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?

Nothing new under the Sun

The title may seem surprising. There has indeed been a lot of news recently in Russian politics, so much that it got a considerable part of us Russia-watchers confused. Gleb Pavlovsky quit, Medvedev started to replace officials on the boards of state-owned companies, a massive reorganisation has taken place in the police, the President started a legislative upsurge against corruption, a real chance emerged to revisit the case of Sergey Magnitsky, and, most recently, Vladimir Putin announced the creation of a wide political alliance of parties, people and civil organisations who are ready to rally around United Russia. Some, including the very respectable Gordon Hahn on ROPV, suggest that this may be the sign of a real rupture on the highest levels of the ruling tandem. I agree with most of his points, but when it comes to drawing conclusions, we differ. I don't think this is the beginning of an open war at the top. Here is why.

Teamwork

The Domodedovo bombing has undoubtedly shaken up last week's political scene in Russia. Of course, the attack has many interpretations and many lessons to draw from. I refrain from commenting on ever-surfacing opinions that the whole terror wave in Russia was in fact orchestrated by some murky state structures to allow a tighter grip on regions and further disrespect of human rights. A sober assessment dissmisses these assumptions. In fact, the aftermath of the attack is much more interesting from our point of view than the question of the whodunit. The actions taken by President Medvedev seem to confirm our point made earlier about the safe game we are likely to see this year before the election. Other than that, it will be interesting to see how all the questions put by the growing threat of terror will shape Russian politics only a bit more than a year before the presidential election. And also, who will solve them.