Moving

Dear readers, as I've already given notice about it, the great showdown having occurred, I decided to keep blogging under a different name. From now on you will find this blog on my new site, No Yardstick.

The Putin Defence

Obviously, the biggest question when it comes to the new power structure in Russia will be about the handling of inevitable personal clashes. As I've blogged before, Vladimir Putin will have to solve a double task: he will have to ensure stability for the elite that takes stability for the preservation of the monolithic power structures, while at the same time ensuring stability for the population that takes stability for the return of stable growth. As a third factor, Putin will also have to deal with those who want change, and who may as well be more powerful than Putin has anticipated. Especially now that we're closing in on regional elections. I suppose that Putin will try to put in place a system where, in the short term, he will be trying to keep heavyweights out of the frontline and push a semblance of changes to the foreground. This might allow him to buy precious time, but it won't be near enough to preserve a system which is more and more decaying from below. 

Back to the future

It might seem as if the game had ended - at least this is what Novaya Gazeta proclaimed on its front page this week. In fact, the "game" has only just begun with last Sunday's victory of Putin. I believe that in a way Putin's third term will be more reminiscent to Medvedev's intermezzo than to Putin's first two presidential mandates. The elected president may have cleared an important checkpoint - smoother than many had expected - but he still has to face a more important, and tougher challenge: dismantling and redesigning a system he created, while avoiding potential loss of trust from either side of the elite. Thus, he has to create a new power balance, a new machinery and a new way of deliberation to run the state, a new popular platform and he has to do it so to be able to conduct the necessary economic and political reforms as efficiently as possible. The mortar of the system has already been eroded by the unorthodox circumstances under Medvedev, and the next couple of months will be decisive from the point of view of laying out the blueprint for a new, stable, but more flexible construction. But how will this look like?

Putin's pillars

We're edging closer to the 4th of March, and accordingly, the picture has started to be clearer about the strategy of the ruling elite for the very day of the election. However, what will happen after remains a big question mark to many - not only us Russia-watchers, but, I dare to say, to many in the Kremlin as well. The events of the last few months seem to have excluded the possibility of an intentionally harsh crackdown but at the same time, a two-round scenario also seems to be less and less likely. While there is a certain logic behind Putin's apparent intention to bury his head in the sand and to proceed as usual, this may after all send the wrong signal to the elite and certainly to the population. Putin surely thinks that he chose the safer strategy, but this might as well turn out to be the riskier one.