On 10 December, President Putin endorsed Dmitry Medvedev to succeed him. This means that, barring some 'act of God', Medvedev will be elected the third president of post-Soviet Russia in the presidential election on 2 March. Although the main policy lines are tightly set, the character and choices of Medvedev will have considerable importance at the margin, and more so as time wears on. This justifies a close study of his background, character, views and track record. We analyse here the findings of just such a study carried out for us by a leading think tank in Russia specialising in domestic politics.
Medvedev's precocious trajectory goes from star law student via a spell in private business to trusted senior official. More recently he has been tested as a leader, and - to the surprise of many - shown his mettle. His views and actions are those of a steady, realistic and determined moderniser.
At 41 years of age (born 14 Sept 1965), Dmitry Medvedev has served at the highest levels of the Putin administration. Like Putin, he graduated from the Law Faculty of Leningrad (St Petersburg) University. He first met Putin in the early 1990s, when, as a young lecturer in civil law at the University, he was employed also as a legal consultant by the St Petersburg Mayor's office, where Putin was First Deputy Mayor.
The friendship he formed with Putin at that time was crucial to his later career. After Putin was appointed Prime Minister in August 1999, he made Medvedev Deputy Government Chief of Staff. When Putin became acting President on 31 December 1999, one of his first actions was to appoint Medvedev as First Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff, from where he received what had clearly been a long-prepared promotion to the Chief of Staff job in 2003. In the meantime, he had become Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Gazprom. (See Medvedev's background for further details of Medvedev's career history.)
In November 2005, Medvedev moved from the Kremlin staff to the government, becoming First Deputy Prime Minister. (At the same time, Sergei Ivanov, Medvedev's most obvious rival for the succession to Putin in 2008, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, retaining his post of Defence Minister.) His key responsibility in government is to coordinate the implementation of the Priority National Projects launched by Putin in September 2005 and involving new annual spending of around 1.5% of GDP on agriculture, primary education, primary healthcare, affordable housing and demography. He also has policy supervisory responsibility in the areas of competition, the environment and resource use, the judicial system and the prosecution service, and telecoms and IT.
The publicity surrounding the National Projects has boosted hugely Medvedev's public persona through national television exposure and trips around the country. By the end of 2006 after barely more than thirteen months in his present job, he had visited 24 regions. His public recognition rate has risen to 98%, and most importantly, he has established a clear lead over Ivanov - well clear of the margin of error - in the most authoritative opinion polls (see charts below).
% of respondents naming Medvedev and Ivanov among the 4-5 public figures whom they trust, 2006
Prospective % vote shares in a presidential election in which Putin was not a candidate
Medvedev has also begun to raise his international profile with some trips abroad. These have included meetings with President Bush, Chancellor Merkel and the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao. He headed the Russian delegation at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2007.
Political Technologies Centre, Moscow think-tank
The fullest picture of Medvedev's political stance comes out in a series of newspaper articles and interviews since 2004, notably in Expert, a weekly business and current affairs magazine aimed at the Russian elite.
On all sensitive points, no chink of light appears between his positions and those of President Putin. The cases against Khodorkovsky and Yukos, for example, are presented by Medvedev in terms of equality before the law. He defends the existence of large state-controlled companies in 'strategic' sectors, and disagrees with the proposition that present levels of state ownership are excessive. He also echoes favourite Putin themes: the shared responsbility of state and business for the wellbeing of Russia; the importance of a united elite (contrasted with the political struggles of the 1990s) to back necessary policies and hold the country together.
At the margin, however, Medvedev tends to more liberal positions. He regrets the failure of the liberal parties in the 2003 Duma election. He is opposed to state capitalism, and an increase in the state's presence in the economy - 'the state is not an efficient owner'. He rejects the formula 'sovereign democracy' coined by Vladislav Surkov (the Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff and ideologue of the Putin administration) on the grounds that to qualify the word democracy implies less than full democracy.
Medvedev long appeared to be Putin's most trusted subordinate. In the series of interviews gathered hastily into a book to introduce himself to the Russian public in early 2000, Putin made prominent mention of Medvedev when describing his close associates and repeatedly referred to Medvedev by the familiar diminutive form of his first name ('Dima'). This signified a close and benign mentoring relationship.
Since his promotion from senior, but behind-the-scenes, Kremlin staffer to the number two position in the government responsible for running Putin's flagship new 'national projects', Medvedev has displayed strong and previously hidden qualities.
He has established a strong bureaucratic machine in his own right. As First Deputy Prime Minister, he has a large private office ('secretariat') run by Mikhail Trinoga, one of the most experienced bureaucrats in Russia who was already a senior government staffer under Viktor Chernomyrdin in the 1990s. Medvedev has a second staff (a 'department' in the central government apparatus) dedicated to the national projects. This department is run by Boris Kovalchuk, the 28-year old son of Yuri Kovalchuk, a St Petersburg banker and influential friend of Putin. Medvedev has shown himself equal to his new status by publicly dressing down senior subordinates - the Industry & Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko, and the Health & Social Security Minister Mikhail Zurabov.
