Writing in the Seattle Post Intelligencer Lara Iglitzin, executive director of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which has supported NGOs working for human rights and democracy in Russia since 1989, says that Russia is singing the same old neo-Soviet song:

Is there hope for change in the post-Putin era in Russia?

Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor Dmitri Medvedev has been president of Russia for two brief months. On a recent visit to Moscow, there is palpable optimism for change – although tempered by political reality. "We have a whiff of a thaw in the air," said Arseny Roginsky of the leading human rights organization, Memorial, using a word closely tied to the Khrushchev era when repressive measures under Stalin were eased.

Yet no one can predict whether that thaw is a reality or just a dim hope. "No one knows where the balance of power lies at this moment," Roginsky continued, pointing to the current guessing game as to who will hold real power in Russia tomorrow – Putin (in his new job as prime minister) or the newly elected President Medvedev. No one disputes that Putin has the upper hand today. Having centralized political power during his eight years as president, Putin still pulls the political strings in Russia.

While it is too soon to tell if Putin and Medvedev are heading for conflict, in fighting and tension between the Putin and Medvedev circles could be good for Russia's political system. "If there are two centers of power today, it would be better for civil society, even if the two camps are similar in aims," says Roginsky, "because it would provide a space for political influence and activism." Currently, observers agree there is essentially no political life in the country that impacts the state other than what is masterminded from above. Politics has become institutionalized.

"There is 100 percent control of the political sphere. Nothing unexpected can happen without the Kremlin pulling the puppet strings," says Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center. She is skeptical that Medvedev's election holds any promise for the development of civil society and true political opposition in Russia. While the new president is viewed as a possible reformer, both because of his non-KGB background and his rhetoric since taking power, Putin still has the capacity to limit Medvedev's scope of action. There is little room for autonomy in his actions given Putin's huge power base in the government. "Putin has been the only decision-maker, with the authority of a monarch. It will be years before Medvedev develops his own power base that could provide a check on that power," Lipman predicts.

The government has sidelined political opposition in Russia today despite its tolerance of free speech to a great degree. The Kremlin won't target everyone who dares defy the system in speech– as long as it feels unthreatened by the dissent. And while the traditional Russian "kitchen conversations" of the past – the private space where Russians were allowed to discuss their views openly – have now expanded to a much larger, more public place, none of it has much if any impact on politics.

An annual, highly critical and well-attended international conference on democracy and Russian politics is held in a big Moscow hotel – with no political results. A recent newspaper expose of money being siphoned off by corrupt officials in the banking community even named names – yet elicited no reaction by the government. On the plus side, the editor of the paper wasn't thrown in jail – yet no criminal investigation was launched. This results in a total marginalization of any opposition voices.

A booming Russian economy, propped up by oil money, has provided the cover for the Putin drive to centralize political control. Putin routinely compares the wealth-soaked country of today unfavorably with what he calls the "terrible 1990s" – the Yeltsin era of political and economic instability– contending that people suffered under Yeltsin's brand of democracy. Putin has trumpeted his successes, arguing that Russia can succeed without openness, without democracy – can become rich without freedom. "This was democracy in the 1990s, and it was bad for you, Putin has implied," says Yuri Dzhibladze of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights. "Putin has skillfully manipulated the court of public opinion." Indeed, Russians now live better and have asserted themselves on the global scene: two powerful arguments that have led to Putin's popularity.

These are persuasive claims for a populace that is living better today than ever, even if the economy rides on the strength of global oil prices. In Moscow it is clear that money is everywhere and corruption is not far behind. Economists agree Russia faces serious challenges and needs to modernize. Yet everyone is risk averse. "The temptation to muddle along is extremely strong," notes Roginsky. Not yet faced with the crisis confronted by Gorbachev in the waning years of the Soviet era, Russia's government erratically responds to today's problems one by one. "When a problem flares up, the government throws a few pennies at it. It's like emergency medical care," says Roginsky. Russia was never as rich as it is today.

Yet as the disparity between the very rich and the very poor grows ever wider, it could lead to a social cataclysm, particularly if oil prices drop. While everyone lives a bit better ("except the NGO community," Roginsky says wryly) much of society is unhappy. Lyudmilla Alexeyeva, the 81-year old veteran of the human rights movement, agreed. "Big business hates Putin for what he did to Mikhail Khodorkovsky," the oil tycoon who crossed a line into political opposition and was subsequently targeted and imprisoned. "The military hate him because he has ruined the army." They are not alone: Journalists remember life without censorship during the Yeltsin era. Pensioners resent that their stipends buy less today. Judges have seen their autonomy restricted. Dissatisfaction is widespread, if muted.

Why is this opposition not expressed at the ballot box? Aside from the overt political manipulation of the electoral system resulting in a lopsided result (people were pressured at factories, colleges, businesses and hospitals, for example, to fill out their ballots in front of bosses, just as in Soviet days), people have supported Putin, his protйgй Medvedev and their policies "only because they know nothing else," Alexeyeva asserts. "They have traded political freedoms for a bit more bread and a calmer life."

