Remember when iPads were all the rage for Russian officials? Or when the Skolkovo scientific center was going to spearhead innovation that would modernize the economy? How about when freedom was better than nonfreedom?
 
Russian President Vladimir Putin is clearly determined to eradicate any traces of the weak little mini-thaw that was Dmitry Medvedev's odd interim presidency.
 
But that clumsy, half-hearted, four-year effort to reform the economy and let some fresh air into the political system unleashed forces in society and within the elite that will be difficult to contain.
 
Can Putin put the genie back into the bottle? In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discuss that very question with co-host and longtime Kremlin-watcher Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."
 
Also in the podcast, Mark and I discuss how Putin's efforts to forbid officials from holding foreign assets has become a bonanza for the president's nemesis -- anticorruption blogger and opposition figure Aleksei Navalny.
 
Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast: The Strange Death Of 'Medvedevism'

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Does anybody remember Skolkovo? What seems like eons ago, back when iPads were still must-have gadgets for the Russian elite, the scientific and technological center was the showcase project in Dmitry Medvedev's efforts to modernize the country's economy to make it less dependent on oil and gas.
 
Well Skolkovo is back in the news, but probably not for reasons Medvedev welcomes.  The Investigative Committee announced this week that it was launching a probe into the alleged embezzlement of nearly 24 million rubles ($797,000) at the center.
 
How about Nikita Belykh? Does that name ring a bell? Back in 2008, months after assuming the presidency, Medvedev caused a minor sensation when he appointed the onetime opposition figure as governor of Kirov Oblast. The surprise move was part of a Kremlin strategy at the time to bring some elements of the opposition in from the cold and establish at least the appearance of a more pluralistic system.
 
Belykh's term is up this year and he has indicated he would like to stay on. But don't bet the house on that happening. President Vladimir Putin won't even meet with him.
 
And late last month, Investigative Committee agents searched his offices and interrogated him over alleged improprieties in the privatization of a local distillery -- a case tied to the Kremlin's ongoing efforts to prosecute anticorruption blogger and opposition figure Aleksei Navalny.
 
The back-to-back assaults on Belykh and Skolkovo represent hits on two key pillars of "Medvedevism," a short-lived and ultimately half-hearted effort to diversify the Russian economy and introduce a degree of managed pluralism into the political system.
 
The attacks are the strongest indication yet that President Vladimir Putin is determined to not only eradicate any traces of Medvedevism, but to utterly humiliate Medvedev himself and discredit the legacy of his entire interim presidency.
 
"Putin was not very pleased with his experiment involving his successor, who overtly started playing games, building his own political coalition, and criticizing the national leader himself," political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya wrote recently in Politcom.ru.
 
"By initiating a political thaw Medvedev created the social basis for the protests that erupted in December 2011...Medvedev's presidency smashed the inertia of the Putin regime and against this backdrop the current president is reinstating [repressive] mechanisms and eradicating Medvedev's 'green shoots.' The overturning of Medvedev's decisions, the stalling of his projects, the criticism in the media, and the discrediting films are all links in the same chain -- the process of politically destroying Medvedev."
 
It may be just a matter of time before the pro-Kremlin media accuses Medvedev of "hare-brained schemes, half-baked conclusions, and hasty decisions and actions divorced from reality," as Soviet Communist Party mouthpiece "Pravda" wrote of Nikita Khrushchev  following his ouster in 1964.
 
The steady dismantling of Medvedev's thaw, of course, has been building since Putin returned to the Kremlin last spring. Since then, we've had the Pussy Riot trial, the so-called "Bolotnaya case" against demonstrators who took to the streets on the eve of Putin's inauguration, the ramped up efforts to prosecute Navalny and Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, the rolling back of tepid political reforms on the election of governors, and the taming of the "systemic opposition" in the State Duma.
 
"The revision of Medvedev's legacy began virtually from the moment of the announcement of Vladimir Putin's future return to the presidency," Stanovaya wrote.  
 
"Now it already seems that Medvedev's presidency was a different era. The atmosphere in the country has changed so rapidly and fundamentally. The regime has become tougher. Political power has reverted to the 'Putinites.' The siloviki have acquired a second wind. Traditionalists and conservatives have started to win moral and political victories over the remnants of the liberals in the regime."
 
The powerful security service veterans in the Kremlin, many of whom are closely linked to the energy industry, staunchly opposed Medvedev's modernization efforts as well as the liberal experiment to allow for some managed pluralism in the political system. And now they are getting their revenge.
 
But as Gazeta.ru  wrote in a recent editorial, "When people get involved in vengeance, they do not weigh up the political costs very well."

The trap here is that in dismantling Medvedevism and all its remnants, Putin and his political managers are dealing with symptoms and not even coming close to addressing the underlying cause of the systemic crisis gripping the elite.
 
The Medvedev thaw, tepid as it was, didn't appear out of thin air. And it had very little to do with Medvedev himself -- he was just its iPod-toting front man, and a clumsy one at that.
 
It happened because the more savvy minds in the Kremlin grasped -- correctly -- that Russia was changing and the way it was governed needed to evolve as well.
 
They understood that the economy was, and remains, dangerously dependent on commodities, dooming it to an endless cycle of boom and bust as energy prices fluctuate. They understood that diversifying and decentralizing the economy would inevitably lead to new centers of political power and the need for some semblance of greater pluralism.
 
And they understood that Russian society was developing rapidly and becoming more differentiated and sophisticated as the prosperity of Putin's first term trickled down and spread. Such a society cannot be governed effectively in the paternalistic fashion that characterized Putin's 2000-08 rule.

But those pushing for this path -- Arkady Dvorkovich, Vladislav Surkov, Igor Yurgens, and Gleb Pavlovsky -- to name a few, lost the argument and are no longer in the Kremlin (although some have migrated over to the government with Medvedev).
 
Putin's political strategy is now dominated by people like Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff Vyacheslav Volodin, who believe the mounting restlessness in society and disquiet in the elite can be pounded into submission. Perhaps it can in the short term. But the underlying causes of the current political crisis aren't going away.
 
"Discontent is going to grow everywhere, either rapidly or more slowly. The forward-leaning section of Muscovites were only the first people to express it," Gazeta.ru opined in its editorial.

"Defending a system that has run out of steam is a hopeless cause. And senseless repressions that compromise the regime only deepen the systemic crisis." 
 
-- Brian Whitmore

NOTE TO READERS:  Be sure to tune in to the new "Power Vertical" podcast here, where I will discuss the strange death of Medvedevism with my co-host, New York University's Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."

Leonid Brezhnev did it. Boris Yeltsin did it. Is Vladimir Putin doing it, too?

Kremlin leaders tend to be obsessed with succession. They think about it. They worry about it. And they actively try to manage it.

In the latter Brezhnev years, the upper echelons of the Soviet elite, mindful of their own mortality, actively sought to promote a younger cadre from which the next generation of leaders would be drawn. It was a process that ultimately landed Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin.

And throughout his presidency, the aging Yeltsin toyed with a number of potential successors before -- fatefully -- settling on Putin.

The reasons for the fixation are obvious. In the absence of institutions, traditions, and a political culture to assure a smooth transition of power, Russia's rulers seek to control the process themselves.

So are Putin and his entourage thinking about life after Putin?

Political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, the onetime Kremlin spinmeister who was instrumental in strategizing and marketing the president's initial rise to power, thinks so.

"It is noticeable that Putin is considering the formation of a group from which he will be looking to choose the next president," Pavlovsky told the daily "Moskovsky komsomolets" recently.

"The difficulty lies in the fact that he has not yet decided whether he wants to see a successor by 2018 or if he will need one in 2024. In the second case there will, of course, be difficulties. It is hard to imagine keeping a pool of successors for 12 years. This group will inevitably be updated repeatedly."

Audition Of The Heavyweights

So if Putin is, indeed, actively thinking about succession, who's likely to be on his short list?

Probably not Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whose political capital has been severely diminished and who seems to grow more alienated from Putin by the day.

"Dmitry Medvedev is a worn-out figure whose weakness is seen by everyone," political analyst Pavel Svtatenkov wrote recently in the online "Osobaya bukva."

Medvedev's comments in January that he may seek the presidency again were widely ridiculed. He backtracked in an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, stressing that he would never run against Putin.

Shortly thereafter, he became the target of a series of attacks -- most notably a slickly produced video assailing his acquiescence to NATO's air campaign against Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi.

"Medvedev began to position himself too aggressively as Putin's successor," political analyst Aleksei Mukhin told the daily "Noviye izvestia." "Some circles deemed this premature and they struck several very powerful blows at the prime minister's political image." 

Many Kremlin watchers don't even expect Medvedev to last the year as prime minister.

If and when Putin finally sacks Medvedev, whom he appoints as a replacement will be a major tell.

If Medvedev is replaced with a "technical" prime minister with no political profile -- somebody like Mikhail Fradkov or Viktor Zubkov, for example -- it will be a surefire sign that Putin is probably not pondering succession yet.

But if he appoints a real heavyweight, that person will inevitably be looked at like a president-in-waiting.

"By making a heavyweight prime minister, you know that you are giving someone not just power but the power to make more power for themselves," NYU professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows," said on the latest "Power Vertical Podcast."

"You are making an active move...[and] one that you know that not only will everyone else interpret as having succession implications, but one that will make the heavyweight even heavier."
 
​​Two such heavyweights have been getting a fair bit of attention lately in the Russian media: Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
 
Since taking over as Moscow mayor following the sacking of Yury Luzhkov in September 2010, Sobyanin has enjoyed high popularity in the capital and good relations with the Kremlin. Putin reportedly sees him as loyal, but he has also seemed to go out of his way not to alienate the opposition.
 
"I think Putin is counting on him and has included him in his own plans for the future," Pavlovsky said. "I think that Sobyanin is on Putin's personal short list today. Medvedev is not."
 
​​Shoigu's star has also been rising dramatically.
 
For more than a decade as emergencies minister he was Russia's action man, appearing at nearly every disaster, either natural or man-made.

And since taking over the scandal-plagued Defense Ministry in December he has become, by far, the most popular minister in the government.

"Sooner or later, the Kremlin will be faced with a dilemma: whether to use Shoigu's reputation or remove him from the scene," Svtatenkov writes.

Likewise, former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, a political heavyweight who remains close to Putin despite his flirtations with the opposition, has been touted as a replacement for Medvedev.

A Lame Duck?

Of course, today's potential successor could be tomorrow's footnote. Just ask would-be presidents Sergei Shakhrai, Vladimir Shumeiko, or Boris Nemtsov -- all of whom were at one time or another touted as successors to Yeltsin.

And all the succession chatter, of course, may be coming not because Putin himself thinks it's time to consider the issue but rather because others in the ruling elite do.

"It is hard to think of Putin yet actively thinking: 'It's time I went and who is going to be my chosen heir?'" Galeotti noted in last week's podcast.

"It's actually that others within the deep state are either beginning the auditions or allowing conversations about succession to percolate as a way of signaling to Putin that he really ought to be thinking in these terms -- and if he doesn't, then others will begin thinking about it for him."

If this is indeed the case it means that some in the elite are already looking at Putin as a lame duck. Which would explain much of the turbulence and public intrigue that has gripped the political class recently.

"This is a sign of people realizing that Putin is no longer Putin. He's lost his touch," Galeotti said. "And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more people talk about a succession, the weaker Putin becomes."

But there is one funny thing about managed successions in Russia: They often don't turn out how their orchestrators intend. The Brezhnev elites' efforts to groom a young cadre of leaders led to the rise of two men -- Gorbachev and Yeltsin -- who would be instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union.

And Yeltsin's inner circle, the so-called Family, settled on Putin because they believed he would protect their interests after their patron left the Kremlin. Just ask Boris Berezovsky how that worked out.

-- Brian Whitmore

It's beginning to look a lot like a mob war.
 
From Moscow to Sukhumi to Istanbul, the fallout is spreading from last month's killing of mafia kingpin Aslan Usoyan. After more than a decade of peace, the hit appears to have set off a settling of scores among post-Soviet crime groups.

How far will this new war of the thieves go? And what are its implications? 

On the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss these issues with co-host Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University, expert on Russian organized crime, and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."

Enjoy...

The Power Vertical Podcast: War Of The Thieves

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Somebody is out to get Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Or somebody is setting up Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. Or both. Or neither.
 
But regardless, something pretty weird appears to be going on.
 
A slick feature-length video appeared online last week attacking Medvedev for selling out Russia's interests in the Middle East during his presidency by implicitly backing NATO's air campaign against Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. And he did do that, the video claims, against the express wishes of Vladimir Putin.

The film, which runs more than an hour and features top Russian military figures, popped up on what appeared to be Rogozin's YouTube page. Rogozin has staunchly denied having anything to do with it -- or even having a YouTube page.

So was this yet another in a long string of attacks on Medvedev? It bears a striking resemblance to another online video that appeared last summer attacking him for his alleged indecisiveness during Russia's August 2008 war with Georgia.

Or was it an elaborate provocation to discredit Rogozin, a bombastic nationalist and divisive figure whose star has been rising of late? There are certainly many who would like to knock him down a peg and President Putin is known to disdain his lieutenants airing dirty laundry in public.
 
Who knows? But the video's appearance is symptomatic of a trend that runs deeper than the immediate question of whodunit. It is illustrative of the ongoing intrigue, mayhem, and public shenanigans that have gripped the upper echelons of the elite -- a tendency that is, to some degree, reminiscent of the twilight of former President Boris Yeltsin's rule.
 
It was just this tendency that Putin made a priority of stifling during his first stint in the Kremlin, when he established the "power vertical" and reasserted the authority and prestige of the Russian state.
 
The return of such 1990s-style mischief and disarray, of which last week's mysterious anti-Medvedev video is just one example, points to an erosion of this authority.
 
The Deep State And The Fake State
 
In the past several months, the State Duma has taken up legislation on everything from combating blasphemy, to banning foreign words from the Russian language, to barring dual citizens from federal television channels, to prohibiting so-called homosexual propaganda.
 
Meanwhile, long-delayed reforms of the creaking social welfare and education systems, overhauls the Kremlin claims it wants, have gone nowhere.
 
According to a recent poll by the independent Levada Center, the Duma's approval rating is just 36 percent.

Medvedev's government hasn't fared much better. Since it took office in May there have been constant rumors of its imminent firing. Putin constantly berates the cabinet. The Duma regularly ignores its bills.

Likewise, as political analyst Leonid Bershidsky noted in a recent commentary for Bloomberg, the government isn't bothering to enforce many of the new laws the Duma has passed, leading to some angry exchanges on the floor of parliament.

"In the current state of suspended animation the executive branch resembles a mammoth embedded in ice: You can examine it but cannot see any movement," political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky recently told the daily "Nezavisismaya gazeta."

Medvedev himself has become something of a punch line and a punching bag. There have been not-so-subtle jokes on television about not being able to remember the prime minister's name as well as persistent barbs from former ministers like Aleksei Kudrin, German Gref, and Anatoly Chubais.
 
The degradation of Russia's formal institutions is an outgrowth of how the country has been governed for the past decade.
 
Under Putin, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Duma, and the courts have largely been elaborate window dressing, a form of kabuki theater where stage-managed political set pieces were played out for public consumption. The important decisions were made by an informal super elite of about a few dozen people -- a cabal of political, security, and business insiders with Putin serving as its front man and decider-in-chief.
 
Kremlin-watchers have given this group of shadow rulers different labels, such as the Collective Putin and Putin's Politburo. I prefer to call it Russia's Deep State. By whatever name, it is a central feature of Putinism.

For the Putin elite to rule this way it needs to preserve the illusion that the formal institutions are effectively fulfilling their constitutional functions. In this sense, the Deep State needs the fake state to look real -- or at least plausible. And it doesn't anymore.
 
The Mask Comes Off
 
For Putinism to work effectively, not only does the fake state need to look real, but the Deep State needs to remain deep.
 
And this ceased to be the case on September 24, 2011 when Putin and Medvedev announced their fateful "castling move" -- with Putin replacing Medvedev in the Kremlin and Medvedev taking over the prime minister's post from Putin.

Once that happened, once the mask came off, the degradation of Russia's formal institutions -- from the rigged elections to the puppet Duma and the technical government -- was only a matter of time.
 
"The Deep State worked when everyone was aware that it existed...but it was willing to operate behind a carapace, a facade of politicians," longtime Kremlin-watcher and New York University professor Mark Galeotti, one of my co-hosts on the Power Vertical podcast, says.

"Putin made the presence of the Deep State so clear. He rubbed it in Russians' noses, and that was a big mistake."
 
In addition to exposing the facade, the castling of September 2011 led to a crisis within the Deep State itself -- with the elite's technocratic wing favoring a thaw to accommodate a changing society and the "siloviki" wing advocating a crackdown on dissent.

