Moscow: Russia's first deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, was nominated by the ruling United Russia Party, and three other smaller pro-Kremlin parties, yesterday, Monday 10 December 2007, as their candidate for the Russian presidency, with current president Vladimir Putin due to step down from his post at the end of his second term next year March. Reports stated that President Putin warmly endorsed his candidacy, a critical matter, for this is likely to guarantee Medvedev the presidency.
 
"I have known Dmitry Medvedev well for over 17 years, and I completely and fully support his candidature," Putin said on national television.

Medvedev currently holds the post of first deputy prime minister and chairs the board of Russia's state-controlled natural gas monopoly, and also the country's biggest company, Gazprom.

He is also overseeing an ambitious multi-billion-dollar "national project" to improve living standards in the country.

The bear
The surname Medvedev is derived from the Russian word 'medved', meaning Bear - an animal long associated with the country. Dmitry Medvedev has been described as a soft-spoken lawyer and a pro-business moderate.

Putin brought him to Moscow from St Petersburg, and it is said that they share a close personal relationship, which goes back to the early 1990s when they worked together in the city.

Like Putin, Medvedev was born in Soviet Leningrad, Russia's second city, now known by its imperial name, St. Petersburg, the son of middle-class university teachers. Media reports quote his school and university teachers as saying that he was an intelligent and conscientious student, not given much to playing on the streets like other children.

At Leningrad University law school, he learnt under Anatoly Sobchak, who later earned fame as the reformist mayor of the renamed St Petersburg. Sobchak also taught Putin a decade before, and both he and Medvedev ended up working for Sobchak when he became mayor of the city. They came into contact with each other in the early 1990s when Medvedev was a legal consultant to the city and Putin served as its first deputy mayor.

With Putin becoming prime minister in 1999, he brought Medvedev to Moscow as deputy head of the government administration. When he moved on to the Kremlin, Medvedev followed as chief of staff in 2003, being appointed first-deputy prime minister and made responsible for multi-billion dollar investment programmes.

The dark horse
Medvedev has been described as a liberal reformer at heart, good English language skills and an easy-going manner, which tends to charm. He is not associated with the Kremlin 'siloviki,' or the security and law enforcement officials who have established a stranglehold over all key appointments in Russia and have been effectively ruling the country for eight years. Sergei Ivanov, another first-deputy prime minister, a representative of this breed.

According to analysts, Medvedev's choice works in favour of Putin's post-retirement policy, for he is completely beholden to Putin for his current position. This suits Putin who would not appreciate being sidelined once he demits office – much in the manner he himself turned on the oligarchs who backed his ascendancy to the Kremlin in 2000.

The choice of Medvedev may also have sprung from the fact that the siloviki are currently embroiled in a multibillion-dollar turf war and made selecting a candidate from amongst them difficult for Putin. Certainly hardliners, such as Ivanov, were deemed to be favourites to succeed Putin, and so Medvedev was certainly not the front-runner.

A presentable face
Image-makers in Russia may be at work, attempting to give Medvedev a modern, youthful appeal. He has also helped matters by slimming down considerably, revealing a more youthful personality.

Earlier in the year, reports in the Western media had quoted Kremlin liberals as saying that Medvedev had the support of Russian liberals, as he had ''the right kind of views on democracy, on freedom of the press, on the market." (The Financial Times)

Medvedev has also iterated the right views on democracy – the West's favourite target as far as Russia is concerned. Medvedev has gone on record to reject the notion of ''sovereign democracy,'' promoted by the Kremlin as its understanding of democracy. In July 2006, Medvedev said that when qualifiers are added to the term "democracy," the word acquires "a strange taste.''

"This creates the impression that we are talking about a non-traditional democracy, and this immediately establishes a particular perspective," he said.

All this is seen as helping build a smooth, broadly liberal and pro-Western persona, markedly different from that of the hardboiled siloviki – a persona that hopefully will be more acceptable to the West.

A new era
With the siloviki having done their job fighting back a hostile and aggressive West, they have in the process, if not fully antagonised, certainly alarmed European nations with regard to their intentions. The Kremlin may have decided that a backtracking from the current aggressive stance might be a more sensible option.

Resuming flights of Bear bombers over Europe, sending the Russian navy on a world wide tour and aggressively pursuing a ballistic missile development programme may all be very good for a national election, and also national testosterone levels, but not really what the doctor may have ordered for an export-dependent economy.

Russia's current prosperity, after all, is dependent entirely on its oil and gas earnings. All the exports are also made to Western and Eastern Europe, with whom relations are now at freezing point. Not the happiest of prescriptions for any planner who is looking forward to secure his country's future and prosperity.

Is it likely that Medvedev's candidacy might be a calibrated signal to the West that a gradual climb-down from the current heightened state of hostilities may well be on the cards? Is it likely that Russia has decided that its people should much rather continue to enjoy the fruits of their new found prosperity, rather than find it all shrivel away as a hostile Europe finds some way to break the stranglehold of Russia over oil and gas supplies, and in the process, neutralise its precious export advantage?

As for now, the elections are done and over with and United Russia, Putin's party, has comprehensively swept the polls. An arms race is a very effective platform for promoting jingoism and national pride, but not so very healthy for a country's economy. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a direct result of the inability of the Russian economy to sustain an unabated arms race with the West.

These are historical lessons too close in time for Vladimir Putin and his siloviki cronies in the Kremlin to have lost sight of. After all they have been responsible for returning some semblance of order to a country that virtually went under in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

A presentable face
Almost miraculously, legendary rock band Led Zeppelin decided to resurface for one performance in London in synch with Medvedev's candidature in Moscow. In a recent interview with the Russian magazine Itogi, Medvedev had revealed his passion for rock music. He said he had spent much of his youth compiling cassettes of popular Western groups, "Endlessly making copies of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple."

All these groups were on the blacklist in Russia during Medvedev's Soviet-era schooldays. So the time he claims to be compiling cassettes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and the like, is also the time when Mother Russia was caught deep in the throes of a Cold War with the West.

A nice touch!

Apparently we may now witness in Russia the ascendancy to power of a generation that would be quite the antithesis of Putin's generation, a generation whose personalities and careers were formed by the Cold War, and who are now in control in the Kremlin.

Medvedev might well be a diehard rock fan or all this may just be an act of image creation from professional spin-doctors in the Kremlin, who are old hands at the game.

Medvedev may well be St Petersburg cronyism in action, or a calculated gambit from the Kremlin aimed at restoring normalcy in its relations with the West – its immediate neighbours and also its most important clients.

If Medvedev, as an offering, is not acceptable to the West, then the siloviki, the hardline option, is in place and waiting. For that matter, so would be Putin, as a member of the recently elected parliament. If he were acceptable, then clearly it would be time for the siloviki, the cold war gladiators, to fade away.

Time alone will tell how events will play out. As for now, it's a long time to March 2008 and the Russian presidential elections. The most well laid plans can go awry in such a time frame.