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Andrew Wilson

After Putin: Medvedev and the Politics of Russian succession

By Andrew Wilson

In 2000 George Bush looked into Putin's eyes and thought he had found a soulmate for the West; what followed was the restoration of authoritarian rule in Russia. Today, Western leaders may well be about to repeat the same mistake with Dmitry Medvedev.

Sunday's election will be a coronation rather than a competition. Medvedev's only opponents are has-beens from the 1990s like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who long ago converted into Kremlin loyalists; and Andrey Bogdanov, a fake `democrat' run by the Kremlin to convince the West that a real contest is taking place.

It is therefore surprising that Medvedev should be hailed by so many in the West as a `liberal'. Is this just because we have been manoeuvred into fearing someone worse, a sabre-rattling `silovik' (past or present member of the security services), like former Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov? Or does Medvedev represent a genuine opportunity to unfreeze the recent mini Cold War between Russia and the West?

Medvedev is indeed personable. Putin's background was in the KGB, Medvedev is a lawyer, who has attacked Russia's “legal nihilism” and denounced the fashionable concept of `sovereign democracy'. Medvedev is familiar to the business world after seven years as at Gazprom. He can talk the talk at Davos. He wears nice suits. He does not look like an archetypal post-Soviet bureaucrat or KGB agent. He is a big fan of 1970s rockers Deep Purple.

But we need to understand the system that made Medvedev, before rushing to embrace a `new face' which may turn out to be only a cosmetic improvement.

Russia's problem is not that it is an imperfect democracy, but that its politics is corrupted by so-called `political technology'. This involves much more than just stuffing the ballot box. `Political technology' means secretly sponsoring fake politicians like Mr Bogdanov, setting up fake NGOs and youth movements like Nashi (`Ours') to prevent any Russian version of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, and mobilising the voters against a carefully-scripted `enemy'. It 1996 this was the Communists; in 1999-2000 the Chechens; in 2003-04 it was the `oligarchs'. Now it is us - the supposedly hostile West and the threat of `coloured revolutions' to Russia's hard-won stability.

Medvedev may find all or some of this personally distasteful, but Russia now has an entire industry of political manipulation that is hardly likely to disappear overnight.

We also need to understand the mechanics of Russian succession politics. In the Russian context `liberal' means little more than opposing the `siloviki'. It means being in a different clan, at a different part of the feeding trough. The uncertainties of the succession have created a covert war for property and influence, but the system cannot afford an outright winner. In recent months the most powerful clan led by the Deputy Head of Kremlin Administration Igor Sechin, whose Rosneft company received the biggest chunk of Yukos in 2004, has threatened to engulf the others. Another company, Russneft, worth an estimated $8 to $9 billion, seems to be heading its way, after its owner Mikhail Gutseriyev was prized out by the same recipe of legal threats and tax demands used against Yukos, and after the mysterious death of his son in a car crash. There are rumours that the Sechin group has designs on Russia's `Stabilisation Fund', which soaring energy prices have pumped up to over $140 billion.

Rebalancing the system, in other words, was the key reason for choosing Medvedev - not any sudden desire to reverse the increasingly illiberal course Russia has taken since 2003. Medvedev's own liberal `clan' is mostly in internal exile. Former associates like Anatoly Chubais and Yeltsin's former Chief of Staff Aleksandr Voloshin will not be allowed to make too public a return to power, as Putin bases his whole ideology on a negative image of the 1990s. If Medvedev were to be President, the Sechin group would be strong enough to balance him, but this would not be true the other way around. One reason why Putin has promised to stay on as Prime Minister is to ensure that this balancing act works as intended.

Medvedev and the siloviki heartily dislike each other. Sechin and Ivanov will be watching the new president closely for any signs of `weakness'. Medvedev will not become his own man until he can cut free.

Putin himself observed his succession deal with Yeltsin for about three years. It is often forgotten that Yeltsin men like Voloshin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, before he became an enemy of the Kremlin and had to be forced out of this year's campaign, survived in office until the `Yukos affair' in 2003-04. Medvedev may have his own `Yukos moment' in time, but we should not assume he is an independent player until he does.

In recent years, the EU has punched under its weight with respect to Russia, and repeatedly fallen prey to Kremlin divide-and-rule. The EU should step back and realise the advantages it has. Russia wants to keep and expand its existing gas markets in Europe. The idea that they could shift to Asia is a myth. But Russia is only one part of the EU arc of supply. Supply diversification, connecting up national networks, and EU investment in storage and short-term supply alternatives for the likes of Hungary would undercut the Russian position significantly.

Russia wants all sorts of downstream investment in the EU. Currently Russia has the best of both worlds. We don't insist on open markets and a rule of law on their part, but offer it to them.

Russia has no need of aid, but Russian companies like IPOs and international loans. Rosneft proved that the City isn't particularly sniffy about where assets come from, but a requirement for listed companies to be engaged in actual production would hurt the likes of Rosukrenergo. Russian gas production is hitting a ceiling, and domestic demand in going up. Russia will need to invest perhaps $8 billion to $10 billion per annum over ten years to raise supply, and will need Western technology and FDI. Counterfactuals ought to matter to the more far-sighted Russian. FDI is OK, but nowhere near as high as it could be.

We also have more political leverage than we think. Amour propre - Russia is back and walking tall - is very important to the current elite. So is competing on the European stage. In the last analysis, Russian elites do not want to be 'Eurasian'. They think they are more European than we are.

Europe can therefore welcome Medvedev's election, but our response should be carefully calibrated to the extent of real change he is able to make. We must avoid repeating the over-reaction of many European leaders when Putin took over from the ailing Yeltsin in 2000. There should be no race to be Medvedev's new best friend, no staring into his eyes and no speculating about his soul. We should also concentrate on what he does, not on what he says. Russia's real transition is likely to come sometime after the election, when and if the new president begins to define the system, more than the other way around.

Andrew is a Research Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and also a Senior Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He has published widely on politics and culture in independent Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, and on the comparative politics of democratisation in the post-Soviet states, especially its corruption by so-called ‘political technology’.

Areas of Expertise: Ukraine, comparative politics of democratisation in the post-Soviet states.

Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, some Belarusian & French.

Recent publications:

Russia's post-election balance, Open Democracy, 3 March 2008

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (Yale University Press, 2005)

Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World (Yale University Press, 2005)

The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation (Yale University Press, 2000)