And since that time, the Kremlin's efforts to put the old system back together again have only exacerbated the crisis.
 
The Fading Putin Majority
 
For much of the past decade, Putinism was based on more than repression. And the continued rule of a few dozen insiders was propped up by more than a facade of hollow state institutions.
 
Putinism at its high point was also based on a broad consensus, a social contract, an unwritten compact between the elite and the governed. The Kremlin provided stability and ensured rising living standards, and in exchange the population gave its loyalty.
 
It worked well after the chaos and deprivation of the 1990s. But it also had an expiration date.
 
"Last winter's crisis exposed the disintegration of the pro-Putin majority, a kind of pro-authoritarian consensus that had become established in the first half of the 2000s," political analyst Kirill Rogov wrote recently in the newspaper "Novaya gazeta."
 
"It became obvious that the old paradigm is coming apart at the seams, that it does not suit the most advanced and dynamic strata of the population, and in the context of falling economic growth rates it is, moreover, losing the support of ordinary people and of the regions."
 
The Kremlin's reaction to this, Rogov argues, has been to build "a new, much more conservative, Putin majority" on the ashes of the old.
 
"In order to shape such a majority it was necessary to convince [the Kremlin's] ideological competitors that they are marginal and to convince ordinary people that they don't need these groups," Rogov wrote.
 
"It was necessary to exploit issues that, on the one hand, arouse and outrage the advanced community, but which, on the other hand, are alien and incomprehensible to ordinary people."
 
Thus the antigay legislation. Thus the fealty to the Orthodox Church and the battle against blasphemy. Thus the xenophobic measures, like prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian orphans and the attempts to purge the Russian language of foreign words.
 
But the plan isn't working. "This strategy turned out to be a trap for the Kremlin. A conservative majority simply is not emerging, and the hysteria goes on and on," Rogov wrote.
 
And as a result, the country's institutions look increasingly absurd and the formal state looks increasingly fake. And with much of the elite uncomfortable with the strategy to begin with, the Kremlin's efforts are leading to even more intractable divisions and clan intrigue inside the Deep State.

Which brings us back to that mysterious Medvedev video that appeared online last week and what it appears to signify.
 
In the late 1990s, as the ruling elite fractured and the Yeltsin regime entered its crisis phase, the public airing of "kompromat," or compromising material, among warring factions, became increasingly commonplace.
 
One of the most memorable was a video clip that aired on state television in March 1999, that purported to show "a person resembling" the prosecutor-general at the time, Yury Skuratov, cavorting with a prostitute.
 
At the time, the phrase "Человек, который похож на Скуратова" ("a person resembling Skuratov") entered the political lexicon as a catchphrase, a punch line, and a symbol of the authorities' bankruptcy.
 
We're not there yet, or course. But we seem to be headed in that direction.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

The government seems invisible. The prime minister is publicly ridiculed on a regular basis. The parliament seems to get more outlandish by the day.
 
In the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss the deterioration of Russia's political institutions with regular co-host Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service.
 
Also on the podcast, Kirill and I discuss a mysterious video attacking Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that appeared on the Internet this week.
 
Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast -- Russia's Fake State

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When Vladimir Putin decided to detain reputed crime boss Semyon Mogilevich back in January 2008, he didn't use regular police, special forces, the Investigative Committee, or even the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Instead, he relied on an elite force from the Interior Ministry's Department of Economic Security, which was the fiefdom of a trusted old pal, a KGB veteran named Yevgeny Shkolov.

In retrospect, this is not surprising.

Shkolov's ties to Putin go way back. All the way back to when they served together as KGB agents in Dresden in the 1980s. And he is increasingly becoming Putin's go-to guy for sensitive operations. Shkolov was formally named an adviser to the president in May and placed in charge of personnel policy. Recently he was put in charge of investigating illegal financial transactions by Russian officials.

So in addition to being Putin's own personal human-resources department, Shkolov is also the guardian of the Kremlin's "kompromat" files. And that makes him the most important Russian official you've (probably) never heard of.

The website Rumafia.com, which compiles dossiers on top Russian officials, calls him "the new gray cardinal of the Kremlin," adding that "security, defense, and law-enforcement officials are forced to go cap in hand to Shkolov, knowing that there is a 99 percent chance that his position will be supported by the president."

Shkolov's most recent role grew out of the Kremlin's anticorruption campaign that appeared to pick up steam late last year.

In December 2012, Putin ordered state companies and state-owned banks to open their books and disclose the salaries of their top managers and their relatives. The State Duma, meanwhile, passed legislation requiring officials to repatriate foreign assets. Quoting Kremlin sources, the daily "Vedomosti" reported that Putin had given officials till the end of the year to return their foreign-held assets to Russia.

Putin then tasked Shkolov with heading up a new interagency group that would collect information about officials' property and business dealings.

If this were a real campaign against graft, he would simply be playing the role of an anticorruption ombudsman. But, of course, it is highly unlikely that this is what's happening.

If the past is any guide, the new regulations will be enforced selectively and aimed at those who cross the Kremlin. It's all about leverage and control at a time when Putin is struggling mightily to regain control over a restless elite.

And as the compiler and keeper of the files, this gives Shkolov an enormous amount of power. (Interestingly, it is a role Putin himself played as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.)

"Security officers are known for having excellent memories. They never forget a friend or an enemy, and Yevgeny Shkolov is no exception," the newspaper "Novaya gazeta" wrote recently.

This much was clear soon after Shkolov took his Kremlin post: In carrying out Putin's desire to clean out the Interior Ministry, he also used the opportunity to exact revenge on his adversaries there.

After joining the Interior Ministry in 2006, Shkolov quickly rose through the ranks. In 2007 -- aided by Putin's patronage -- he was named deputy interior minister and was believed by some to be in line for the top job. This, naturally, put him in conflict with then-Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.

Shkolov resigned from the Interior Ministry in 2011, nominally over differences with Nurgaliyev. But Russian media reports suggest the real reason was his proximity to a mounting corruption scandal related to the attempted takeover of Togliattiazot, one of the world’s largest ammonia exporters.

"His resignation," reported "Novaya gazeta," "looked like a rescue operation designed to save him from a snowballing corruption scandal at the department of economic crime."

But by May 2012, Nurgaliyev was out as interior minister, replaced by Vladimir Kolokoltsev, and Shkolov was safely embedded in the Kremlin. And as Rumafia.com reports, within six months he had purged the ministry's upper ranks of his enemies.

Shkolov also appears to have helped Putin in some unusual and unexpected ways.

When antigovernment protests were shaking the Kremlin in December 2011, Igor Kholmanskikh, then an unknown foreman at the UralVagonZavod tank factory in Niznhy Tagil, offered on Putin's live call-in show to travel to Moscow "with the guys" and deal with the demonstrators.

Putin famously named Kholmanskikh his special envoy to the Urals region shortly after returning to the Kremlin in May. But what went virtually unnoticed at the time was that the chairman of UralVagonZavod's board of directors was none other than Yevgeny Shkolov, who was cooling his heels there after his resignation from the Interior Ministry.

Soon, Shkolov would be named a Kremlin aide.

"Shkolov seems to be placed where Putin needs something done or something watched, and is then moved on when his patron's interests and needs change," NYU professor Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia's security service and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows," told me in a recent e-mail.

And right now, Putin needs Shkolov's eyes and ears in the Kremlin. Which makes him somebody to keep an eye on.

-- Brian Whitmore

Ten men to rule the nation. Dozens of clans fighting for resources. One arbiter to settle disputes.
 
It has gone by different names, from the collective Putin to Putin's Politburo. But most Kremlin-watchers agree that Russia is not, in fact, governed by formal institutions like the Cabinet of Ministers and the State Duma, but rather, by an informal collective leadership -- with Vladimir Putin as its front man and decider-in-chief.
 
The respected political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko has been monitoring and analyzing the composition and dynamics of this shadow ruling elite for years. And this week, his Minchenko Consulting Group released the latest update of their series, "Putin's Politburo 2.0."
 
In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discussed the state of the "collective Putin" with co-host Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and special guest Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies and author of "Sean's Russia Blog."
 
Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast -- All The King's Men

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And so it begins.
 
The assassins were waiting in a silver Mercedes as Astamur Guliya, a 31-year-old crime kingpin, left a restaurant in downtown Sukhumi. They opened fire as Guliya entered the parking lot, mortally wounding him.
 
It was impossible not to notice the similarities with the killing four days earlier of the legendary gangster Aslan Usoyan as he left a restaurant in central Moscow. It was also impossible not to notice that the hit took place on the same day that Usoyan was buried in the Russian capital, where hundreds of mob bosses from all over the former Soviet Union bid their farewells.
 
And it was impossible not to notice that like Usoyan, Guliya was a "vor v zakone," or "thief in law," the rough equivalent of a "made man" in the Russian and post-Soviet underworld.  
 
But Usoyan and Guliya were very different types of made men.
 
​​The 75-year-old Usoyan, a Georgian-born Kurd who was also known as "Ded Khasan" or "Grandpa Khasan," was an old school "vor v zakone" who followed an elaborate code of conduct that dates back to the early 20th century.
 
The younger Guliya was only crowned a "vor" in December. And, significantly, Usoyan did not recognize the coronation, claiming it was not done in accordance with the thieves' code, calling Guliya a "pretender."
 
Speaking on the latest "Power Vertical Podcast" last week, NYU professor Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian organized crime and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows," said much of the turbulence in the Russian underworld is attributable to a struggle between the old style "vor v zakone" and the younger, flashier, and more brash breed of mobster that has emerged in recent decades.
 
"This is part of a generational shift," Galeotti said. "The new breed of gangster that has emerged don't wear the tattoos or have a background in the prison camps. They are gangster businessmen. They don't cleave to the old rules."
 
Usoyan, Galeotti noted, was one of "the last of the old dinosaurs" and his killing marked "an important change point in the Russian underworld."

And the hit on Guliya appears to be the old guard showing its teeth.
 
Guliya was allied with one of Usoyan's fiercest rivals, an Azerbaijani gangster named Rovshan Janiyev. On the podcast and on his blog, Galeotti named Janiyev, as well as the Georgian crime bosses Tariel Oniani and Zakhar Kalashov, as those who potentially could have ordered the Usoyan hit.
 
"This could be a retaliation, but it could also simply be a part of a the wider spill-out. Certainly, there are some in Usoyan's network who continue to blame Janiyev, even if the current weight of evidence and supposition points towards Oniani," Galeotti wrote in an e-mail January 21.

He noted that Dmitry Chanturia, Usoyan's nephew, who took over his network, may want to avoid a war with Oniani until he consolidates his authority.
 
"Oniani is a much harder target, so maybe he has politically chosen to blame Janiyev," he wrote.
 
Whatever the case, we should expect more mob violence to follow amid the ongoing generational conflict in the underworld, competition over the Afghan heroin trade, and battles over construction contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
 
"We've had over a decade of relative peace in the underworld, but that peace was already under considerable pressure," Galeotti said on "The Power Vertical Podcast" last week.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

UPDATE: Be sure to check out Mark's new, and very comprehensive, post on the Guliya hit and the current turbulence in the underworld here.

The brazen daylight assassination in Moscow this week of Aslan Usoyan, a leading mafia kingpin known as "Ded Khasan" (Grandpa Khasan), has turned a bright spotlight on Russia's criminal underworld amid fears that the hit could spark a broader mob war.

Usoyan was no ordinary mobster. He was one of the few remaining "vori v zakone," or "thieves in law," legendary Soviet-era gangsters who sport elaborate tattoos, use colorful slang, and follow unwritten prison codes of conduct that date back to the Gulag. The "vori" have been romanticized in Russian lore and popular songs for decades.

This week's edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast" takes an in-depth look at the Usoyan hit as well as examining the Russian underworld, its culture and mores, and its relationship to the state.

Joining me are co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service, NYU Professor Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian organized crime and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows," and special guest Merhat Sharipzhanov, a correspondent for RFE/RL's Central Newsroom.

Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast -- January 18, 2013

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Listen to or download the podcast above, or subscribe to "The Power Vertical Podcast" on iTunes.

The various factions of the Russian elite send signals to each other and lay down markers in many ways. Some subtle. Some, not so much.
 
Addressing the State Duma on January 16, Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov seemed to go out of his way to undermine controversial legislation requiring NGOs engaged in political activities and that receive funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents."
 
Konovalov noted that thus far only one organization had registered as such, that the new law contradicts previously existing legislation on NGOs, and that the Justice Ministry would not go out of its way to uncover foreign financing for civil-society groups.

The comments came in response to a question from lawmaker Mikhail Markelov of the ruling United Russia party, who asked Konovalov what the Justice Ministry was doing to enforce the law, which went into effect in November. "The kind of provocations that have been taking place are not possible without foreign financing," Markelov said.

To be sure, Konovalov was careful. His response was parsed and laden with legalese. The law doesn't give the Justice Ministry the authority to conduct "audits" or "raids" to root out foreign funding, he said. This is the job of the Finance Ministry and law enforcement, respectively. And the issue of which NGOs are engaged in political activity is the job of the courts.
 
But it was abundantly clear that he was not crazy about the law and was trying to distance himself from it. Opposition lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov tweeted from the floor of the legislature: "Markelov attacks Konovalov in the Duma: The Justice Ministry is not enforcing the foreign agent law. The Answer: It contradicts the spirit of legislation on NGOs."
 
The fact that somebody like Konovalov is opposed to the foreign-agent law isn't really surprising.
 
He belongs to the technocratic wing of the elite that is uncomfortable with the crackdown that followed Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. Konovalov is also one of the "civiliki," specialists in civil law, that Dmirty Medvedev promoted during his presidency in an effort to mitigate the influence of the security-service veterans, or "siloviki," who surrounded Putin. Medvedev has long sought to get Konovalov named prosecutor-general, a prospect that looks increasingly far-fetched.

What is surprising -- and  interesting -- is that Konovalov would express his opposition, as cautious as it was, so publicly.
 
Even more so given that Konovalov's comments came as rumors are swirling in Moscow (yet again) that a government shakeup is imminent. The latest round of speculation was sparked by a front-page article in the pro-Kremlin daily "Izvestia" this week that named the government's "most and least effective ministers."
 
In that report, based on interviews with unidentified Kremlin officials, Konovalov was ranked one of the seven most effective ministers in the cabinet. (Nine were ranked adequate and five subpar.)
 
Will Konovalov's Duma performance result in a downgrade? Will he be pulled back in line?
 
In response to Ponomaryov's tweet from the floor of the Duma, Markelov answered on Twitter: "I am certain that in the near future, the Justice Ministry will begin enforcing the law on foreign agents."
 
We'll have to wait and see how this all plays out.
 
But for now, it is yet another indication that not everybody, not even among those considered the most effective members of the government, is on board with the Kremlin's current hard line toward civil society.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

Don't say anybody's name unless you have to. If you do, that person could also be called in for interrogation.

They will take down everything you say, so talk as long as you can about the most banal things possible and let them fill their notebooks up with nonsense.
 
Those were two of the many useful pieces of advice I remember receiving from attorney Yury Shmidt before being interrogated by the Federal Security Service (FSB) some 14 years ago.
 
It was January 1999 and I was working as a reporter in St. Petersburg. The story of the moment was the assassination of State Duma Deputy and human rights activist Galina Starovoitova, who was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in the city on November 20, 1998.
 
The FSB, which showed little interest in solving the crime, had been busy summoning journalists who were close to Starovoitova and pressuring them into giving false and compromising testimony about the slain politician. I got subpoenaed shortly after writing a story about the experience of two such Russian journalists who had endured these interrogations.
 
I retained Shmidt as an attorney, as much for legal counsel as for advice on how to handle myself once inside the "Bolshoi Dom," or the "Big House," as the St. Petersburg FSB headquarters is known.
 
The son of two Soviet-era political prisoners and a longtime human rights lawyer, Shmidt knew this territory better than most. In his trademark kindly, wise, and yet no-nonsense style, he gave me a thorough rundown of my rights and obligations as well as an invaluable checklist of dos and don'ts while dealing with the FSB.

When I went into the Big House and handed the officer who would be questioning me a document indicating that I was represented by an attorney, and that attorney was Yury Shmidt, the deflated look on my interrogator's face said it all.
 
Such was Shmidt's reputation. He, after all, was on the verge of securing the acquittal of ecologist Aleksandr Nikitin, a retired navy captain the FSB had accused of espionage due to his environmental work.

"Why did you go and hire Shmidt?" I remember the officer, who identified himself only as "Colonel Ivanov," saying. "He's just trying to scare you."

From that point on the interrogation was pretty painless. (And no, I didn't mention any names. And yes, I spent a lot of time talking about banal things.)

I recall this old story now for the saddest of reasons. Shmidt died in St. Petersburg this weekend at the age of 75 after a long battle with cancer.
 
