liking for rock music combined with a certain nostalgia for the last Russian czar and for the moral role of the Orthodox Church, is what Russia needs in the future. But that future will not be easy to define since the near certainty that Putin will remain in power if not in office means two things. First, Russia is not yet entering the post-Putin era, and second, a Medvedev era is therefore likely to be a long time in coming.

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links