A woman votes for United Russia
during the State Duma elections:
Dec. 02, 2007.

Dmitry Medvedev is poised for victory in Russia’s upcoming presidential election. Barring some extraordinary twist, Medvedev will take over the presidency from his mentor, Vladimir Putin, who will become Russia’s prime minister and technically serve under his former protégé. Such an arrangement will allow Putin to continue working in politics without violating the Russian constitution, which he claims is sacrosanct. No candidate could realistically challenge this popular incumbent tag-team. Throughout Russian history, fate has met this sort of inevitability as a dare, but even a twist of fate would be unlikely to defeat the Spring 2008 “United Russia” ticket.

For years, Medvedev has been known as the leading liberal in the Kremlin. He is experienced in international business and politics, having been chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors and head of the presidential administration. A lawyer who was educated during the Gorbachev era, he belongs to a younger generation whose formative intellectual years coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent opening of Soviet life.

Over the past few years, Russian politics have taken some interesting turns. There have been setbacks as well as progress (which has been based both on leadership and luck – such as high oil prices). Few informed Russia-watchers would argue that its economic improvement was solely due to Putin’s leadership; even Putin himself has repeatedly acknowledged as much. Still, it is as ludicrous to argue that Russia’s second democratically elected president has done nothing right, as it would be to say that he has done nothing wrong.

Some reforms are easier than others, and there is only so much that can be expected from a leader. Laws are meaningless unless they can be effectively implemented, and to do so often requires a legion of coordinated bureaucrats, a resource sorely lacking in Russia. Even under those circumstances, certain aspects of Russian reality would be stubbornly resistant to change, particularly in the domestic arena. There is no off-switch for corruption, nor any formula for instant economic diversification.

Some positive steps have been taken. One relatively successful recent endeavor in Putin’s Russia is the stabilization fund, designed to soften the impact of economic downturns and supplement Russia’s budget in the event of a drastic drop in world oil prices. At best this is only a temporary solution, and Western experience shows that this sort of fund is extremely vulnerable to mismanagement, but it is a positive step.

Putin is most often accused of murdering Russian democracy and crushing United Russia’s rival parties. Most Russian political parties owe their demise as much to the overall situation – and to themselves – as to the Kremlin’s handiwork. In the 2003 Russian parliamentary election, so many voted for “against all” on their ballots that it would have earned representation had it been an actual party. Meanwhile, Yabloko and SPS, the two parties most often cited by Western observers as the courageous opponents of the Kremlin, each received less than 5 percent of the vote, thus failing to earn a seat in the Duma. This was deemed a loss for the Kremlin since these parties usually voted with, not against, United Russia. They were defeated by a real non-entity – so why are we still proclaiming them to be the voice of Russian freedom?

Putin has been accused of all sorts of things. Statistics can be compelling, but they are still subject to interpretation. It may be true that the average number of murders reported annually in Moscow was lower in the 1990s than in the Putin era. However, this does not mean that more people are being murdered now, just that their deaths are reported as murders. Moscow during the Yeltsin era was ruled by anarchy. More than a few influential business leaders “accidentally” fell off their balconies or drowned in their pools, and the police recorded those deaths as non-suspicious or accidental. Context matters.

Donna Marie D’Aleo is the co-author of the forthcoming book, From Soviet to Putin and Back.

Find out more about From Soviet to Putin and Back at soviettoputin.com.