In recent years, Shmidt was most famous as the lead defense attorney for jailed Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He began his career in the 1960s as a criminal attorney. Shmidt wanted to defend political prisoners but due to his family's history was not allowed to.
 
"My father was imprisoned for 27 years in Soviet times. My mother was in internal exile. My social circle was that of dissidents. My anti-Soviet convictions came very early in my life," he said in a recent interview.
 
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Shmidt founded the Lawyers' Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. The Nikitin case, which ended in acquittal in December 1999, secured his reputation as one of Russia's premier defense attorneys.

Some of his other notable cases included the defense of two journalists in Perm accused by the FSB of revealing state secrets in their articles and of Yury Samodurov, director of the Sakharov Museum, on charges of inciting religious hatred. He also represented Starovoitova's family following the lawmaker's assassination.
 
"To describe this man as a legend in his field would barely do justice to the intelligence, compassion, and courage he displayed on a daily basis, tirelessly working for his beliefs long after it would have been more comfortable to relent and conform," wrote Robert Amsterdam, an attorney who served on Khodorkovsky's international defense team.
 
"He went toe-to-toe with the darkest, most intimidating elements within Russia’s security apparatus and never flinched."
 
The last time I saw Shmidt was during a visit to RFE/RL in June 2010. He looked much frailer than I remembered him in the 1990s and he was visibly less animated.
 
He lamented that the legal profession had become overly commercialized and dominated by big money. When I asked him if there was anybody among Russia's young attorneys who impressed him, he said he had considered Stanislav Markelov, the rights lawyer who was assassinated in January 2009, to be his "spiritual successor" and was deeply troubled by his death.
 
"There will be somebody," he said. "I don't want to think the situation is so hopeless."

There surely will be somebody. But I doubt there will ever be another like you, Yury Markovich.

-- Brian Whitmore

What happens when one of Russia's most popular and enigmatic figures meets one of its most entrenched bureaucracies?
 
For more than a decade, Sergei Shoigu was Russia's can-do action man. As Russia's emergency situations minister, he cut a calm, confident, and reassuring figure, appearing at nearly every large-scale disaster, either natural or manmade.
 
Shoigu has also long been one of the country's most popular officials. He has been touted as a potential prime minister, and the Moscow rumor mill has even speculated that he might be being groomed to eventually succeed Vladimir Putin as president.
 
Whether or not that is the case, Shoigu's next emergency mission is going to be a daunting one. In November, Putin tapped him to take command of the country's scandal-plagued Defense Ministry after the controversial Anatoly Serdyukov was dismissed.
 
Shoigu inherits a ministry rife with corruption and an increasingly outdated military that is badly in need of reform but deeply resistant to change.
 
In the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss the Shoigu phenomenon and the challenge of defense reform with co-host Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University, an expert on Russia's security services, and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."

Enjoy...

The Power Vertical Podcast: Russia's Action Man -- Sergei Shoigu

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Listen to or download the podcast above, or subscribe to "The Power Vertical Podcast" on iTunes.

It began with a roar and it ended with a whimper.

As 2012 wound down in Russia, the soaring expectations for change that accompanied the civic awakening and mass protests at the year’s dawn had clearly faded. But the social, economic, and political forces that spawned them will continue to shape the landscape well into the new year.

A fledgling middle class remains hungry for political change, splits still plague the ruling elite over the way forward, and a fractious opposition movement continues to struggle to find its voice.

With the Kremlin unable to decisively squelch the mounting dissent and the opposition unable to topple President Vladimir Putin, Russia has entered an uneasy holding pattern that has the feel of an interlude between two epochs.

"I don't think we are at the end of the Putin era, but we are at the beginning of the end," says longtime Russia-watcher Edward Lucas, international editor of the British weekly "The Economist" and author of the recently published book "Deception."

With economic headwinds on the horizon, generational conflict brewing, and new political forces developing, Russian society is changing -- and changing rapidly. But the political system remains ossified.

So what can we expect in 2013? Below are several trends and issues to keep an eye on in the coming year.

The Oil Curse: Energy Prices And The Creaking Welfare State

If 2012 was all about politics, 2013 will also be about economics.

The Russian economy, the cliche goes, rests on two pillars -- oil and gas. And both will come under increasing pressure as the year unfolds.

World oil prices, currently hovering between $90 and $100 per barrel, are expected to be volatile for the foreseeable future. And any sharp drop could prove catastrophic for the Russian economy.

Energy experts and economists say Russia's budget will only stay balanced if oil prices remain between $100 and $110 per barrel. Five years ago, the figure needed for a balanced budget was $50 to $55.

Meanwhile, Moscow's dominance of the natural gas market is being challenged by the development of new energy sources like shale gas and liquefied natural gas.

"The Russians are going to have to face, just as the Saudis did in the 1980s, the possibility of dropping energy prices," says Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

The flush days when petrodollars could power Russia’s economy and lubricate Putin's political machine are coming to a close.

How the political system responds to these challenges will be a key question in 2013.

​​
Leading Russian economists like Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin have stressed the need to diversify the economy away from its dangerous dependence on nonrenewable energy. Both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev have likewise made calls for diversification.

But despite all the rhetoric, there has been little real action.

Part of this is due to fierce resistance from powerful figures in the Russian elite with ties to the energy industry, like Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin crony.

But the reasons for inaction are actually much more fundamental. Diversifying and modernizing Russia's economy would entail a degree of decentralization and the subsequent development of alternative centers of economic power. This, in turn, would eventually lead to new centers of political power with more independence from the Kremlin than Putin appears willing to tolerate.

"The decoupling of gas and oil prices, the large quantities of liquefied natural gas on world markets, the growth of shale gas have all [diminished the regime's] ability to collect natural-resource rents," Edward Lucas says. "And the collection and distribution of those rents is central to its model."

With resources declining and no economic diversification program in sight, the authorities appear to have concluded that they need to reform the country's creaking social-welfare system. But such a move is certain to be politically volatile, especially since Putin's main base of support is now the rural poor and the working classes.

The Kremlin is still haunted by the protests that broke out in 2005 when the government attempted reforms to the social safety net.

Fathers And Children: The Looming Generational Conflict

When Putin took power in 2000, the 40-something former spy looked like an energetic young leader, especially compared to his geriatric predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

But more than a decade later, he and his team are aging together. And by most accounts, they intend to remain in office at least until 2018 -- and possibly until 2024. By that time, much of his ruling circle will be in their 70s.

The comparisons to Leonid Brezhnev that accompanied Putin's return to the Kremlin were not superfluous. In addition to the fears of stagnation, the graying of Team Putin also sets the stage for a generational conflict within the elite.

"The lack of institutional mechanisms for promotion and rotation is a problem because, when you don't have that, it leads the younger generations to get frustrated if they don't believe there is a way to advance within the system," Gvosdev says. "If everything is blocked off it creates tension. You can't just freeze the government establishment because the energy of people is going to be directed toward breaking into it or replacing it, and that becomes a danger."

How this generational discord develops will be one of the key underlying trends to watch in 2013. This is especially true since a whole new cohort entered the elite over the past four years.

During his presidency, Dmitry Medvedev made a concerted effort to bring younger cadres into the Kremlin, which analysts say added a political element to the generation gap.

"Real fragmentation is taking place by age because Medvedev rejuvenated the system of administration," prominent Moscow-based sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya told the daily "Nezavisimaya gazeta" this summer. "The more conservative older part of the elite was irritated by this and moved toward Putin. And those who were younger moved toward Medvedev in hopes of a quick career if Medvedev remained for a second term."

The young guns who came in with Medvedev are also ideologically inclined toward greater pluralism. "Many observers are convinced that these leaders are giving financial support to the opposition," Kryshtanovskaya said.

The generational gap in the elite is mirrored by a similar one in society as the cohort born after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and which has only faint memories of the chaos of the 1990s -- comes of age.

"This group of citizens sees itself as not only post-Soviet, but non-Soviet," says Masha Lipman of the Moscow Carnegie Center. "They don't consider themselves to be vassals of the state. They are more free-thinking."

Lipman adds that this younger generation is helping fuel Russia's civic awakening. "This process is irreversible,” she says. "And as Russia continues to urbanize and cities become centers for younger people, this process will only accelerate."

​​Strange Bedfellows: When Aleksei Meets Aleksei

When speculation emerged that anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny and former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin may be cooperating politically, it raised eyebrows among Kremlin-watchers.

And the reason for the interest goes much deeper than an abiding fascination with these two emerging players on the political scene.

An alliance of the Alekseis would have pointed to one of the key developments analysts have been watching for since mass protests broke out a year ago: collaboration between the technocratic wing of the elite and moderate elements in the opposition.

Such a marriage makes sense in many ways. Elite technocrats understand that Russia is dangerously dependent on energy exports, that current levels of corruption are unsustainable, and that in order for the economy to diversify and modernize, the political system will need to become more pluralistic.

Moreover, as moderate opposition activists come to understand that a colored revolution in Russia is unlikely, they are more likely to place their hopes in evolutionary change.

And in the event that the Putin regime begins to look dangerously shaky, overtures from inside the halls of power to the opposition will become more likely.

"We are going to see more people toying with defection to the opposition, people opening up back channels," says Mark Galeotti, the author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows" and a professor at New York University. "We're going to see the economic elite trying to reach out [to the opposition] and this is going to be very dangerous for the state."

On the opposition's Coordinating Council, a bloc is already emerging that seeks to negotiate political change with willing elements in the Kremlin, rather than trying to topple the regime, according to press reports.

The faction apparently includes 16 members of the 45-seat council. In addition to Navalny and his backers, it reportedly includes socialite-turned-activist Ksenia Sobchak and her supporters, as well as longtime opposition figure Ilya Yashin and entrepreneur Aleksandr Vinokurov, the co-owner of Dozhd-TV.

For his part, Kudrin has been trying to position himself as a bridge between the opposition and the authorities to foster what he calls "evolutionary change" toward greater pluralism. So has billionaire oligarch and former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov.

If a bridge is ultimately built between the opposition and the technocratic wing of the elite, it could result in negotiated political reforms, in the co-opting of a vital wing of the Kremlin's opponents -- or a measure of both.

"I think it is more likely that as we see divisions within the regime that one faction tries to exploit public discontent," Lucas says. "It will still be kind of 'inside baseball' rather than a 1917-style change."

Beyond The Street: Will The Opposition Mature?

Bouts of soul searching are an inevitable ritual after the past few opposition demonstrations.

The heady days of December 2011 and January 2012, when dissenters found their voice and discovered they were not alone, are a fading memory. Likewise, the period from the beginning of the year until Putin's return to the Kremlin in May, when the opposition seemed to control the national conversation, is also over.

And opposition leaders look increasingly uncertain about what to do next.

"They're focusing on the glory days, the revolutionary days of December through May. But nobody is thinking about what happened after May, when they lost control of the agenda," says Sean Guillory, a fellow at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies. "How are they going to recapture the agenda and how are they going to really start making connections with society?"

The opposition, of course, is not a unified movement. It comprises nationalists, leftists, and liberals, united only by their opposition to Putin.

Will a single leader emerge in the coming year? Will the Coordinating Council, an elected body designed to bridge the divides in the opposition and establish a bond with civil society, prove an effective form of collective leadership?

"A process we are going to see is the opposition actually beginning to fragment," Galeotti says. "You will begin to see ideological blocs, real opposition movements rather than just the generic 'we want Russia without Putin' thing. But it will be a painful process."

What happens with the opposition, whether it is able to move beyond the street and develop into a potent political force, is a trend to watch because there is a deep well of discontent in society to potentially tap.

"They have this feeling of stagnation," Lucas says. "Of institutions that don't work, of a public life plagued by lies, evasions, and propaganda. They want more decent behavior by public officials and public institutions and they aren't getting it."

Vladimir Putin's annual press conference has a lot of familiar elements: the advance hype, the game-show-like atmosphere, and the predictably servile questions.
 
But this year's event also had something unusual: a crop of journalists who were not in awe of the president and who were unafraid to challenge him with tough questions.
 
From the lively sparring over Kremlin policy to the unexpected snappy comebacks to Putin's trademark putdowns, it was political theater that reflects how much Russia has changed in the past year.
 
In the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss these issues with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."
 
Enjoy....

Podcast: Political Theater With A New Script

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NOTE TO READERS AND LISTENERS: "The Power Vertical" will break for two weeks as I take a breather for the holidays. The blog will be back in action on January 7 and the podcast will return on January 11.

He insisted he wasn't a dictator. He defended the Kremlin's crackdown on dissent. And he claimed to know when the world will end.
 
The Kremlin hyped President Vladimir Putin's annual press conference like a Hollywood blockbuster. It lasted more than four hours, and when it was (finally) over its contents were dissected and parsed like an ancient text.
 
But in the end, there were no spectacular announcements: no government shakeup, no new corruption targets, and really, not much major news.
 
The main take-away was the optics.
 
Opposition journalists spent a good deal of time patting themselves on the back for their bravery in asking the president tough questions. And tough questions were asked, at least by some: about the fate of those detained in connection with the May 6 protests on the eve of Putin's inauguration; about the wisdom of pending legislation banning U.S. citizens adopting Russian children; about what is really going on with the Kremlin's anticorruption campaign. There were also the usual crop of servile questions as well.
 
The Kremlin and its many surrogates spent the day praising Putin's performance -- insisting that he's back in top form. He certainly had his moments, quipping about how he's not afraid of the end of the world because it is inevitable (and noting that it won't happen on December 21, but in 4.5 billion years).
 
But as a relaunch of brand Putin, if that is what the Kremlin spinmeisters had in mind, it seemed pretty weak. He was the star, but he had to share the spotlight with at least a few real journalists asking real questions -- and they appeared not to be in awe of him.
 
A telling moment came when Putin addressed an adult journalist, Maria Solovyenko, by the diminutive, "Masha." She came right back at him, addressing the Russian head of state by his diminutive, "Vova."
 
Addressing Putin this way in public would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
 
Russian television treated the whole thing like the Super Bowl or the World Cup final. And in the post-game show, both sides were claiming victory.
 
Live from Moscow, the Putin Show was long, and at times it was even informative. But I'm not sure yet whether it tells us anything new about where Russia may be headed.
 
Those are my initial thoughts, which I reserve the right to revise.

In this week's edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I'll discuss all this with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU Professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."
 
-- Brian Whitmore

Maybe it was the rumors about his health. Maybe it was the poor reviews his big speech to parliament received last week. Or maybe he just wants to end the year with a bang.
 
But whatever the reason, the Kremlin has clearly decided to play up President Vladimir Putin's December 20 press conference in a very big way.
 
From the dramatic voice over and Hollywood-style background music, to the classic action-hero shots from the Putin archives, the message in trailers on Russia's state-controlled television channels announcing the big event seems clear: the old hard guy is back with a vengeance. Or so we should believe.
 
WATCH FOR YOURSELF HERE:
 


AND HERE: 


 
In addition to emphasizing the Kremlin leader's physical vitality, the trailers also highlight the recent anticorruption campaign -- and make a point of splicing in a clip of Putin announcing the sacking of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. (Significantly, this comes shortly after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made a point of defending Serdyukov in his television interview earlier this month.)
 
Putin's image makers and political advisers have clearly decided to raise expectations for the annual event. What is not clear yet is why. Is this part of Putin's anticipated image makeover? Is the government shake-up the press has been speculating about for months finally coming? Or will it fall flat just like his speech to parliament did last week?
 
We'll know in a couple of days.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

There was a lot of anticipation for President Vladimir Putin's state-of-the-nation address this week, his first since returning to the Kremlin in May.

Some media speculated he would reshuffle the government. Some reported that he would use the speech to unveil a rebranded "Putin the Wise Patriarch." Other Kremlin-watchers  thought the address would signal a pivot to more liberal policies.
 
But what everybody got instead was boilerplate. 

In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discussed Putin's big speech and why it fell flat with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU Professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows." Why did Putin pass up an opportunity to take the political initiative?

Also on the podcast, we discuss a recent gaffe by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who was caught by a live microphone insulting agents of the Investigative Committee.

Enjoy...

The Power Vertical Podcast -- The State Of The President

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Listen to or download the podcast above, or subscribe to "The Power Vertical Podcast" on iTunes.

When Dmitry Medvedev was caught by a live microphone last week referring to Investigative Committee agents as "kozly," a deeply offensive insult in Russian, it sparked a minor scandal, embarrassed the prime minister, and infuriated many in the law-enforcement community.
 
Medvedev's gaffe cast a light on the turbulence that President Vladimir Putin's monthslong crackdown on dissent and more recent anticorruption drive has unleashed among the elite. Both campaigns are being spearheaded by the Investigative Committee and its controversial chief Aleksandr Bastrykin, who has emerged as Putin's attack dog of choice.
 
