I started reading in The International Herald Tribune this morning about Dimitri Medvedev, the man chosen from on high to be Russia’s next President.

But I have to be honest - the story bored the hell out of me, so I gave up. Maybe I’m just not in the mood to read about how Medvedev will be the softer side of the Putin constituency. In this regard, I find myself - for probably the first time ever - agreeing with Hillary Clinton as she assessed in the most recent Democratic debate who Medvedev actually is:

“I can tell you that he’s a hand-picked successor, that he is someone who is obviously being installed by Putin, who Putin can control, who has very little independence…This is a clever but transparent way for Putin to hold on to power, and it raises serious issues about how we’re going to deal with Russia going forward…”

She’s absolutely right. In fact The New York Times, the IHT’s alter ego, gave us the lowdown a few days ago on what’s really happening in Russian election politics:

Shortly before parliamentary elections in December, foremen fanned out across the sprawling GAZ vehicle factory here, pulling aside assembly-line workers and giving them an order: vote for President Vladimir V. Putin’s party or else. They were instructed to phone in after they left their polling places. Names would be tallied, defiance punished.

The city’s children, too, were pressed into service. At schools, teachers gave them pamphlets promoting “Putin’s Plan” and told them to lobby their parents. Some were threatened with bad grades if they failed to attend “Children’s Referendums” at polling places, a ploy to ensure that their parents would show up and vote for the ruling party.

Around the same time, volunteers for an opposition party here, the Union of Right Forces, received hundreds of calls at all hours, warning them to stop working for their candidates. Otherwise, you will be hurt, the callers said, along with the rest of your family.

[snip]

Here in this historic region on the Volga River, Mr. Putin’s allies now control nearly all the offices, and elections have become a formality. And that is just as it should be, they said.

“In my opinion, at a certain stage, like now, it is not only useful, it is even necessary — we are tired of democratic twists and turns,” said the leader of Mr. Putin’s party in Nizhny Novgorod, Sergei G. Nekrasov. “It may sound sacrilegious, but I would propose to suspend all this election business for the time being, at least for managerial positions.”

This is, to any democracy loving individual, crazy talk. But Russia is, in many respects, prospering. Moscow has become intensely cosmopolitan, and is by some accounts the most expensive city in the world. The streets are lined with designer boutiques and exclusive (and tremendously expensive) restaraunts and nightclubs. For a fee, anyone can get permission to add police lights to their vehicle, allowing them to speed and ignore traffic signals with abandon. It has become a playground of the rich and famous, with mobsters and (one imagines) ex-KGB providing the muscle that protects this new, glamorous - and dangerous - way of Russian life.

Putin sits at the top of the list of these ex-KGB toughs who, through different means, has made Russia’s new oligarchs quite happy with their fortunes. Those who would like to continue to prosper tend to stay out of his way, lest they wind up in prison (or worse?)

It seems that Russia continues to be shark-infested waters, and while the Great White himself may have to step down as president, he’ll still be calling all the shots.

Filed under: Back in the USSR