By Uwe Klussmann in Moscow
Election victory as planned: Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev (right) with Vladimir Putin (left) at Friday night's concert on Red Square.
It was an easy victory that vaulted Dmitry Medvedev into a difficult job. He celebrated it on Sunday evening with a concert on Red Square where he, flanked by Vladimir Putin, told around 20,000 mostly young people that he would continue the policies of his predecessor. Putin too showed himself delighted with the election outcome.
The future Russian president got just over 70 percent of the vote, a remarkably similar result to Putin's four years ago. This was hardly a real election campaign - more a form of karaoke with the lyrics dictated by Putin, and with a decidedly bored national audience looking on.
The only serious opposition candidate, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who got well below 20 percent, waxed lyrical about the days of Stalin. The Communists' true share of the vote is likely to have been a little higher, because election fraud in Russia's remote provinces is usually at the expense of the Communist Party. The two other presidential candidates, far-right populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky (who got around 10 percent) and Andrei Bogdanov of the small Democratic Party, who had to make do with just over one percent, are Kremlin marionettes with clown-like features.
Putin's crown prince is likely to have got the best election results -- well above 90 percent -- in the North Caucusus republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, where criminal clans rule with the methods of Latin American dictatorships: blatant election fraud, murder, torture and kidnapping of opposition politicians.
Suspicious 99 Percent Results in the Caucasus
Medvedev's smooth liberal rhetoric such as his banal statement "Freedom is better than non-freedom" seems like mockery to many citizens living in these crisis-hit regions. And it doesn't look as if the placebo liberalism of the future president will change the tense situation in the explosive regions of the Russian empire. The manipulated 99 percent results for Medvedev near the Caucusus mountains are no barometer for the true political sentiment. Instead they herald future uprisings.
Like Putin in the Duma elections, Medvedev achieved his best results in the regions which are far removed from European ideas about the rule of law. In big cities, especially Moscow and St. Petersburg, his results are far more modest. The citizens of modern service-based metropolises don't like it when they are governed by authoritarian clans, as if they were on the Kazakh steppe. Medvedev lacks the active support of the intelligentsia and the middle class. These are not good pre-conditions for the breakthrough he promised in the direction of economic reforms and the transformation of Russia into a country of modern, competitive high technologies.
At an expanded State Council meeting in the Kremlin three weeks before the election, Putin admitted that Russia had not managed to transform itself from a commodity-export economy into an "innovation economy." "We are still modernizing our economy in a very fragmented way," noted the outgoing president. At the same meeting, Putin openly confessed to a Russia that, even after eight years of his rule, still has some of the same problems that drove the Soviet Union to ruin: namely "excessive centralization" and the "colossal public sector," which employs some 25 million people.
Corrupt Bureaucracy
Putin leaves his successor Medvedev a difficult legacy, even though the state coffers are brimming with oil revenues. The power of the state over the economy in today's Russia is greater than at any point since the end of the Soviet Union. The social contrasts between the super-rich and the millions of poor are becoming more marked, and the growing potential of the Communist Party as a protest party is heralding this trend. The Kremlin's assurances that it in no way wants "state capitalism" are as convincing as the promises of an reformed alcoholic who has just poured himself a big glass of vodka.
The reason why Russia is still not on the road to a high-tech future after years of huge oil and gas revenues is simple: The corrupt ruling bureaucracy, which finds its political expression mainly in the Kremlin party United Russia, does not need change. As long as bureaucrats can "saw up" budgets, as a revealing Russian expression puts it, and top government officials can siphon off hundreds of millions of euros for themselves, Russian officials show no inclination to innovate.
"We must give a real fight to corruption -- the gravest disease which has struck our society," Medvedev said during the election campaign, sounding like a son-in-law talking about his mother-in-law's cancer. No hint of how corruption will be tackled at the numerous subsidiaries of energy giant Gazprom, whose board Medvedev leads. Not a word about why, in the years when Medvedev was presidential chief of staff, corrupt Kremlin officials had little fear of being investigated. Former employees describe the Kremlin administration as the "academy of corruption," as one ex-official puts it.
There are traditionally two ways to fight corruption: either with draconian state violence or with competition coupled with the rule of law. The Russian elite's dilemma is that neither of the two approaches appeals to them.
In the view of most Russians, inflation, which is currently around 12 percent, is the most urgent problem after corruption. The price increases have been triggered in part by a lack of competition. But instead of encouraging more competition, Putin had his current prime minister, the former Soviet Communist Party official Viktor Zubkov, freeze food prices -- an approach which, if it is pursued consistently, would lead to an economy of scarcity, something the country cannot afford.
During the campaign, Medvedev, an attorney by profession, said he wanted to vanquish the country's system of "legal nihilism" and reduce the state's role in the economy. By doing so, he met the expectations of businesses and laissez-faire liberals. Meanwhile, the days of Soviet-influenced Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov appear to be numbered. Putin is expected to replace him in May. Zubkov had a penchant for issuing commands to the economy and awarding lavish state contracts.
Before the election, Putin promised that his dealings with a President Medvedev would be "very harmonious." But whether that will still hold true if Medvedev, influenced by ambitious advisors, adopts an economically liberal course, is questionable. Experts close to the country are already divided over how Russia should respond to a worldwide financial crisis that could soon hit the country hard. And efforts by Putin and Medvedev to present Russia's leadership as a bastion of harmony are reminiscent of the East German philosophers who 20 years ago were fond of lecturing that "societal contradictions would develop harmoniously."
Who Will Set the Foreign Policy Tone?
Under the Russian constitution, Moscow's foreign policy is determined by the president and not the prime minister. But this political weight could be shifted under Prime Minister Putin. If Medvedev doesn't try to establish his own foreign policy, he will still be stuck with the image of being a protegé. And that will do little to help him cement his leadership position. Even if Putin and Medvedev attempt to pretend to act with a single heart and soul, their respective apparatchiks in the Kremlin and in the government building, Moscow's "White House," will be battling each other behind the scenes -- especially when it comes to slicing up government appropriations worth billions.
Just five days before the presidential election, Putin gave a clear signal that he favors radical nostalgia for a lost Russian empire over liberal thinking. The president sent patriotic, nationalist Moscow author and journalist Alexander Prokhanov, editor in chief of the ultra-nationalist paper Zavtra, a telegram wishing him a happy 70th birthday.
Putin praised Prokhanov, known for shrill anti-Americanism, saying he represents a viewpoint that is "always convincing." Putin said he was certain that Prokhanov's work would serve to aid the further "stabilization of Russia." The birthday boy, who Putin once invited to the Kremlin library for a discussion over tea, is known for his thesis: "Only dead liberalism is good liberalism."
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