Abstract
Unlike his predecessor Vladimir Putin, Dmitrii Medvedev had relatively little success in promoting his own supporters to leading positions. His meetings with defence and security officials took place less frequently, and were more highly formalized; he met key economic ministers less often than his predecessor, and continued to meet them irregularly even during the worst of the international economic crisis. Responses to the crisis, in practice, were devolved to government commissions, which met daily. Putin's political weight was meanwhile enhanced by his appointments to leading companies and by the substantial majority in the Duma that had been secured by United Russia, of which he was the leader. The ‘tandem’ was an unstable construction that depended entirely on the relationship between the two leaders; but it survived the economic crisis, in large part because Russia's soft authoritarianism allowed no space for an independent media and a political opposition to resist and delay its decisions.
Acknowledgments
This contribution was translated by Stephen White. The support of the Economic and Social Research Council under grant RES-062-23-1542 is gratefully acknowledged.
Notes
Available at <http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=489DB5ADEAB72>, accessed 20 May 2011.
Available at <http://kp.ru/daily/24143/361264> and <http://www.ng.ru/politics/2008-08-11/1_hronika.html>, both accessed 20 May 2011.
Available at <http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B0>, accessed 20 May 2011.
See Ol'ga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, ‘Losing Power in Russia’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2005), pp. 200–22.
O.V. Kryshtanovskaya, Anatomiya rossiiskoi elity [Anatomy of the Russian elite] (Moscow: Zakharov, 2005), p. 240.
We rely here on the ‘Monitoring of the Russian Political Elite’ project that is directed by the author at the Sector of Elite Studies at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the figures are for May 2010.
Khrushchev, after his dismissal, had begun to develop an interest in gardening and was especially proud of his tomatoes: see Roi Medvedev, N.S. Khrushchev: politicheskaya biografiya [N.S. Khrushchev: A political biography] (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), p. 254).
‘Tandem’ is the word used in Russian to depict the duopoly of Putin and Medvedev.
This term refers to the ministries that control security forces, including notably defence, the interior and various intelligence agencies.
Available at <http://www.government.ru/content/rfgovernment/rfgovernmentmanagement/leaders/d4da4820-24dd-42d8-9b06-d90b3e0c2fe8.htm>, accessed 20 May 2011.
Available at <http://government.ru/gov/activity/#person3>, accessed 20 May 2011.
According to our sources, Naryshkin was a member of the First Main Directorate of the USSR KGB; this is consistent with his employment as a ‘specialist adviser to the State Committee on Science and Technology’ and later as an economic advisor to the Soviet embassy in Belgium.
Available at <http://www.dp.ru/?ArticleID=64bff215-634f-4de8-908a-a7767e77c38f>, accessed 18 May 2011.
Available at <http://www.weekjournal.ru/rubric/10/news/7273.htm>, accessed 20 May 2011.
Rossiiskaya gazeta, 23 Nov. 2009, available at <http://www.rg.ru/2009/11/23/privatizatsiya-anons>, accessed 6 June 2011.
Available at <http://archive.kremlin.ru/text/docs/2004/08/75174.shtml>, accessed 16 May 2011.
We rely here on the ‘Monitoring of the Russian Political Elite’ project; the figures are for February 2011.
We rely here on the official site of the ‘United Russia’ party, available at <http://www.edinros.ru>, accessed 2 March 2011.
Available at <http://edinros.ru/er/text.shtml?10/9219,110028>, accessed 20 May 2011.
Marina Krasil'nikova, ‘Khronika ekonomicheskogo krizisa v otsenkakh mass’ [Chronicle of the economic crisis in the evaluation of the masses], Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniya, 2009, No. 1, pp. 29–38.
Kommersant, 16 Jan. 2009.
Available at <http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-12-28/news/28469223_1_budget-deficit-global-power-finance-minister-alexei-kudrin>, accessed 2 June 2011.
Available at <http://www.newizv.ru/economics/2010-04-21/125537-premer-uspokoil-deputatov.htm> and <http://www.gazeta.ru/financial/2010/04/20/3354953.shtml>, both accessed 18 May 2011.
Available at <http://www.government.ru/docs/14898>, accessed 16 May 2011.