In casual banter with journalists following an interview with five television stations on December 7, Medvedev let slip what he really thought about an incident in which Investigative Committee agents raided the house of film director Pavel Kostomarov.
 
"They were kozly to turn up at 8 in the morning, but that, in fact, is their habit," Medvedev said in comments picked up by a live mic and later circulated on the Internet.

(Kozly is the plural of kozyol, which literally means "goat" in Russian. Its origin as an insult dates back to prison slang in the 1960s, when it was used to describe inmates who collaborated with the authorities. When used commonly as a slur, it is considered particularly disrespectful and can often result in a fight.)

Medvedev's remarks drew a fast and sharp rebuke from the Investigative Committee.
 
"It was strange to hear comments that not only denigrate Investigative Committee investigators but also undermine the authority of all of the country's law-enforcement agencies," spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement posted on the committee's website.
 
Markin's comments was eventually removed from the committee's site after repeated complaints from Medvedev's staff. But in an interview with the daily "Izvestia," the spokesman refused to retract his remarks.

"I was defending the honor of the investigators, the Investigative Committee, and all law-enforcement agency personnel. At the same time, I did not insult anybody and did not say anything offensive. So I do not consider it necessary to retract my comments," Markin said.
 
Medvedev's live-mic scandal attracted headlines for days and illustrated something Kremlin watchers have long known: Much of the elite is deeply uncomfortable with Putin's crackdown on dissent and the methods Bastrykin and the Investigative Committee have used in spearheading that effort.
 
But something else the premier said -- and said openly in the on-the-record portion of the same television interview -- appears to be the real reason for his conflict with the Investigative Committee.
 
During the interview, Medvedev spoke out forcefully in support of former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who was recently fired over a defense procurement scandal.
 
"Regardless of what anybody says, there haven't been any charges [against Serdyukov]," Medvedev said in remarks later reprinted in the official government daily "Rossiiskaya gazeta." "The investigation is ongoing, but that is only one side. There are accusations and there is also the defense. The investigation needs to continue and a court will decide."

Medvedev went on to praise Serdyukov's work, saying he was a "high-quality defense minister" who "worked effectively" during a period of transition in the armed forces.
 
Citing unidentified officials, "Izvestia" reported that it was this -- and not Medvedev's live-mic insult -- that really angered the Investigative Committee brass.

"The prime minister's comment that Serdyukov worked 'extremely effectively' at a time when his subordinates are already under arrest perplexed the Investigative Committee, to say the least," one official told the daily. "How is it possible before the case is complete to make excuses for a person who could end up in the dock?"
 
As I have blogged here, Medvedev appeared to be courting Serdyukov's support late in his presidency when he was hoping to run for a second term. For his part, Serdyukov was also using Medvedev for his own purposes -- to win a higher budget for armament purchases.
 
While it would be a stretch to call the two allies, Medvedev was clearly not pleased with Serdyukov's sacking. And his willingness to publicly express support for the former defense minister is yet another sign of how much Putin's anticorruption campaign -- no matter how cosmetic -- is causing discord among the elite.
 
The unwritten rules are changing for the elite in unclear ways -- and with unpredictable results.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

NOTE TO READERS: Be sure to tune in to "The Power Vertical Podcast" on December 14, where I will discuss this week's developments in Russian politics with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU professor and longtime Kremlin watcher Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."

In a meeting with supporters on December 10, President Vladimir Putin insisted the Kremlin's anticorruption campaign was the real deal and not just for show. Arrests would be made, he added, and punishment for crooked officials was "inevitable."

Should we believe him? There are, of course, plenty of reasons for skepticism. First among these is the fact that corruption is not a bug in Putin's operating system but a feature.

And an essential feature at that.

First and foremost, it's a feature that holds together the power vertical. As the Moscow Carnegie Center wrote in a report released last week, the unwritten contract among the ruling class can be summarized as follows: Officials pledge "fealty toward the Kremlin in exchange for a license to grow super-rich."

Put another way, loyalty buys you a license to steal. Take away that license and what else is there to compel loyalty?

The corruption feature also provides the Kremlin with an invaluable tool to control potentially wayward officials. If everybody is dirty to some degree, then everybody is vulnerable to a veiled threat -- or, if necessary, a targeted prosecution -- if they step out of line politically.
 
A true anticorruption campaign, Gazeta.ru wrote in a recent editorial, "could follow an unpredictable trajectory and overtake practically any member of the current or former political elite."

That, of course, would change the elite contract dramatically and make it increasingly difficult for Putin to remain above the fray.

"The campaign against corruption -- with or without high-profile resignations and imprisonments of high officials -- has enormous costs for the regime, despite all the popularity of anticorruption rhetoric among the masses," Gazeta.ru opined.

"After all, all these outrages did not simply take place before Putin's eyes but were carried out by his subordinates within the framework of the system created by him."

And yet despite this, something has changed. The rules of the game are suddenly different.

In a recent column in "Novaya gazeta," Yulia Latynina illustrated how different by contrasting two corruption cases that broke out back in 2007 to the situation today. (You can read the abridged English-language version from "The Moscow Times" here.)

The first involved Semyon Vainshtok, who resigned as head of Transneft after the Audit Chamber compiled a dossier on his shadowy business dealings. The report was, of course, made to order. The siloviki, the security service veterans surrounding Putin, had long wanted to remove Vainshtok and replace him with their preferred candidate, FSB General Nikolai Tokarev. But Putin insisted that this be done quietly, with no public scandal.

And it was. The Audit Chamber report wasn't made public at the time (although it was later leaked to anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny). And Putin rewarded Vainshtok for going quietly, naming him head of Olimpstroi, the state corporation in charge of building Olympic venues for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.

First the stick, then the carrot. And the license to steal remained intact.

"Tokarev didn't go public because Putin sent a clear signal: I decide everything and anybody who goes public will lose and will be smacked down immediately," Latynina wrote.

Another 2007 case, one that resulted in the so-called siloviki war, illustrates the costs of breaking this code of "omerta." When Viktor Cherkesov, a KGB veteran and longtime Putin ally who then headed the Federal Antinarcotics Service, went public with a "kompromat war" against other siloviki -- publishing a scandalous article in the daily "Kommersant" -- it eventually cost him his high-profile job (although he later resurfaced as head of a state corporation).

In contrast to five years ago, a whole slew of corruption scandals has gone very public and has gotten very nasty in the past few months -- apparently with Putin's blessing.

The most spectacular of these have been the sacking of Anatoly Serdyukov as defense minister over defense-procurement shenanigans, the firing of Yury Urlichich as head of the Glonass Global Satellite Navigation system over embezzlement allegations, and the documentary on state-run Channel One television about financial machinations involving former Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik.

"The rules of the game have not just changed quickly, but with blinding speed," Latynina wrote.

"Five years ago, each of these scandals would have been resolved behind closed doors, just as the Transneft affair was. Putin would have been the sole arbiter and no compromising information would have been released to the public. This is a major change in Putin's behavior and that of his elite."

So why is Putin changing the rules? Why would he give up both a carrot and stick to control the elite? Why would he unleash potentially debilitating chaos among his subordinates? And why would he potentially put himself at risk?

One reason could be that there simply isn't enough money for servicing the elite's corruption habit to continue to be, for all intents and purposes, a line item in the budget.

And as the Moscow Carnegie Center pointed out in its report, this puts the entire Putin system in a bind:

 
In other words, economics dictates that the rules of the game for the elite must change. But the politics of the Putin system dictate that they cannot change.

-- Brian Whitmore

It has been a year since Russia's season of dissent kicked off in earnest following the disputed State Duma elections on December 4, 2011.
 
Much has happened since, from Putin's reelection to the Pussy Riot trial to the legislative crackdown on dissent to the current campaign against corruption.
 
And as a turbulent 2012 draws to a close, it's clear that Russia is in the midst of an important transformation. What isn't yet clear: a transformation to what?
 
The new edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast" takes a look back at the past year and ahead to what we may expect in 2013, with co-hosts Mark Galeotti of New York University and Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies.
 
Enjoy...

The Power Vertical Podcast -- One Year After

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At first glance, former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin and opposition leader Aleksei Navalny make for odd allies.
 
The cerebral, urbane, and pro-Western Kudrin has long been a close friend of President Vladimir Putin. He spent most of his career in the halls of power overseeing and facilitating Russia's macroeconomic stability -- and tolerating a mindboggling amount of graft in the process.

The firebrand Navalny made his name as an anticorruption blogger with a nationalist bent who made it his mission to expose that graft. He has spent the past year as one of the Kremlin's fiercest opponents, and wears the numerous nights he has spent in police detention as a badge of honor.

But despite these differences, there have been signs in recent weeks that these two very different Alekseis may be moving toward working together to forge a link between the opposition and the technocratic wing of the elite, which is uncomfortable with the Kremlin's current hard-line posture.

This week, on the first anniversary of the disputed parliamentary elections that set off a wave of protests that made Navalny a household name, Kudrin called on the Kremlin to stop using "confrontational rhetoric" toward its opponents.

In a report posted on the website of his think tank, the Civic Initiatives Committee, Kudrin and his co-authors wrote that such actions "only increase the antigovernment attitude of the middle class, without which the country’s development isn’t possible."

The report, titled "2012: The Authorities and Our Common Risks," also criticizes Russia's rulers for engaging in what it calls "imitation politics" and says only a real dialogue between the Kremlin and the emerging civil society can prevent the country from sliding into economic and political stagnation -- or worse.

For the past year, Kudrin, who resigned as finance minister in September 2011, has been trying to position himself as the man in the middle of Russia's intractable political standoff -- the honest broker who could foster a true dialogue among the authorities, the opposition, and newly politically active segments of society.

Having seen the system work from the inside, he understands that Russia is dangerously dependent on oil and gas, that current levels of corruption are unsustainable, and that in order for the economy to diversify and modernize, the political system will need to become more pluralistic. But he has also stressed that change needs to be evolutionary.

And recently, Kudrin appears to be getting a major assist from Navalny.

The anticorruption blogger has been using his influence on the opposition's Coordinating Council to strengthen the hand of moderates who seek to negotiate with the authorities and reform the political system and weaken radical elements who want nothing short of regime change.

Navalny's chief ally in this effort has been socialite-turned-social-activist Ksenia Sobchak, with whom he has teamed up to form a powerful super faction on the council.

The Navalny-Sobchak alliance was instrumental in providing a critical link between Kudrin and the Coordinating Council. The two successfully backed a controversial move to get Dmitry Nekrasov, a close ally of the former finance minister, named the committee's executive secretary.

Nekrasov, a former Kremlin aide who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the same council, is the coordinator of Kudrin's think tank. Navalny praised him as "sincere, sensible," and "capable." He also lauded the work of Kudrin's Civic Initiatives Committee.

After Nekrasov's appointment was approved, opposition journalist and council member Oleg Kashin fiercely criticized Navalny on Twitter.

Despite their obvious differences, Kudrin and Navalny also complement each other. Kudrin has cache with the authorities that Navalny lacks. Navalny has street cred with the opposition that Kudrin, despite his apparent democratic epiphany, will probably never have.
 
It's not clear where -- if anywhere -- this is going. But a true meeting of the minds between Aleksei and Aleksei could be a vital step toward a development that I've been watching for: an overt alliance between the technocratic wing of the elite that understands that Russia's political system needs to open up to accommodate a changing society, on the one hand, and the moderate wing of the opposition that is seeking evolutionary change on the other.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

Vladimir Putin may be about to undergo an extreme image makeover.
 
Putin the chest-thumping and siloviki-loving tough guy could be on his way out. And a kinder and gentler Vladimir the Wise might be on the way in.
 
"Putin's political advisers have decided to abandon the macho image in favor of that of a wise patriarch," the daily "Nezavisimaya gazeta" writes, citing a Kremlin strategy paper.

According to the report, Putin will also seek to "reassure the population" that has become increasingly less confident in his rule by moving closer to the liberal faction of the elite and beginning to curb the powers of the siloviki. But given the amount of power Putin has granted the security services over the years, "it will be difficult to do so without damage."
 
The impending image makeover and policy shift, along with the ongoing anticorruption campaign, were sparked by a measurable "decline of trust in the country's senior management and the almost revolutionary sentiments in the minds of Russians," the daily wrote, citing unidentified Kremlin officials.
 
The rebooted Putin, the officials say, will be launched when the president gives his annual address to parliament later this month.
 
Or maybe not.
 
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly and curtly denied the report, saying it was "from the realm of falsification." But "Nezavisimaya gazeta" stood firmly by the story. Speaking to Vladimir Kara-Murza of RFE/RL's Russian Service, the paper's political editor, Aleksandra Samarina, insisted that the Kremlin report existed and that the paper's reporting was accurate.

WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE:



So what's going on? Did "Nezavisimaya gazeta" overplay what it had? The paper has a solid track record of strong political reporting and is known to have good Kremlin sources. It identified the document in question as a report prepared by Putin's political strategists for an unidentified regional governor.
 
So is Peskov just stonewalling? Possibly. As Samarina pointed out, it would have been strange for him to come out and just verify a story based on a leaked Kremlin strategy paper and anonymous officials.
 
But documents like this don't just leak without a reason. Such instances are almost always part of a larger game in which one Kremlin faction or another is attempting to advance its agenda. Rarely do they reflect settled policy.
 
As has been widely reported, the Russian elite has long been locked in a bitter "cold war" between its siloviki and technocratic factions over how to deal with the country's rapidly changing political dynamic.

Likewise, the ranks of Kremlin political strategists are also split between those loyal to the regime's current chief ideologist, Vyacheslav Volodin, and holdovers from the team of his predecessor, Vladislav Surkov.
 
The hard-liners in this constellation -- the siloviki and Volodin -- have had the upper hand since Putin returned to power in May, as evidenced by the regime's harsh suppression of dissent. The technocrats and Surkov's people have been waiting for the crackdown to fail, which would give them a chance to push for, if not a full-fledged thaw then at least a softer and subtler alternative.
 
"As with so many strategy documents over the years, this is probably an attempt to try to influence a process, but it likely isn't a blueprint," Nikolas Gvosdev, a Russia expert and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, told me.
 
Nevertheless, there are also signs that the time might be right for the authorities to switch paradigms.
 
The leaks about Putin's impending image makeover and policy shift come amid persistent reports about the president's poor health that the Kremlin has been unable to squelch.
 
Whatever is or isn't going on with Putin's health, the unrelenting speculation about it has severely damaged the image the regime would like to project. Kremlin strategists have long used Putin's virility and vigor as a metaphor to illustrate Russia's revival during his rule. This was easy when he was in his 40s and 50s. It will only get more difficult as the now 60-year-old president continues to age.
 
"He needs to be able to construct a public narrative of success and competent authority and leadership, which is where his own physical fitness and Russia's return to economic health are in many ways overlapping," Edward Lucas, international editor of the British weekly "The Economist" and author of the book "Deception: Spies, Lies, and How Russia Dupes the West," said in a recent interview.
 
"It's very hard for him to do that now, when people laugh at you and when you seem visibly uncomfortable appearing in public. He's a fast-decaying asset, both in terms of being able to project the regime as a success and in being an internal arbiter in its many disputes."
 
Moreover, on the same day the "Nezavisimaya gazeta" story appeared, the Moscow Carnegie Center released a report titled "The Russian Awakening" that painted a bleak picture of the health of Russia's political system.

Among the report's conclusions are that the political system Putin created "has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the more dynamic, modernizing, and now politically active segments of society."
 
Moreover, Russia's economy, based on the collection and distribution of natural resource rents, "is cracking" and volatile energy prices have "put the Russian economy at risk" as "the government struggles to meet its massive social obligations."
 
And Putin's vaunted "power vertical," in which officials offer "fealty toward the Kremlin in exchange for a license to grow super rich, is crumbling as Russia’s leaders are seeking to discipline the elite in order to save the system."
 
Whether Putin's image is Vlad the Tough Guy or Vladimir the Wise -- and whether he is in good health or ill -- this is the dire reality he needs to address.
 
"There is no overlap between the image [the Kremlin is creating] and what is actually going on in the country," Samarina said.

The first hint about what, if anything, will change should come with Putin's much-awaited address to parliament in a few weeks.

 -- Brian Whitmore

The recent wave of corruption cases in Russia has been dizzying. From the Defense, Regional Development, and Agriculture ministries to the Global Satellite Navigation System, to the Chelyabinsk regional Health Ministry.
 
There have been raids and arrests and resignations and firings. It's been dizzying -- and difficult even for Kremlinology junkies to keep up with.
 
The state-controlled media is calling it a campaign against corruption. But in Russia, nothing is ever that simple.
 
So what's really going on?

In the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss this issue with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."
 
Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast: Antigraft Campaign? Clan War? Chaos?

