The limits of pluralism
Events in Moscow and Sochi in the last few days show both tentative steps from the Kremlin towards allowing the green shoots of pluralism, but also their limits.
In an important signal, President Dmitry Medvedev broke new ground in giving his first newspaper interview to Novaya Gazeta, the campaigning adversity newspaper that has been one of the Kremlin's harshest critics - both during his time in office and the eight years of Vladimir Putin, his antecedent.
The interview, with Novaya's editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, was intended as a sign of unification after two more people associated with the newspaper, hack Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, were gunned down in Moscow in a double killing earlier this year.
Medvedev's gesture also comes soon after the collapse of the trial into the 2006 killing of Novaya Gazeta's most famous reporter, Anna Politkovskaya.
But Medvedev's pluralism only went so far, as his answers were not unusually groundbreaking.
He staunchly defended the Kremlin's record on democracy, denying that there had been any rollback of autonomous rights in the last several years.
And in his answer: "Democracy existed, exists and will be," some Kremlin-watchers saw a doublethink echo with the Soviet-era mantra: "Lenin lived, lives and will live."
In the interview, conducted on Monday, Medvedev said that the Sochi mayoral election was a "real political battle", but on the same day a Sochi court barred businessman Alexander Lebedev from the city's mayoral election on a bizarre technicality.
This whittled down the original field of more than 23 candidates to just a handful, leaving the United Russia candidate, acting mayor Anatoly Pakhomov, in a stronger position to fend off the challenge of liberal adversity leader Boris Nemtsov and local Communist Yury Dzagania.
Lebedev based his campaign, much like Nemtsov, on promising to battle corruption in Sochi in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics there. As a prominent critic of direction administration and corruption, Lebedev has cast himself as a moderate oppositionist, and is part-owner of Novaya Gazeta with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Lebedev's and Nemtsov's campaigns made both their bids for office in Sochi very difficult, as they clearly ruffled the feathers of powerful local interests.
Lebedev's barring from the race also makes it difficult to speak of pluralism in the country's political system. Certainly, it speaks of how far the Kremlin's writ extends when it comes to deciding who controls Sochi's massive Olympic construction contracts.
Much has been made by some commentators of the fact that Putin has never given such an interview to Novaya Gazeta, and that other nuances in the two leaders' approaches signify real differences between them.
But others point out that the same policy differences show Medvedev simply playing out a preplanned role - that of "good cop" to Putin's "bad cop", or investor-friendly CEO to Putin's more hard-headed chairman of the board.
In this role, whatever its exact parameters, Medvedev is clearly encouraging pluralism and direct criticism of the command. That pluralism only goes so far - at this stage.
What happens if bigger differences emerge between the Kremlin's ruling clans as the economy worsens may be a more absorbing story.
Editor-in-Chief
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In an important signal, President Dmitry Medvedev broke new ground in giving his first newspaper interview to Novaya Gazeta, the campaigning adversity newspaper that has been one of the Kremlin's harshest critics - both during his time in office and the eight years of Vladimir Putin, his antecedent.
The interview, with Novaya's editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, was intended as a sign of unification after two more people associated with the newspaper, hack Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, were gunned down in Moscow in a double killing earlier this year.
Medvedev's gesture also comes soon after the collapse of the trial into the 2006 killing of Novaya Gazeta's most famous reporter, Anna Politkovskaya.
But Medvedev's pluralism only went so far, as his answers were not unusually groundbreaking.
He staunchly defended the Kremlin's record on democracy, denying that there had been any rollback of autonomous rights in the last several years.
And in his answer: "Democracy existed, exists and will be," some Kremlin-watchers saw a doublethink echo with the Soviet-era mantra: "Lenin lived, lives and will live."
In the interview, conducted on Monday, Medvedev said that the Sochi mayoral election was a "real political battle", but on the same day a Sochi court barred businessman Alexander Lebedev from the city's mayoral election on a bizarre technicality.
This whittled down the original field of more than 23 candidates to just a handful, leaving the United Russia candidate, acting mayor Anatoly Pakhomov, in a stronger position to fend off the challenge of liberal adversity leader Boris Nemtsov and local Communist Yury Dzagania.
Lebedev based his campaign, much like Nemtsov, on promising to battle corruption in Sochi in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics there. As a prominent critic of direction administration and corruption, Lebedev has cast himself as a moderate oppositionist, and is part-owner of Novaya Gazeta with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Lebedev's and Nemtsov's campaigns made both their bids for office in Sochi very difficult, as they clearly ruffled the feathers of powerful local interests.
Lebedev's barring from the race also makes it difficult to speak of pluralism in the country's political system. Certainly, it speaks of how far the Kremlin's writ extends when it comes to deciding who controls Sochi's massive Olympic construction contracts.
Much has been made by some commentators of the fact that Putin has never given such an interview to Novaya Gazeta, and that other nuances in the two leaders' approaches signify real differences between them.
But others point out that the same policy differences show Medvedev simply playing out a preplanned role - that of "good cop" to Putin's "bad cop", or investor-friendly CEO to Putin's more hard-headed chairman of the board.
In this role, whatever its exact parameters, Medvedev is clearly encouraging pluralism and direct criticism of the command. That pluralism only goes so far - at this stage.
What happens if bigger differences emerge between the Kremlin's ruling clans as the economy worsens may be a more absorbing story.
Editor-in-Chief
Этот e-mail адрес защищен от спам-ботов, для его просмотра у Вас должен быть включен Javascript