Next, Medvedev has shown that he can attract strong teams, and place his appointees in important positions ranging from the Executive Board of Gazprom to the higher courts and law enforcement agencies, and extending more recently to the area of economic policy making (see Medvedev's circle for details). Most members of his team are fellow graduates and/or (former) teachers at the St Petersburg law faculty. His most prominent and impressive associate to emerge so far was the only other St Petersburg law student in the class of 1987 besides Medvedev himself to obtain across-the-board top grades. This is Anton Ivanov, appointed in 2005 Chairman of the Supreme Arbitrazh Court, and who has quickly established himself as a notable reformer (see Arbitrazh courts: the long road back from Yukos).
Medvedev has taken advantage of his front-line role coordinating the national projects to travel widely across Russia's key regions establishing ties with local elites and building his public recognition through appearances in the local media. His ambition was also reflected in his presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2007. He had to push hard to obtain the necessary prior permission from Putin to make the trip. Putin's apparent hesitation may be due to his concern to avoid giving the impression at this stage that any of the potential successors has become the definitive one. But Medvedev got his own way.
During his years in private legal practice in St Petersburg, Medvedev worked as General Counsel at Ilim Pulp, the integrated pulp & paper group. He exited from the shareholding of the company in 1999 on being summoned to Moscow by Putin to join the newly formed administration. Since then, there has been no evidence or even allegations of Medvedev machining former Ilim Pulp colleagues into government jobs or of favouritism towards Ilim Pulp in the context of various corporate battles in the forest product sector in recent years.
Medvedev is thorough in his approach to his work. He likes to be well informed, is systematic and punctual and values order. He expects those around him to be the same. At the same time, he is polite to others and readily offers help those who need it, showing a great capacity for listening to those who ask for his help. This was a characteristic which was noted when he was still a university student. Despite being top of the class, Medvedev was popular because he used to help his less-gifted fellow students. He is sober and unemotional, and inspires trust in those he deals with.
One apparent weakness which has been identified in Medvedev is that when confronted by an opponent he tends to withdraw into himself, bottling up feelings.
So far, so good. Medvedev looks like a presidential candidate
This PTC study brings out the innate similarities of temperament and character between Putin and Medvedev, reinforced by the lengthy period in which Putin acted as a mentor to Medvedev. Being such a 'chip of the old block' must increase Medvedev's attractiveness to Putin as his successor. Medvedev offers for this reason the greatest assurance (compared to the obvious alternative candidates) of the continuity and reliability which are clearly key criteria for Putin in making his choice.
It follows that by pushing Medvedev forward in November 2005 as First Deputy Prime Minister, Putin was giving him a chance to show whether he (Medvedev) has what it takes to build up a positive public following. As the PTC analysis shows, Medvedev has passed this test with flying colours.
In doing so, he has also shown some qualities which Putin does not share (or at least did not display when at a similar stage himself in late-1999). Medvedev possesses more ease and confidence - including in spoken English. In contrast to Putin's poor Leningrad childhood in a communal appartment (i.e. shared with other families), Medvedev's family was part of that city's large intelligentsia (his father was a university professor).
Medvedev's unmistakeable determination comes with realistic judgement. He gives a sense of knowing that he has a great chance of reaching the top and is positioning and promoting himself accordingly - while taking the greatest care not to over-reach.
The same traits suffuse his approach to policy and general world view. Realism, pragmatism, a dislike of abstraction: these are the essentials. Speaking on Russia's National Unity holiday in November 2006, he dismissed talk of an abstract national idea. In his view, the only thing that could bind together such a vast country of many tens of millions of people was the shared aspiration to enjoy a decent living standard in a normal, civilised country.
From that remark may be derived the most suitable label for Medvedev - and a more precise one than the much-bandied 'liberal'. He is a moderniser.
It is not only national ideologies which he wants to leave behind, but also - as he stated openly in a major speech to the State Duma on 25 January - other baleful aspects of Russia's heritage. He singled out here the state paternalism inculcated by the communist system, and with its roots in serfdom. He presented the national projects as departing from the old levelling-down mode, and instead channelling state support to the most able and competitive among teachers, farmers etc.
So while Medvedev does not stand for any new, let alone radical, polices, he brings to the existing programme a modernising spirit which must also be seen as a product of his relative youth. When his adult life began, the Soviet system had already started to melt down. Given the importance of generation change to Russia's post-communist transition, this is perhaps the single most important fact about him.
The PTC interestingly highlights as a potential weakness Medvedev's tendency to withdraw into his shell in the face of an irrational opponent or some other shock (rather as the newly-minted President Putin in August 2000 upset the public with his almost autistically muted reaction to the loss of the Kursk submarine with all 118 men on board). This raises questions as to how Medvedev would cope as president when faced with inevitable crises.
Will Medvedev secure an undisputed status as Putin's preferred (hence shoe-in) successor by being appointed to the premiership before the start of the Duma election campaign in 4Q07?
Or will Medvedev have to continue the present unacknowledged competition with Sergey Ivanov (and any other potential successors who might emerge) through to the presidential election campaign itself in 1Q08?
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