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Is it an anti-graft campaign? A purge of the elite? Or the start of a clan war?
 
When police raided and searched the home of Rostelekom CEO Aleksandr Provotorov last week, it marked yet another chapter in what the Russian media has been describing as a Kremlin-backed war on corruption.

The search was part of a probe into Marshall Capital, where Provotorov was a partner before becoming head of the state-run telecommunications giant in July 2010.
 
Investigators are looking into whether Russagroprom, a now bankrupt subsidiary of Marshall Capital, fraudulently received -- and then defaulted on -- a $225 million loan from the investment bank VTB Capital in 2007.
 
The home of Konstantin Malofeyev, current head of Marshall Capital, was also searched. For the time being, prosecutors are describing Provotorov and Malofeyev as "witnesses" in the case.
 
With all the other corruption probes out there -- from the procurement scandal that brought down former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to the probes into financial malfeasance in the Regional Development Ministry and the Global Navigation Satellite System (Glonass) -- what makes the Rostelekom case so noteworthy?
 
Well, for one thing, Provotorov is considered a close Putin ally. He served as his protocol chief, he was made head of Rostelekom with Putin's support, and in July the Kremlin leader awarded him a Medal of Honor.
 
"This is in fact an attempt to replace the manager of one of Russia's largest companies, who is under the Kremlin's political patronage," Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the analytical department for the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies wrote in Politcom.ru.
 
Moreover, Russian media has reported that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has been trying to remove Provotorov at Rostelekom and replace him with Vadim Semyonov, the head of state telecoms holding company Svyazinvest and an old law-school classmate of the premier's.
 
"The conflict is reaching the very top, splitting the vertical. The battle line is passing between the government and the Kremlin," Stanovaya wrote.
 
Additionally, the assault on Provotorov comes on the heels of the dismissal of Serdyukov, which some commentators interpreted, at least in part, as retribution against the former defense minister for cozying up to Medvedev late in his presidency.
 
"In the last two years of Dmitry Medvedev's presidency, Serdyukov increasingly sought and found support specifically in the Kremlin rather than the White House, where Putin was installed at the time," Yevgenia Albats recently wrote in "Novoye vremya."

Most notably, Albats wrote, Serdyukov used Medvedev's backing -- over Putin's objections -- to increase spending on armaments from 2011-20 from 13 trillion rubles to 20 trillion rubles ($409 billion to $630 billion).
 
So is it that neat and clean? Simple tit-for-tat?
 
I'd be very cautious of interpreting the Rostelekom case as Medvedev's answer to Serdyukov's dismissal.
 
First of all, with his political obituary being written almost daily in the Russian press Medvedev is politically very weak right now and I doubt he would be able to launch such a frontal assault on a close Putin ally.
 
Moreover, although Serdyukov did in fact use Medvedev to get his defense budget hike back in 2011, it would be a bit of a stretch to call him an ally of the prime minister. He simply played one side of the tandem against the other to get what he wanted -- and probably paid the price for it with the famously vindictive Putin. He also had many enemies within the military. (It also probably didn't help Serdyukov that he lost an important political patron when his marriage to the daughter of Putin crony and Gazprom Chairman Viktor Zubkov broke up.)

Moreover, the battle for control of Rostelekom is a complex game with numerous powerful players and many moving parts -- and not a straightforward battle between "Putin's people" and "Medvedev's people."
 
What the case does indicate, however, is that the campaign against corruption -- which Putin may have intended to be a public relations trick, a purge of the ruling elite of disloyal elements, or both -- is perilously close to spinning out of control with unpredictable consequences.
 
"What happened largely indicates the beginning of ferment within Russia's ruling class, an escalation of the fight for resources and of uncontrollable conflicts that the Kremlin is unable to regulate without damaging its own reputation," Stanovaya wrote in Politcom.ru.
 
"Wars of all against all are being waged and their causes have absolutely nothing to do with the Kremlin's intentions and are most likely developing in spite of the regime's priorities."
 
-- Brian Whitmore

NOTE TO READERS: Be sure to tune in to the Power Vertical podcast on Friday November 30, when I will discuss the issues raised in this post with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED

The Moscow punditocracy has had China on its mind lately. In fact, one leading commentator even confessed to suffering from "China envy."
 
When the Chinese Communist Party elected the country's new top leaders earlier this month, with Hu Jintao relinquishing power to Xi Jinping, many in Russia's chattering classes noted how favorably the system stacks up to their own.
 
"The Chinese have managed to do something the Russians can never pull off: to stop relying on great and irreplaceable individuals, and instead put in place a system of regular change of [its] top leaders," Mikhail Rostovsky wrote in "Moskovsky komsomolets."

Since 1992 -- when Deng Xiaoping turned power over to Jiang Zemin -- the rule has been two five-year terms and out.
 
The contrast with Russia, where the political system revolves around the indispensible Vladimir Putin, was noted everywhere from the opposition tabloid "Novaya gazeta" to the business-oriented "RBK Daily," to the official government broadsheet "Rossiiskaya gazeta" -- which, quite interestingly, called the Chinese model "an instructive model for other countries."
 
In the daily "Kommersant," Aleksandr Gabuyev wrote that the Chinese leader is "only the first among equals in a sort of 'board of directors' for the PRC, which avoids a situation in which the country is ruled for too long by a sickly and aging leader who has stayed too long atop the power vertical."

Putin, of course, had the chance to implement something akin to the Chinese model last year. All he had to do was bless Dmitry Medvedev's bid for a second term as president, as the technocratic wing of the elite was urging him to do, and maintain his decisive influence behind the scenes -- as Deng Xiaoping did in his day.
 
But that, of course, did not happen. And by opting to return to the presidency for six -- and possibly 12 -- more years, Putin is being compared not to Deng but to Leonid Brezhnev.
 
"Both looked young and attractive at the beginning of their rule and both looked sickly and comical toward the end. Both let the right historical moment for their departure slip by, ran out of steam, and survived in politics," political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky wrote in Slon.ru.

The Brezhnev comparisons, which began in earnest about a year ago and enjoyed a revival with recent rumors about the state of Putin's health, have become a bit overdone and old hat by now.
 
But one aspect is very relevant to Russia's future. It wasn't only Brezhnev who looked old and sickly by the end of his rule but the entire Soviet elite. This cadre, known as the Class of 1937, rose to power in the wake of Stalin's purges -- and remained there until their deaths.
 
And many observers are now wondering whether the same will happen with the entire Putin team. This would keep the rising generation, which came of political age after the fall of the Soviet Union, eternally frustrated and on the outside.
 
"Putin has demonstrated a willingness to keep management of the state in the hands of his trusted people, who will soon be of retirement age, until the end of the decade," analyst Viktor Averkov wrote in "RBK Daily." "In order to avoid a generational conflict, he needs to study the mechanisms of succession and the transfer of power."

There is little evidence that he is doing so. In fact, as columnist Sergei Shelin illustrated in a recent piece in Gazeta.ru, Putin's much vaunted mini-purge of the elite after a series of corruption scandals amounted to little more than shuffling around some familiar faces into new posts.

"The purges at the Defense and Regional Development ministries, as well as in other departments and regional structures, seemed to promise the desired posts to those who have grown tired waiting for them," Shelin wrote. "But the paradox of Putin's personnel purge is that the reshuffles of the establishment are in full swing without any hint of upward mobility."
 
Shelin adds that "the Kremlin is shuffling one and the same pack of cards" with "heavyweights" and their "entire close-knit clans moving from place to place."
 
There was a time when many observers, myself included, thought Putin's long-term goal was to build an enduring and stable (albeit authoritarian) system that would endure beyond his time in office.
 
What is becoming abundantly clear is that no such strategic goal exists. There are only tactical maneuvers aimed at survival -- which, paradoxically, makes for the most unstable system of all.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

One of the hallmarks of Vladimir Putin's rule has been stability of cadres.

His people, his top ministers, members of his inner circle, were untouchable. The law, to quote a popular refrain from the opposition, was only for his enemies.

But with the sacking of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov earlier this month over a defense procurement corruption scandal, that appears to have changed.

Suddenly, it looks like nobody is untouchable. The Russian media have been filled with speculation that a major government shake-up is in the works.

Is a purge on the way for Team Putin? And if so, to what ends? In this week's edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discuss this issue with co-hosts Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service and NYU Professor Mark Galeotti, author of the "In Moscow's Shadows" blog.

Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast: A Shakeup For Team Putin?

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Vladimir Putin can't seem to decide which of his two heroes he wants to be.

The tough guy KGB veteran in him clearly wants to follow the example of the late hard-line Soviet leader Yury Andropov. But another side of Putin yearns to emulate the reforming and modernizing tsarist-era Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin.

For the first six months of his third term in the Kremlin, Putin was all Andropov all the time. From new laws cracking down on dissent, to the imprisonment of anti-Kremlin demonstrators, the shocking abduction and alleged torture of Left Front activist Leonid Razvozzhayev, the vibe oozed repression and regression.

But the sacking earlier this month of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov over a defense-procurement scandal was widely interpreted by Moscow's chattering class as an important watershed and potential turning point for Putin's presidency.

"It seems that the third presidential term is going to be quite unlike a simple continuation of the previous two. Just like the situation in the country and in the world is quite unlike the one that existed in 2000-2008," political analyst Leonid Radzikhovskiy writes in "Nezavisimaya gazeta."

But a turning point toward what?

Some Kremlin-watchers, including many not favorably inclined toward Putin, view the Serdyukov sacking as a prelude to the president discovering his inner Stolypin and pivoting in a reformist direction in the coming months -- cracking down on corruption and restructuring the economy.

Others, however, see it as an ominous sign that Putin is gearing up to double down on repression and purge the elite of disloyal elements under the guise of an anticorruption campaign. The move would be reminiscent of Andropov's cleansing of the Soviet leadership during his brief 15-month rule, in which he fired 18 ministers and 37 regional party bosses.

Which interpretation is correct has broad implications for everything from the Kremlin's ongoing struggle with the opposition, to the intramural cold war within the ruling elite, to Russia's prospects for economic modernization.

Discovering His Inner Stolypin

With a long-awaited and badly needed restructuring of Russia's creaking social-welfare system stalled, foreign and domestic investment in the private sector drying up, and a budget crunch looming, any move toward reform, analysts say, would come more out of necessity than out of conviction.

But the repressive policies Putin has followed since May, some Kremlin-watchers say, now give him the political space to commence economic reforms in earnest.

"It is the best time to start a new round of economic liberalization, given the political freeze," Nikolai Petrov of the Moscow Carnegie Center wrote in a recent article in Slon.ru.

"For Putin, this is evidently his last chance to get on top of a situation which is objectively not going his way. And if he does not take advantage of the moment now, he will not have such an opportunity again. It is also important that the (excessively) repressive policies of recent months allow Putin to act as if from a position of strength, and not one of weakness."

Petrov notes that there are persistent rumors circulating in Moscow that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's government is about to be replaced. And many eyes, he writes, are on former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, "who seems to be continually waiting for something and is in no hurry to move into opposition to Putin."
​​
In one sense, bringing in Kudrin and pushing through social and market reforms would be shrewd. Such a move would be cheered by the urban professional wing of the opposition, which reveres Kudrin and favors economic liberalization, but staunchly opposed by the Kremlin's opponents on the left.

Splitting the opposition in this way would give the Kremlin, which has been on the defensive most of the year, some breathing space.

I have long believed this was the real motivation behind the criminal probe against Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, who could prove dangerous in an environment of working-class and rural unrest.

But bringing back the widely respected Kudrin to save the Kremlin's economic bacon also has its risks. Kudrin has long argued that any successful economic liberalization must also be accompanied by political reform and increased pluralism -- something Putin clearly has no stomach for.

And even as his name is surfacing for the prime minister's job, Kudrin is clearly hedging his bets. As Kremlin-watcher Stanislav Belkovsky notes in "Moskovsky komsomolets," Kudrin is openly calling for early elections to the State Duma and has placed his ally, Dmitry Nekrasov, on the opposition's Coordinating Council.

Unleashing His Inner Andropov

One of the hallmarks of Putin's rule has been stability among the ruling elite. His people, his top ministers, members of his inner circle, were untouchable. The law, to quote a popular refrain from the opposition, was only for his enemies.

Serdyukov's sacking over a corruption scandal at Oboronservis, a military procurement company set up by the Defense Ministry, was seen as a sharp turn away from this "stability of cadres" approach.

"Now, nobody is untouchable," political analyst Leonid Radzikhovskiy writes in "Nezavisimaya gazeta."

"Suspicions of corruption are not being covered up and will not be covered up -- including at the highest level. The president knows the public's moods and takes them into account."

There have indeed been quite a few corruption scandals breaking out of late. In addition to the Oboronservis case that brought down Serdyukov and other top defense officials, there have been embezzlement cases involving the Global Navigation Satellite System (Glonass), financial wrongdoing connected to preparations for the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, and a financial scandal at the Health Ministry in Chelyabinsk, just to name a few.

So are we witnessing a real crackdown on official corruption?

Not quite, writes Yevgeniya Albats in "Novoye vremya." On closer scrutiny, she suggests, the Serdyukov case looks more like a settling of scores.

"Strangely, few people have drawn attention to the fact that in the last two years of Dmitry Medvedev's presidency, Serdyukov increasingly sought and found support specifically in the Kremlin rather than the White House, where Putin was installed at the time," Albats writes.

Most notably, Serdyukov relied on Medvedev's help -- over Putin's objections -- to increase the 2011 defense budget from 13 trillion rubles to 20 trillion rubles ($409 billion to $630 billion).

"It is clear why Medvedev needed an alliance with the minister of defense," Albats writes.

"While de jure he was the commander in chief, to whom all the siloviki are subordinated, de facto he controlled very few people: those same security policemen's loyalties lay exclusively in the prime minister's office. At that time Medvedev had started thinking seriously about a second term and had a vested interest in Serdyukov's support."

So now it's payback time.

"It appears obvious that Putin has started to be afraid of his own entourage.... Which means that that further high-profile cases and dismissals are in the offing," Albats writes.

If this is the case, Putin may be about to move to finally settle the intramural struggle about Russia's future that has been raging since the Medvedev presidency, and which has intensified since Putin returned to the Kremlin.

Which means that in addition to the ongoing crackdown against the opposition, we may be in for a comprehensive purge of the ruling elite under the guise of a war on corruption.

A False Choice?

So which will it be? A pivot to Stolypin-style reforms or a doubling down on Andropovism?

Politically speaking, the line between Putin's two role models is actually quite thin. Both sought to introduce measures explicitly designed to salvage an ailing autocratic system.

Serving as premier in the tumultuous period following the Russo-Japanese War, Stolypin initiated historic land reforms, expanded the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and facilitated the development of Siberia.

But his zeal for reform only went so far. Appointed by Tsar Nicholas II in the politically charged atmosphere following the revolution of 1905, Stolypin was obsessed with preventing further political upheaval. He was so ruthless in dealing with real and potential revolutionaries that the hangman's noose became known as a "Stolypin necktie."

And Andropov, when he became Soviet leader in November 1982 after Leonid Brezhnev's death, sought to introduce more effective management, stricter discipline, and very limited market mechanisms to make the stagnant Soviet economy more competitive. But his short-lived authoritarian modernization left little room for any inkling of pluralism. Instead, he kept the political system tightly controlled and the economy wedded to the state -- with the KGB taking a leading role.

So Putin may not need to choose at all. If he can achieve firm Andropov-style control over the political system and tame rebellious elements in the elite, he may feel sufficiently confident to pursue modernizing reforms a la Stolypin.

The Paradox

If Putin is indeed planning to pivot to a season of reform, Kudrin will most likely be a key figure.

When Kudrin resigned in September 2011, his stated reason was that he opposed the hike in defense spending Serdyukov had secured with Medvedev's assistance -- and over Putin's objections. Kudrin argued that the funds allocated for defense were needed to modernize the education, health-care, and social-welfare systems.

Was Serdyukov's removal the first step in a plan to dismiss Medvedev and make Kudrin prime minister?

Perhaps. But this begs a larger, more fundamental, question: Would Kudrin go along with an economic reform program without the political reforms he has repeatedly said must accompany it?

I have long argued that any true economic reform in Russia, any true diversification and decentralization of the economy, would in the long run lead to political decentralization and ultimately greater pluralism.

And this may be Kudrin's calculation -- compromising on political reform in the short run knowing full well that it will be unavoidable in the long term.

It's all speculation at this point. But the picture is bound to become clearer when Putin gives his annual address to parliament, which the Kremlin says should come by the end of the year.

-- Brian Whitmore

Since the death of Leonid Brezhnev, three decades ago this weekend, a series of Soviet and Russian leaders have struggled with the same riddle: How do you modernize without jeopardizing your grip on power? 

In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discussed this issue with my regular co-host, Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service.

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Power Vertical Podcast: 30 Years After Brezhnev

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In many ways, the current battle for Russia's future began 30 years ago this week.
 
On November 10, 1982, Leonid Brezhnev died, sparking a generational change in the Soviet leadership and setting in motion an ongoing cycle of reform and reaction in Russia that remains incomplete and inconclusive to this day.
 
The players' names have changed as has the lexicon, but the fundamental issue remains essentially the same: how to carry out essential reforms when said reforms threaten the existing elite's continued dominance.
 
Brezhnev's death heralded the exit from the scene of the so-called "Class of 1937" -- the generation of Soviet leaders that quickly climbed the Communist Party's ranks following the Stalinist purges and ruled the country for decades thereafter.
 
By the end of Brezhnev's rule, the Soviet economy, perilously dependent on commodities exports, was stagnating and contracting as oil prices fell. The political system was ossified, corruption rampant, and public cynicism endemic. The consensus within key quarters of the rising generation of the elite was that reform was essential.
 
The two main constituencies pushing for change -- the KGB and technocratic "regime liberals" -- made for an unlikely alliance. But this odd coalition teamed up to pick two Soviet leaders: Yury Andropov (the KGB's candidate) and Mikhail Gorbachev (the technocrats' choice).
 
And it should come as no surprise that the two key meta-clans in Vladimir Putin's Kremlin are the "siloviki" and the technocrats. These bureaucratic descendants of the very same alliance that anointed Andropov and Gorbachev in the 1980s also put Putin in the Kremlin at the turn of the millennium.
 
In last week's edition of the Power Vertical podcast, Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows," succinctly drew the parallel:
   
Andropovism and Gorbachevism represent two paths for a stagnating authoritarian system to reform itself -- and both eventually lead to a dead end.
 
The Andropov model, which the sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya has called "authoritarian modernization," is similar to the path China has followed until now -- tightly managed economic reform that introduces market mechanisms, albeit without political reform.
 
Due to Andropov's death in 1984, it never got off the ground in the Soviet Union. But it was the model for Putin's rule, which exposed its limitations. In the short term it leads to growth and prosperity. But in the long run, said growth and prosperity lead to the creation of a middle class that eventually clamors for political rights. Denying these rights saps the system's "creative capacity" and leads to instability.
 
And if pushed to its logical conclusion, the Gorbachev model, which envisions more comprehensive economic and political reform, eventually unleashes forces that lead to a level of pluralism that brings down the authoritarian system.
 
Both models also inevitably split the coalition of siloviki and technocratic liberals that spawned it.
 
In the case of the Andropov model, the technocrats rebel and team up with the emerging middle class in pushing for greater pluralism, as exiled members of Putin's team, like former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, are doing now.
 
And as the full implications of the Gorbachev model play out, the siloviki ultimately rebel -- as they did in August 1991.
 
If Putin followed Andropovism throughout his first stint in the Kremlin from 2000-04, Dmitry Medvedev's presidency had the feel of a Gorbachev redux.
 
And while September 2011, when Putin announced his return to the Kremlin, wasn't quite the coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, the impulse was the same: the siloviki feared losing power and made their move to stop any more change. They famously failed in August 1991, but were more successful last autumn.
 
So three decades after Brezhnev's death, we've come full circle. The system remains deadlocked with nothing in sight to break the logjam.
 
-- Brian Whitmore
 
NOTE TO READERS: Be sure to tune in to the Power Vertical podcast on November 9 when I will discuss these issues with my co-host, Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service.

This week, many in Russia and much of the former Soviet Union marked the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression.

Do past periods of repression in Russia teach us anything about the Kremlin's current crackdown on dissent?
 
In the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss this issue with two guests: historian Sean Guillory, a fellow at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies and author of Sean's Russia Blog; and New York University professor Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia's security services and author of the blog In Moscow's Shadows.
 
Enjoy...

Power Vertical podcast

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From the abduction of Leonid Rozvozzhayev to new legislation broadening the definition of treason, the Kremlin appears to be pulling out all the stops in its efforts to stifle the opposition.
 
But will what critics call Soviet-era methods work in an increasingly postmodern society?
 
In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discuss the trend with special guest and co-host New York University professor Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."
 
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Power Vertical Podcast: Shock And Awe, Kremlin-Style

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Remember Aleksandr Bastrykin's "forest scandal"?
 
In light of the horrors Leonid Razvozzhayev says he endured, merely hauling a journalist out into the woods and threatening his life looks positively quaint.
 
Bastrykin has managed to survive -- and indeed thrive -- amid not just the forest incident, but also the revelations about his unreported properties and business dealings in Europe. And his sharp bureaucratic elbows have made him plenty of enemies inside the elite.
 
Will the mushrooming scandal around Razvozzhayev's abduction and alleged torture finally be the one that brings him down? I wouldn't count on it.
 
He enjoys President Vladimir Putin's favor and the Kremlin leader isn't one to throw his people under the bus.
 
Moreover, the case that led to Razvozzhayev's abduction -- allegations that he, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, and Konstantin Lebedev conspired with Georgian officials to provoke mass unrest in Russia -- was clearly green-lighted at the highest level.

But more pertinent than how the scandal will affect Bastrykin is another question: Is this one of those tipping point cases that turns a critical mass of the public against the regime?
 
We'll see in the coming weeks. But even by the standards of today's Russia, what appears to have happened to Razvozzhayev is pretty shocking.
 
According to the account he gave to human rights activists who visited him in detention, he was abducted in Kyiv outside the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which was helping him apply for political asylum. He had been directed there by the UN High Commission for Refugees.
 
Razvozzhayev says he was bundled into a van, basically hogtied (he was handcuffed and his legs were chained to his hands), had a balaclava put over his head, and driven for five hours across the Russian border. His abductors then turned him over to men who held him in a basement and kept him for three days in chains.
 
He was told he and his family would be killed if he didn't sign a confession implicating himself, Udaltsov, and Lebedev. He wasn't allowed to use the toilet. And he believes he was drugged.
 
After he finally relented and wrote the confession, he was driven to Moscow and taken to the Investigative Committee.
 
The case against Razzovzhayev, Udaltsov, and Lebedev -- which was initiated by the latest installment of NTV's "documentary" film series "Anatomy of Protest" --  looked shaky at best from the start.

But the authorities appear intent on pursuing it regardless of the circumstances. Why they so relentlessly went after Razzovzhayev -- who, until now, was a bit player in the case -- also remains a mystery.
 
Was his "confession" necessary to build a case against Udaltsov, the obvious main target of this whole drama? Were they trying to expand the case and target opposition State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, for whom Razvozzhayev works as an aide? Who knows?
 
But what is clear is that the scandal is changing Russia's national conversation in a way that could be devastating for the authorities.
 
“Clearly now everybody will be talking about torture. This is a poison pill for Putin,” Gleb Pavlovsky, editor of the Russ.ru website and a former Kremlin adviser, told "The Moscow Times."

And this comes at a time when the ruling elite's standing with the public is at its Putin-era nadir.
 
A report released October 24 by the Committee of Civic Initiatives, a think tank associated with former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, said Putin is supported by just 44 percent of the population.
 
But even that number -- an all-time low for the president -- paled in comparison to the way survey respondents characterized their government. Asked to compare their rulers to an animal, 88 percent named some sort of predator -- either a wolf, lion, or wild boar.
 
And Razvozzhayev's ordeal will only serve to harden those attitudes.
 
-- Brian Whitmore
 
NOTE TO READERS: Be sure to tune into the Power Vertical podcast on October 26 when I'll discuss the Razvozzhayev scandal and its implications with New York University's Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia's security services and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."

How badly did Russian authorities want to nab Leonid Razvozzhayev? To answer that question, you will need to separate the Kremlin's virtual reality from, well, actual reality.

First the virtual, I mean official, version  -- courtesy of the Investigative Committee.

Razvozzhayev, an aide to opposition State Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, surrendered to authorities and voluntarily wrote a 10-page, handwritten statement admitting that he, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, and Udaltsov aide Konstantin Lebedev conspired to provoke mass unrest in Russia.

The operation, according to Razvozzhayev's alleged confession, was financed by former Georgian lawmaker Givi Targamadze.

The allegations are based on a report, "Anatomy of a Protest-2," that was broadcast on October 5 on the Kremlin-friendly NTV television station. (As I blogged last week, NTV is quickly becoming Siloviki TV, the security services' media outlet of choice to smear opposition figures before prosecuting them.)

This official version was already in doubt even before the Investigative Committee made its announcement on October 22. Earlier in the day, reports surfaced in Kyiv that Razvozzhayev, who had earlier fled to the Ukrainian capital, had been snatched off the street days earlier and had disappeared.

The same day, a video appeared on the website LifeNews.ru showing Razvozzhayev being led to a car by police officers. "They promised to kill me. I was abducted in Ukraine and tortured for two days," he shouted at the camera.

And then, in the evening, the Kremlin's alternative version of reality truly crashed and burned.

Here is a full statement from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees:

 
A report in Gazeta.ru quoted Yevgeny Golishkin, a leader of the leftist Ukrainian organization Borotba, as saying that Razvozzhayev arrived in Kyiv two days earlier and had decided to seek refugee status.

Razvozzhayev fled Russia and went into hiding after he, Udaltsov, and Lebedev were questioned on October 17 by agents from the Investigative Committee, which opened a criminal case against them in connection with the May 6 demonstrations.

Lebedev was kept in custody. Razvozzhayev and Udaltsov, who remains in Moscow, were released and ordered not to leave the capital.

One has to wonder why the authorities went to such lengths -- and took such risks -- to seize Razvozzhayev on foreign territory. Until now, he appeared to be a bit player in a case that, at least until now, seemed aimed primarily at Udaltsov.
 
The Investigative Committee could be seeking to broaden its list of targets in the case and considered Razvozzhayev key to that effort. If that is the case, Razvozzhayev's boss, Ilya Ponomaryov of the opposition A Just Russia party, could be in for a rough ride.
 
On October 23, Vladimir Burmatov, a Duma deputy from the ruling United Russia party, called on Ponomaryov to surrender his parliamentary mandate -- and thus his immunity from prosecution -- due to his affiliation with Razvozzhayev and the May 6 demonstrations.

(Thanks to Pavel Butorin of RusPoliceWatch for help compiling materials for this post.)

-- Brian Whitmore

Gennady Timchenko has long been the invisible man in Russia's ruling elite -- the Keyser Soze of the "collective Putin."
 
He's a Finnish citizen. He lives in Switzerland. And he denies that he even knows President Vladimir Putin all that well.
 
But Timchenko, who left Russia two decades ago, owns Gunvor, the world's fourth largest oil trading company. At its peak, Gunvor handled approximately a third of Russia's seaborne oil exports, making Timchenko a key player in the country's political-energy complex.
 
And despite his protestations to the contrary, Timchenko is widely rumored to have a KGB past and a long association with Putin. His name shows up on virtually every list of the top officials believed to be part of Putin's informal "politburo."
 
And now, according to Russian media reports, he's coming home. And this has led to a lot of speculation about why, and why now. Explanations from Russian officials, to say the least, were unconvincing.
 
Aleksandr Ryazanov, a former deputy chief executive of Gazprom, told the daily "Vedomosti" that since his "kids are grown up," Timchenko decided to return to Russia and "invest in manufacturing."
 
Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin, who is close to Timchenko, offered a similarly opaque explanation. "Sometimes in business, to maximize legal convenience you find that people even change their citizenship, but they keep their roots," he said. "For those like him, a time comes when it's necessary to determine what's more important. He made his decision to return to Russia, and I support that decision."
 
In an interview in the upcoming Russian-language edition of "Forbes" -- the first he's ever given to the Russian media -- Timchenko said he planned to form a construction holding company.

But this being Russia, there is a much more interesting backstory.
 
As John Helmer has meticulously chronicled on his blog "Dancing With Bears," reports that Swiss authorities were targeting Gunvor began surfacing back in July. The latest reports say Swiss investigators are looking into whether Gunvor paid bribes to win Congolese oil contracts and laundered the money through Swiss banks (read Helmer's exhaustive account here).

And it isn't only Swiss law enforcement that is reportedly causing headaches for Timchenko.
 
According to the "Vedomosti" report, a number of energy insiders say the U.S. Justice Department is investigating Timchenko and Gunvor for manipulating the price of oil. The case investigation is reportedly looking into allegations of price manipulation made in an article by the British weekly "The Economist" in May.

Gunvor officials deny this and, when contacted by "Vedomosti," the Justice Department would neither confirm nor deny the rumors.
 
But if the United States is indeed going after Timchenko -- admittedly a very big if at this point -- it would not be the first time U.S. law enforcement targeted Russian interests in a strategic sector.
 
Just weeks ago, on October 3, the Justice Department announced that it had indicted 11 alleged Russian agents on charges of illegally exporting sensitive microelectronics for use by military and intelligence agencies through a Texas-based company.

In a recent commentary, defense analyst Aleksandr Golts argued that spy networks like this -- as well as the sleeper network the U.S. broke up back in 2010, making Anna Chapman a household name -- are as much about acquiring intelligence and technology as they are about helping top Russian officials line their pockets (read the whole piece in Russian here and in English here):

 
It is, of course, much too early to say whether the United States is targeting Russia's shadowy networks -- be they in intelligence or energy. We don't even know for sure whether there is even an investigation into Timchenko and Gunvor yet. But the trend is, nevertheless, worth watching.
 
Whatever Timchenko's reasons for returning to Russia, his presence will likely be felt soon enough on the body politic.
 
He reportedly recently met with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin to try to resolve a simmering dispute.  And news of his return comes as Sechin, a partner and rival of Timchenko in the energy sphere, scored a major victory with Rosneft acquiring 100 percent of the shares in BP-TNK.

It's going to take a little while to unpack all this. But while Timchenko is no longer the invisible man of the Russian elite (his picture is on the cover of "Forbes" this week, after all), he will certainly be a player.
 
"Timchenko has been investing in Russian companies. He has resources here, and it's clear to him how decisions are made, that competitors will think five times before crossing an acquaintance of Putin," an unidentified former Russian official with close ties to Timchenko told "Vedomosti,"
 
"There is a line forming in front of Timchenko, like in front of the mausoleum, of entrepreneurs ready to do business with him."
 
-- Brian Whitmore

What to make of the criminal case against Sergei Udaltsov? Is it a harbinger of a broader crackdown against the opposition? A tactical move to neutralize the leftist leader as the Kremlin prepares to enact painful reforms of the social welfare system?  
 
Tune in to the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," where I discuss these issues with my regular co-host, Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service.
 
Also on the podcast, Kirill and I take a look at President Vladimir Putin's increasingly strained relations with the family of a onetime political patron.

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Power Vertical Podcast: Russia's Big Chill

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If you happen to find yourself featured in an NTV documentary, then you'd best watch your back.

On October 5, the state-controlled television station broadcast the second installment of its "Anatomy of a Protest" series, in which it accused Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov of plotting with senior Georgian officials to stage a coup in Russia.

Five days later, on October 10, Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko instructed the upper chamber of parliament's Defense and Security Committee to investigate the allegations.

And on the morning of October 17, agents from the Investigative Committee -- which has gleefully taken on the role of Russia's "politics police" -- raided the apartments of Udaltsov and two associates, took them in for questioning, and announced they had opened a criminal case based on the NTV documentary.

If you end up being the subject of discussion on an NTV talk show, trouble could be on the way.

On October 13, the host and guests on the program "Metla" spent a good portion of their time smearing the upcoming primary elections to the opposition's Coordinating Council. Among the allegations were that opposition leaders like anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny intended to falsify the online vote, scheduled for October 20-21. The program also suggested that organizers had committed financial improprieties involving candidate-registration fees.

Four days later, prosecutors announced that they were launching a criminal investigation into potential fraud and embezzlement by the organizers of the primaries.

NTV, which is owned by the state-run natural-gas monopoly Gazprom, appears to have become the stalking horse of Russia's security services.

It has long been derisively dubbed "Mentovskoye televideniye," or Cop TV, due to its tendency to air police shows and true-crime dramas. But it is increasingly looking more like Siloviki TV, the place where opposition leaders are smeared with material "leaked" by the security services in slickly produced programs -- complete with dramatic lighting and ominous background music.

The effort has two obvious goals: to discredit key opposition figures in the eyes of the public and to lay the groundwork for potential prosecutions.

And the two most recent targets -- Udaltsov and the primaries for the Coordinating Council -- are particularly telling about what threats the authorities see on the horizon.

​​Udaltsov is a threat because as the authorities implement what promise to be painful reforms of the social-welfare sector, he will increasingly become a key -- if not the key -- player in the protest movement.

"He is an atypical leftwing politician who could potentially put together competition for the Communists and create a leftist opposition," Igor Bunin of the Center for Political Technologies told "Nezavisimaya gazeta."

"We are now approaching a period of strong social protest that is inevitable in light of the impending crisis and the reforms that the regime is being forced to implement."

And if the opposition manages to elect a Coordinating Council with real democratic legitimacy -- admittedly a big "if" given the splits in its ranks -- it could become, at least in moral terms, a shadow parliament that represents what I have come to call "The Other Russia."

"The key to [President Vladimir] Putin's black PR campaign is to portray the opposition as radicals, anarchists, or ultranationalists who lack both a cogent political program and leadership experience," opposition figure Vladimir Ryzhkov wrote in a recent op-ed in "The Moscow Times."

"They are portrayed by the Kremlin's propaganda machine as self-serving puppets of Western powers who hang out by foreign embassies in Moscow begging for financial support. The other message Putin is trying to send is that opposition leaders based in Moscow are out of touch with the common people in the regions and don't understand their problems and needs."

But the smears could also backfire and lead to greater solidarity among the opposition's ideologically diverse ranks.

Soon after the smear against Udaltsov was launched, much of the opposition -- from social democrats like Gennady Gudkov to rightists like Navalny to socialite-turned-activist Ksenia Sobchak -- rushed to offer moral support.

"The little nips at the opposition by the regime are consolidating this community and this entire subculture because they feel they are in a besieged fortress and they're sticking by one another. They are forgetting about their political differences," Bunin told "Nezavisimaya gazeta."

-- Brian Whitmore

It's been a pretty rough year for Aleksandr Bastrykin.

From his humiliating public apology for the infamous “forest incident,” in which he reportedly threatening a journalist's life, to the "Foreign Agent Bastrykin" hashtags that followed the exposure of his business dealings in Europe, the Investigative Committee chief has become the butt of jokes and the subject of numerous Internet memes.

He's reviled by the opposition for spearheading President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on dissent. And his sharp bureaucratic elbows and aggressive style have earned him plenty of enemies in the ruling elite.

But despite all this, Bastrykin appears on the verge of a major victory: achieving his long-held dream of expanding the Investigative Committee and turning it into a super-duper souped-up agency that would police the police and swallow up many of the responsibilities of other law-enforcement bodies.

A Kremlin-authored bill is on its way to the State Duma that would merge the investigative arms of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Antinarcotics Service into the Investigative Committee. Interior is slated to move 37,000 investigators over and the Antinarcotics Service will send 2,000.

The move, which Bastrykin has long lobbied for, illustrates Putin's desire to shore up his base of support in the bureaucracy amid protests in society and schisms in his ruling elite.

"The clan struggle is intensifying with the wave of protest, attacks on the regime, and the crisis of its legitimacy. The cracks in society, which existed before, are deepening," Moscow-based sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who studies the Russian elite, told "Nezavisimaya gazeta" recently.

"The president is faced with the task of strengthening his position. Putin has many different mainstays within the bureaucracy, but he will single out certain fragments of it. These are the so-called firm nuclei -- people and departments that are totally loyal to him."

Bastrykin's Investigative Committee certainly falls into that category. Since Putin's return to the Kremlin, it has been the president's own personal politics police.

It has conducted intimidating early morning apartment searches of troublesome figures like socialite-turned-social activist Ksenia Sobchak and others. It has spearheaded cases against opposition figures like Aleksei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov. And in has investigated and harassed regime defectors like former State Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov.

With the opposition resurgent and the elite splitting, Putin needs someone reliable to keep the street in check and potentially wayward officials in line.

And while Bastrykin appears eager to play that role, his apparent victory could come with a caveat.

According to a recent report in "Kommersant," the impending expansion of the Investigative Committee is accompanied by a renewed push to put it back under the control of the Prosecutor-General's Office.
​​When the Investigative Committee was established in 2007, it was formally under the control of the Prosecutor-General’s Office. Bastrykin, however, treated Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika with disdain and eventually managed to formally change the arrangement so he reports directly to the president.

The recent reports that the Investigative Committee may be placed back under the Prosecutor-General’s Office have been accompanied by persistent rumors that Chaika is on the way out. A bureaucratic lightweight who is considered an ally of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Chaika has been largely seen as a lame duck since Putin returned to the Kremlin.

Medvedev would like his old law-school classmate Aleksandr Konovalov in the post, but that seems unlikely. The name mentioned most has been Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, a longtime associate of Putin’s dating back to when both served in the St. Petersburg government in the 1990s.

Kozak makes sense for a number of reasons. His reputation as a skilled administrator has made him Putin’s Mr. Fix-It, the go-to guy the Kremlin leader turns to to address intractable problems. Putin also sees Kozak as absolutely loyal and reliable. And he is widely rumored to have long coveted the prosecutor-general’s post.

And for Putin, Kozak appears the perfect choice to keep an eye on a newly empowered Bastrykin -- who, while loyal, has been a bit of a loose cannon and an embarrassment for the Kremlin. Moreover, unchecked, a revved-up Investigative Committee could at some point turn into a threat to Putin.

So while Bastrykin seems on the verge of getting his long-standing wish, he may also be getting an unwelcome chaperone.

“The Kremlin gives with one hand and takes away with the other” because “kingmakers can easily become king breakers,” New York University professor Mark Galeotti, author of the blog “In Moscow’s Shadows,” said on the latest "Power Vertical Podcast."

-- Brian Whitmore

An indictment in the United States this week of 11 alleged Russian agents on charges of illegally exporting sensitive microelectronics through a Texas-based company has refocused attention on the Kremlin's espionage activities, which some analysts say have risen to Cold War levels.
 
But this isn't your father's looking-glass war. In the age of the Internet and social media, international espionage has entered a whole new dimension.
 
In the latest edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discuss the new spy games with my regular co-host, Kirill Kobrin, and special guest Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who is an expert on Russia's security services and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows."
 
Also on the podcast, Kirill, Mark, and I talk about Russian President Vladimir Putin's upcoming birthday celebrations.

The Power Vertical -- Spy Vs. Spy: Russia's Espionage Games

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December 14, 1989 has been on my mind lately. That's the day Andrei Sakharov died more than two decades ago.

Russians, of course, lost an intellectual giant and a moral compass on that day. But additionally, the democratic opposition, and the segment of society that sympathized with it, lost its undisputed leader.

That mantle, for better or worse, fell to Boris Yeltsin -- who proved adept at bringing down the tottering Soviet system but who was, to put it charitably, far less skilled at building a functional political system in its wake. Sakharov's death, and the change in the opposition's leadership, was highly consequential for Russia's subsequent post-Soviet political development.

Who leads the opposition, especially in a time of rapid political change, really matters.

And this is one of the main reasons why I consider the October 21-22 online primary elections to the current Russian opposition's new Coordinating Council to be potentially very important.

"We are watching a very interesting, intriguing, and optimistic procedure of a real democratic election," Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service said on last week's edition of the Power Vertical podcast.

As I blogged last week in a post ahead of that podcast, an electoral commission is in place, candidates are being registered, and the online Dozhd TV station begins broadcasting debates among candidates for seats on the council this week.

In many ways, this whole process will be something of a coming-out party for what I have called "The Other Russia."

It will be the time when activists, hipsters, and members of the urban middle class will attempt to turn the slogans they have been chanting on the streets and the values they have been writing about on their blogs into real action -- by holding a truly democratic election among themselves.

Over the past nine months since protests began in earnest, commentators have noted that today's Russian opposition lacks a clear leader. There is certainly nobody with the moral cache of Sakharov out there. There isn't a clear Yeltsin waiting in the wings. There are, instead, several niche figures who appeal to specific constituencies.

But perhaps this isn't such a bad thing.

As virtually everybody commenting on Russian affairs has noted, the current opposition is a diverse lot spanning the spectrum from nationalists to liberals to leftists and everything in between. This, in turn, reflects the fact that Russian society as a whole has become increasingly diverse politically and increasingly differentiated socially.

A 45-member council with an ideologically diverse composition -- the Other Russia's shadow parliament, if you will -- is probably the most effective way to reflect that diversity.

Of course, media chatter about the elections has largely zeroed in on the infighting and intrigues surrounding the vote. The latest involved the latest salvo in an ongoing spat between socialite-turned-activist Ksenia Sobchak and opposition State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomaryov. (The lawmaker accused Sobchak of turning the campaign into a version of the racy Dom-2 reality show she once hosted.)

Given this cynicism, one of the most important numbers I will be watching on October 21-22 is the turnout figure. How many people care enough to cast a ballot will give at least some indication of how large this Other Russia really is? Turnout is also important, because the new council's legitimacy will be linked to how representative the election is.

And then, of course, comes the hard part.

The council's responsibilities will include things like deciding when, where, and why to hold protests and which causes to champion. But they will also involve things like picking candidates for future Russian elections and negotiating with the Kremlin authorities. In theory at least, when the fledgling Power Horizontal talks to the Power Vertical, it will be through the council.

And this will all inevitably get tricky for a body comprising nationalists, liberals, and leftists.

In a comment on my post last week about this issue, the always insightful Sean Guillory of the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies noted that reserving seats for the three ideological blocs (five each) "kicks the problem down the road" rather than solving it "democratically through the election."

I would argue, however, that the issue will be resolved -- to a degree -- with the result of the elections for the 30 at-large seats, which make up two-thirds of the council.

I do agree with Sean, however, that the true test of the movement's maturity will come after the election, when the council meets and begins to hammer out its positions.

Sure, it will be messy. But something tells me Andrei Sakharov would have been proud.

-- Brian Whitmore

For more than nine months now it's been a regular feature of the Russian landscape. Tens of thousands of people gather in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities. 
 
They carry signs with clever -- and often hilarious -- antigovernment slogans. They chant things like "Russia Without Putin" and "Free Pussy Riot." They listen to fiery speeches by Aleksei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov, and other opposition figures.
 
And then everybody goes home until the next protest is called.

Now, there is a growing sentiment among the Russian opposition that street protests like the September 15 March of Millions have reached the point of diminishing returns. Can the opposition move beyond street protests?

A key test will come next month when it will hold online primaries to elect a new Coordinating Council to organize its future activities. 

In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discussed the primaries and what they mean with my co-host Kirill Kobrin, managing editor of RFE/RL's Russian Service.

Also on the podcast, Kirill and I discussed the ongoing "cold war" in the Russian elite and the possibility of a government shake-up.

Enjoy...

Power Vertical Podcast -- September 28, 2012

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Russia will have free and fair elections in October.
 
There will be real choice with multiple, viable candidates. There will be vigorous televised debates. The vote will be open and transparent, with clear rules of the game.
 
No, I'm not delusional. And no, I am not talking about the local elections scheduled for 73 Russian regions on October 14. Those, I expect, will be as fraudulent as ever.
 
What I'm talking about are the online primary elections the Russian opposition movement is holding a week later, on October 21-22, to choose a 45-member Coordinating Council.
 
The council will decide things like which candidates the opposition will back in future elections and when, where, and why to hold protests. In a nod to the diversity of the opposition movement, it will have five seats each reserved for liberals, nationalists, and leftists -- while 30 will go to at-large candidates.
 
An opposition Electoral Commission is already in place to register candidates and monitor the vote. The online television station Dozhd TV is hosting live debates among any candidates who want to participate. 
 
Some predictable names -- Boris Nemtsov, Garry Kasparov, and Dmitry Gudkov -- are running for seats on the council. So are some relatively fresher opposition figures like anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny, socialite-turned-activist Ksenia Sobchak, writers Dmitry Bykov and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, journalist Filipp Dzyadko, comedians Mikhail Shatz and Tatyana Lazareva, and the popular blogger Rustem Agadamov.
 
So why do we care about elections to a council that will be essentially powerless?
 
I think the opposition primaries are important, and merit attention, for a number of reasons.
 
Opposition figures themselves say they will be a dress rehearsal for free and fair elections in a post-Putin Russia. Along those lines, they are also setting an example by creating an alternative civil society where decisions are arrived at democratically.

The primaries are also important because the opposition clearly needs to move on from its street-protests stage.
 
The early demonstrations after December's disputed State Duma elections were widely interpreted as a show of strength by the rejuvenated opposition -- proof that true dissent was real and blossoming in Russian society and that the Kremlin's foes could consistently put people on the streets in large numbers.
 
But after the latest rally earlier this month -- which had a bit of a pro forma feel to it -- many in the media, including outlets sympathetic to the opposition, began to question the utility of street protests as a vehicle for change.
 
Successfully holding primaries to elect its leaders will be a powerful sign that the opposition is serious and maturing.
 
In a video recently posted on his blog, Navalny said the elections will be important in establishing the legitimacy of the opposition.

"The problem of the opposition's legitimacy needs to be decided through elections, [especially] if we are going to accuse the authorities of lacking legitimacy," he said.
 
But the new Coordinating Council will also present an important test for the opposition. Can figures as diverse as Navalny, Nemtsov, and Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, as well as their supporters, agree to abide by common rules of the game, even when they don't like the results? Will liberals support a nationalist or leftist candidate the Coordinating Council decides to back in some future election, or vice versa?
 
If the answer to these questions is yes, then next month's primaries will send an important message and represent something of a milestone for Russia's famously fractured opposition.  

-- Brian Whitmore

NOTE TO READERS: Tune in to the next edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast" on September 28, when my co-host Kirill Kobrin and I will discuss the issues raised in this blog post.

A year ago, the mask came off. A year ago, a spark was lit. A year ago, one political era in Russia ended and another began.
 
On September 24, 2011, Dmitry Medvedev took the stage at United Russia's party congress and suggested it nominate Vladimir Putin to run for president. Putin followed suit by saying he would like Medvedev to serve as his prime minister.
 
The tightly choreographed maneuver finally settled years of speculation about which member of the tandem would be president after 2012.

But more importantly, it also answered a deeper question that had lingered throughout the Medvedev presidency: Was this strange little four-year interregnum a transition period to a more pluralistic system? Or was it just a mechanism to keep Putin in the Kremlin for the foreseeable future without violating the letter of the constitution?
 
The answer deeply disappointed -- and in some cases outraged -- those in the elite and broader society whose expectations had been raised during Medvedev's term that a more open political system was in the offing.

The fallout was visible almost immediately, and continues to this day. Longtime Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin's resignation days after the announcement signaled that all wasn't well in Russia's ruling class.
 
Kudrin is a close personal friend of Putin's and his defection clearly came as a shock. "How could you let me down in this way?" Putin reportedly asked him at the time.

And weeks later, when fans at a martial arts boxing match booed Putin when he entered the ring to address them, it was a sign that the self-styled national leader was wearing out his welcome with the general public as well.

Putin, it appeared, had lost his aura of invincibility. His mojo clearly wasn't what it once was. And there was a rebellion brewing below the decks that would soon be visible on the streets of Moscow and other cities.
 
But September 24, 2011 also did something more subtle, but perhaps more important. It exposed something that had been hidden. Or more accurately, it made it impossible to ignore something that everybody had previously pretended wasn't there.
 
Most attentive Russia-watchers eventually come to an understanding that the country's formal institutions of governance -- the presidency, the State Duma, the courts -- are, to a large degree, a facade. Real decisions are made by a small cabal of a few dozen people informally known as everything from "Putin's politburo" to "the collective Putin" to "The Team." The formal institutions merely execute these decisions.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I prefer to call this "Russia's Deep State." And a year ago, this "deep state" stopped being deep and thus lost a degree of its effectiveness.

"The deep state worked when everyone was aware that it existed...but it was willing to operate behind a carapace, a facade of politicians," longtime Kremlin-watcher and New York University professor Mark Galeotti said in a recent Power Vertical podcast.
 
"Putin made the presence of the deep state so clear. He rubbed it in Russians' noses, and that was a big mistake."
 
In a recent interview with CNN, socialite-turned-activist Ksenia Sobchak said this was the moment that drove her into the opposition.
 
"They decided to change Medvedev for Putin and Putin for Medvedev and then they gave us the result. This is not how it should work and people were offended," Sobchak said.

In addition to inflaming public opinion, especially among the fledgling urban middle class, the announcement also ignited a debilitating cold war inside the deep state itself -- where there was apparently little consensus on Putin's return to the Kremlin.

So September 24, 2011 was one of those inflection points, one of those explosive before-and-after moments that foreshadows political change. And one year later we are still waiting for the dust to settle.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

One front in the struggle for Russia was visible in Moscow last weekend as tens of thousands of protesters marched through the capital carrying balloons and placards as thousands of riot police armed with batons and assault weapons looked on.
 
The ratio of police to protesters, longtime Russia-watcher Mark Galeotti wrote on his blog "In Moscow's Shadows," was "distinctly higher than in other, recent protests" and appears to be indicative of "a nervous Kremlin."
 
But it's more than just the ongoing clash with opposition forces that is making the ruling elite jittery these days. What is truly causing sleepless nights is the "second front," the one where Russia's future will likely be decided -- the elite's war with itself.
 
And with reports of an impending government shake-up and of deep, enduring, and hardening splits in the Kremlin administration, signals abound that this longstanding intra-elite "cold war" could go hot at any time.
 
One aspect of this intramural struggle is simply a naked battle for power and a clash of political ambitions. Another is a heated debate over which tactics -- sticks or carrots -- would best tame the Russian Street and keep the current elite safely in power.
 
But part of the schism is also ideological, with part of the elite believing that increased pluralism -- albeit managed -- is necessary in a rapidly changing society and another faction seeking to revive the tough authoritarianism that marked President Vladimir Putin's first stint in the Kremlin.
 
For the time being, those seeking to turn the clock back to 2007 appear to be winning. A series of tough laws cracking down on dissent have been passed. Dissidents like Pussy Riot and defectors like Gennady Gudkov are being dealt with. And the tepid reforms Dmitry Medvedev ushered in during his presidency are being rolled back.
 
But what is also becoming clear is the model of governance Putin constructed over the past decade, in which he controlled the elite by playing the role of the indispensible arbiter of its warring clans, has -- to say the least -- lost its effectiveness.

"It is this model of statecraft that has now entered a crisis...[Putin's] system of rule, if the not the system itself, shows sign of exhaustion," Richard Sakwa, a professor of Russian politics at the University of Kent, wrote in Opendemocracy.net.
 
"Putin's return has destabilized the system that he so assiduously created, although in formal terms matters continue much as before."
 
The Artist And The Bureaucrat
 
One focal point of the struggle within the elite is the fierce rivalry between Putin's former chief ideologist and political manager, Vladislav Surkov, and the man who succeeded him, Vyacheslav Volodin.
 
In the most recent edition of the Power Vertical podcast, my co-host Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL's Russian Service astutely noted that Surkov approached the job like an "artist" while Volodin behaves more like a "post-Soviet bureaucrat."
 
In practice this means that Surkov's approach to the regime's opponents was to charm, cajole, hoodwink, and -- wherever possible -- to co-opt them. Volodin's is to run them over and whack them over the head with a baseball bat.
 
Surkov also stayed very tuned in to prevailing social forces and understood that as Russian society became more complex, differentiated, and affluent, the political system needed to create outlets to accommodate the emerging pluralism. Failure to do so would lead to political unrest of the sort we are seeing now.
 
He reportedly was pushing for Medvedev to remain president for a second term to complete his program of political and economic modernization, with Putin of course remaining firmly in control behind the scenes.
 
Surkov was also pushing for a form of "managed pluralism" in the State Duma, with United Russia sharing power with a broader constellation of obedient and housebroken "opposition" parties.
 
With the announcement a year ago that Putin was returning to the presidency and Medvedev would become prime minister, it, of course, became clear that Surkov had lost that argument. Months later, after the December 2011 parliamentary elections, he also lost his Kremlin job and was ultimately replaced by his archrival, Volodin.
 
Down but not out, Surkov ended up as chief of staff of Medvedev's government. He's no longer running the political show, but he still has numerous loyalists in the Kremlin (despite Volodin's efforts to purge them), in the media, and throughout the bureaucracy. 
 
The conventional wisdom is that he is gathering his forces, biding his time, and waiting for Volodin's strategy to fail
 
"Slava has taken a break, but this game is not over. They are waiting for the [Kremlin] staff's chosen strategy to lead it into an impasse," an unidentified Kremlin official told Gazeta.ru.

Shareholders And Managers
 
Surkov was one of the key architects of Putin's authoritarian system and his push for greater pluralism was driven by pragmatism more than by principle.
 
As I have blogged in the past, the upper echelons of the Russian elite are largely comprised of shareholders who control resources and are collecting rents from the system, and managers who owe their position in the elite to their specific technical skills.

Surkov and former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin are managers. And as specialists, respectively, in political and economic management they understood the system had to change, modernize, and become more pluralistic. Their goal was not democracy, but rather to preserve the system by reforming it.
 
Political managers like Surkov understood that the fledgling middle class would rebel in the face of continued authoritarian rule. And economic stewards like Kudrin understood that economic modernization required a degree of political liberalization.
 
Shareholders like Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin and Putin cronies Gennady Timchenko and Yury Kovalchuk, on the other hand, opposed opening the system up because they feared that any change would threaten their continued access to rents, their position in the elite, and -- possibly -- their freedom.
 
The shareholders won this argument, which engulfed the elite during the latter stages of the Medvedev presidency, and their victory was evident at the September 24, 2011, United Russia congress when Putin's return to the Kremlin was announced.
 
But their victory has turned out to be pyrrhic. The rebellion Surkov and other political managers like former Kremlin spinmeister Gleb Pavlovsky expected has come to pass. And with Putin's return, economic modernization appears to be off the agenda, which could have dire consequences as it leaves Russia dangerously dependent on commodities exports.
 
And now, Pavlovsky says, they are in a bind. "They have no follow-up step," he told Gazeta.ru. "They cannot endlessly adopt ever-new emergency laws and they cannot suppress all liberal media."
 
Siloviki And Civiliki
 
Meanwhile, it is quickly becoming conventional wisdom that a government shake-up is coming this fall and that Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika will be one of the top officials to lose his job.
 
The leading candidate to replace Chaika, according to a recent report in "Nezavisimaya gazeta," is Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak. But a second name being floated is Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov, who is Medvedev's old law-school classmate -- an association that many officials believe will ultimately disqualify him.
 
"Konovalov's position is weaker because he is perceived by many people as a member of Medvedev's team," an unidentified Kremlin source told the daily.
 
Konovalov was the most high-profile of the so-called "civiliki," or officials with backgrounds in civil law, that Medvedev either appointed or promoted during his presidency. Many of them studied or taught alongside him at the law faculty of St. Petersburg State University in the 1990s.
 
Other high-level figures include Konstantin Chuichenko, who heads the Kremlin's Central Control Directorate; Nikolai Vinnichenko, the presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District; Deputy Prosecutor-General Nikolai Gutsan; and Moscow Arbitration Court Chairwoman Valeria Adamova.
 
During his presidency, Medvedev was using the civiliki as a counterweight to the siloviki, the security-service veterans like Sechin and Sergei Ivanov who surround Putin.
 
As Medvedev's star faded after Putin's return to the Kremlin, the civiliki's influence of course faded. But they are still present throughout the bureaucracy.
 
"Real fragmentation is taking place by age because Medvedev rejuvenated the system of administration," prominent Moscow-based sociologist and expert on the Russian elite Olga Kryshtanovskaya told "Nezavisimaya gazeta."
 
"The more conservative older part of the elite was irritated by this and moved toward Putin. And those who were younger moved toward Medvedev in hopes of a quick career if Medvedev remained for a second term."
 
They are also ideologically inclined toward greater pluralism. "Many observers are convinced that these leaders are giving financial support to the opposition," Kryshtanovskaya said
 
The Decider
 
And what about the man in the middle of it all?
 
Writing in Opendemocracy.net, Kent University's Richard Sakwa notes that while on one hand "Putin is back," on the other "the country and the political system have evolved."
 
A continued "tightening of the screws would cause the system to lose " whatever remains of the inner resources of dynamism and renewal" and "play into the hands of those many voices now predicting the decline and fall of the regime," he writes.
 
Sakwa argues, however, that there is still time to change course. "The third Putin term may yet see a new synthesis emerge. A positive reinvention of Russian political order requires an act of unprecedented leadership and political imagination," he writes.
 
Color me skeptical on that, at least for the time being.
 
In a recent interview with Gazeta.ru, political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky succinctly contextualized the hard-line Kremlin attitude that has prevailed since Putin's third term began in May.
 
"This is a series of measures aimed at bringing reality into line with Vladimir Putin's psychological state," Belkovsky said.
 
"Putin wants everything around him to be stable. He is also hurt and offended that he is being accused of all sorts of crimes and that the opposition does not appreciate the concessions he made on things like the election of mayors and governors and easing the rules on party registration."
 
If real political change comes at this point, it will likely be despite Putin, not because of him. it will result from a combination of pressure from the Russian Street and the resolution of the "cold war" within the elite in favor of those advocating greater pluralism.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

A new season of protests kicks off on September 15 with mass rallies planned for Moscow and other cities.

But in addition to the opposition's longstanding demands for early elections and a more competitive and pluralistic political system, a new element will be added to the protest mix in what promises to be a very hot autumn -- social issues.

In the coming months, the Russian authorities are due to implement a series of reforms of the country's creaking social welfare infrastructure, including its pension and health-care system. Utilities prices are expected to rise.

Additionally, Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization earlier this summer has sparked increasing anxiety among labor unions and rank-and-file workers.

The prevailing protest mood and the addition of social issues to the equation appears to present an opportunity for Russia's left wing political forces -- if they can seize it.

In this week's edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I discuss the state of the Russian left with my regular co-host Kirill Kobrin, managing editor of RFE/RL's Russian Service.

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Power Vertical Podcast - 14 September, 2012

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It's the last day of August. Summer is over. And there are storm clouds on the horizon.

Russia's political season is set to resume after a summer recess that was anything but quiet. And with local elections, opposition primaries, antigovernment demonstrations, and social reforms in the offing, the autumn promises to be even more turbulent.

In the latest edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I speak with special guest host Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and author of the blog "In Moscow's Shadows"  about the upcoming political season.

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Power Vertical Podcast -- August 31, 2012

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Earlier this week, Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Orthodox Church's social affairs department, issued a dire warning in response to vandals chopping down crosses in Arkhangelsk and in Chelyabinsk Oblast.
 
"People who are currently cutting down crosses in the future may turn to violence and murder," Chaplin said on August 26.

The vandalism took place shortly after three members of the feminist punk rock collective Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for an anti-Kremlin protest performance in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in February.
 
Despite the lack of any real evidence suggesting a connection, the state-controlled media quickly linked the incidents to the group's supporters.

Then, four days after Chaplin's comments, on August 30, the Investigative Committee announced that two women were brutally stabbed to death in their apartment in Kazan. Investigators said  the inscription "Free Pussy Riot," written "presumably" in blood, was found in the apartment.
 
It didn't take the pro-Kremlin Russian media long to run with the meme.
 
A headline on the website of the state-run "Vesti" television news program began: "They've Started To Kill For Pussy Riot."

Kristina Potupchik, the former spokeswoman for the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, also wasted no time in drawing conclusions.
 
On her blog, she juxtaposed a photograph of the "Free Pussy Riot" inscription in Kazan with one from the 1969 murders committed by followers of Charles Manson in California, in which they wrote "Death To Pigs" on the walls of their victims' homes. Potupchik wrote that Pussy Riot's supporters "will not get away" with the crime.

And Dimitry Smirnov, head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for Relations with the Police and Armed Forces, said that "blood is on the conscience" of those who supported Pussy Riot members during their trial. Smirnov also called on Paul McCartney, Amnesty International, and others to renounce the group.

It was a full-court press. But as the day progressed, holes began to appear in the initial version of events.
 
First, Andrei Sheptitsky, a Kazan-based spokesman for the Investigative Committee, said the evidence suggested the crime was committed by either a psychopath or a drug addict and that the inscription appeared to be an attempt to cover up the crime and mislead police.
 
Then, the online Dozhd TV noted that the initial reports of the crime in the Kazan media, which appeared in the evening on August 29 when the bodies were discovered, made no mention of the "Free Pussy Riot" inscription.

WATCH THE DOZHD TV REPORT HERE:
 

 
And Petr Verzilov, husband of jailed Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, later tweeted a link to a report on the killings in the daily "Komsomolskaya pravda" that said police worked on the crime scene "all night." The report also made no mention of the inscription.

The fact that reports of the inscription first appeared on LifeNews, a website with ties to the security services, also raised suspicions that the official story might not be entirely accurate.

Nikolai Polozov, an attorney for the three jailed members of the group, called the crime in Kazan "horrible," adding that either it was committed by a psychopath or was a "horrendous provocation."
 
In an interview with Dozhd TV,  Geidar Dzhemal, chairman of the Kazan-based Islamic Committee of Russia, said he had no doubt that the attempts to link the killings in Kazan -- and the vandalism against the crosses in Arkhangelsk and Chelyabinsk -- to Pussy Riot supporters was orchestrated by the authorities:
   
This story is developing very quickly and I am reluctant to draw any firm conclusions just yet. But there is a lot here that raises serious questions. I'll leave it at that for now.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

UPDATE: Police in Kazan say they have detained a man who confessed to killing the two women. The man, identified as 38-year-old university professor Igro Danilevsky, knew one of the victims and denied any connection to Pussy Riot. Interfax reported that he also confessed to trying to "fake a ritual killing" and mislead police by writing "Free Pussy Riot" on the wall.

(A big thanks to my colleague Pavel Butorin of @RusPoliceWatch for help in compiling material for this post.)

The authorities couldn't have scripted it better. The first high-profile test of a new law imposing stiff fines for unsanctioned public gatherings would involve none other than Garry Kasparov.
 
The former world chess champion turned opposition figure was detained outside a Moscow courthouse on August 17, the last day of the trial of three members of the feminist punk rock collective Pussy Riot. Kasparov said he was just speaking to journalists. Police said he was chanting "Down with the police state," "Russia without Putin," and other antigovernment slogans.
 
So they caught a pretty big fish. And few doubted, given Russia's servile courts, that Kasparov would be given a show trial. And few doubted that the show trial would result in a fine of up to $1,000 in accordance with the new law.
 
Enter Judge Yekaterina Veklich.
 
In the August 24 Power Vertical podcast, my co-host Kirill Kobrin, managing editor of RFE/RL's Russian Service, said the following:
   
Timely words indeed. Hours later, Veklich found Kasparov not guilty.
 
“The facts recorded in the police report do not correspond to reality,” she said in acquitting him.

Kasparov is now seeking to have the police who detained him brought up on criminal charges. 
 
In preparing his defense, Kasparov gathered photographic and video evidence of the run-up to his detention to prove he wasn't shouting antigovernment slogans as police had alleged. He also used time stamps on photographs of his arrest to show that it took place more than an hour before the time listed in the police report -- bolstering his case that the police report was fabricated.
 
Moreover, journalists interviewing Kasparov when he was detained (including RFE/RL's Danila Galperovich) testified in his defense.
 
But none of that would have mattered if Veklich had acted according to the expected script. If she had not decided to issue her ruling based on the facts, rather than the political needs of the Kremlin.
 
As I have blogged here and the Russian media has covered extensively, there has long been a deep division in the elite between those who want to govern like it's 2007 and those who see a need to move on -- albeit slowly -- towards a more pluralistic approach. Most of this -- conflicts between shareholders and managers and between siloviki and technocrats -- has focused on the upper echelons.
 
Just last week, Gazeta.ru had a piece on a schism inside the Kremlin administration over the crackdown that followed Vladimir Putin's return to power. "Not everyone likes the harsh suppression of opposition and crude propaganda," the author, Yekaterina Vinokurova, wrote.
 
And the longer this split at the top persists, the more likely it will be reflected throughout the bureaucracy, in the law-enforcement community, and yes, in the courts.
 
"Those in Russian state bodies have a choice," Kobrin said during the podcast.
 
I suspect we will be seeing more and more officials like Judge Veklich surprising us in the future.
 
-- Brian Whitmore

A global pop star sued for spreading "gay propaganda" in St. Petersburg. A "zombies" march in Siberia banned after being condemned by the church. A call by a militialike group to deploy brigades of Christian vigilantes to patrol holy sites and defend them against enemies of the faith endorsed by a leading Orthodox Church official.

Russia's culture wars are heating up.

An emboldened Orthodox Church has become markedly more assertive in defending what it considers traditional values. Meanwhile, much of Russian society has become more cosmopolitan, more tolerant, and bolder in its own right.

In this week's edition of "The Power Vertical Podcast," I discussed the deepening schism in Russian society with my regular co-host, Kirill Kobrin, managing editor of RFE/RL's Russian Service.

Also on the podcast, Kirill and I explore a much-discussed new report on the clans and personalities that make up the current Russian political elite.

The Power Vertical -- August 24, 2012

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Six months after their controversial performance at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, three members of the feminist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot -- Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova -- received two-year prison sentences.
 
The verdict and sentence came just after the 100-day mark of President Vladimir Putin's third term in the Kremlin and highlights the fact that the Kremlin leader is in no mood to tolerate dissent, despite mounting discontent in society. A new poll, meanwhile, shows Putin's approval rating falling to the lowest level of his presidency.
 
In this edition of the Power Vertical Podcast, I discussed the Pussy Riot verdict and its political implications with my regular co-host, Kirill Kobrin, managing editor of RFE/RL's Russian Service.

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Power Vertical Podcast: The Politics Of The Pussy Riot Verdict

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