Within this context, it is difficult for the small but active human rights community to have their voices be heard – and for their work to make an impact. "The public doesn't support civil society, doesn't take human rights and the rule of law seriously," Dzhibladze says. The brightest hope today is Medvedev's talk that reforming the judicial system is a priority. Today, corruption up and down the judiciary threatens the stability of the country. Political bosses still run the show locally. While critics are skeptical of how far Medvedev can go, there is a demand from the business community and parts of the government to make the courts more accountable – and truly independent. Bureaucrats and businesses want to protect themselves from Khodorkovsky's fate by ensuring an autonomous judiciary. They also want to ensure that they don't lose their ill-gotten financial gains.

The Carnegie Center's Lipman concludes that without a strong civil sector in Russia, all talk of a thaw – or real change – will be moot. "Without public activism, all we can hope for is mercy from the bosses. They will throw us something, and we will be grateful." Until the society forms coalitions that are willing to take risks and to challenge the power structure step by step, change will be slow. Lyudmilla Alexeyeva, having experienced more ups and downs than many of her colleagues, remains optimistic: "In 10-15 years, Russia will be a normal country – in its own way."

Writing the in the Moscow Times on Monday, former member of parliament Vladimir Ryzhkov wrote of the recent G-8 summit meeting in Japan:

The summit was Medvedev's big G8 debut, but unfortunately it did not come off very well for him. During the meeting between Medvedev and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday, a British secret service agent chose that particular day to claim that the Russian government likely played a part in the 2006 poisoning in London of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko. Moreover, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice secured agreements for the placement of elements of a U.S. missile-defense system in the Czech Republic, and then flew to Tbilisi to demonstrate approval for the Georgian government, which is trying to join NATO. At the G8, Bush pressed hard on all of Russia's sorest points -- NATO expansion, missile-defense systems in Europe and Kosovo.

Indeed, no sooner had the summit ended than the United States was calling Medvedev a liar on the record at the United Nations Security Council over its veto of the Council decision to sanction the barbaric dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbawe. The MT reported: "In an unusually harsh statement, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, accused Medvedev of going back on an earlier promise and "standing with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe. The U-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and disturbing ... [and] raises questions about its reliability as a G8 partner."

But you wouldn't know any of this listening to the Kremlin's lapdogs. In another op-ed the same day in the MT, sycophant Vladimir Frolov wrote: "President Dmitry Medvedev has clearly passed muster at his first Group of Eight summit in Japan last week."

The Russian Emperor, as is so often the case, struts boldly about in public in his birthday suit. Having shut down all significant independent media and opposition parties (booting, for example, Mr. Ryzhkov out of the Duma), the Russian leadership has no more grasp of reality than did their Soviet predecessors (and why should they, given that Mr. Putin has retained power in exactly the same manner as Mugabe and, unlike him, is a proud officer of the secret police himself).

The fact is that Putin's Russia deserves UN sanctions just as much as Mugabe's Zimbabwe does, but the issue won't be raised at the UN because of Russia's veto power making it a non-starter. But now we see that Russia won't be content to block pro-democracy action by the UN against itself, it will use its malignant membership role to block all such actions against any countries, fearing the precedent.

So the next best thing is to boot Russia out of the G-8 and keep it out of the WTO hen house as well, and perhaps now the world is slowly beginning to realize what a no-brainer this decision really is. Only by such dramatic means do we have any hope of breaking through the new iron curtain and communicating with the people of Russia that their leader is in serious risk of catching pneumonia if he continues his naked promenade across the Kremlin's chilly parapets.

Paul Goble reports:

Dmitry Medvedev’s personnel changes at the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Federal Narcotics Control Service (FSKN) do not point to any liberalization in the Kremlin’s approach, however much some in both Moscow and the West have invoked them as an indication that the new Russian president plans to change Putin’s policies in the security area. Instead, Anatoly Soldatov, a leading Moscow analyst, argues in an article published not in Russia but in Poland, Medvedev’s moves are a continuation of Vladimir Putin’s policies at the end of his presidency. And those policies, Soldatov says, are intended to expand the country’s security agencies beyond their traditional role as guardians of the state to become active supporters of Russian corporate interests, both public and private, not only within the Russian Federation but internationally as well.

When Medvedev recently fired FSB head Nikolai Patrushev and FSKN leader Viktor Cherkesov, however, “many [immediately] drew the conclusion that Medvedev was more liberally inclined than was Vladimir Putin,” the longtime specialist on intelligence services points out. But such judgments, he continues, are at a minimum “a great exaggeration.” At least since the fall of 2007, he argues, “the Kremlin really has revised the place and role of the force structures, but this does not have any relationship to the personality of Medvedev and his views about liberal values. Instead, it reflects a further “’corporatization’ of the Russian state. When Putin appointed Mikhail Fradkov head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the then Russian president said that that service must “more actively stand up for the defense of the economic interests of our companies abroad.” Thus, Soldatov adds, “the president “directly required” a state agency to “act in the interests of Russian companies” rather than the state.

The recent scandal involving Russian purchases of secret helicopter technology in Germany, the Moscow analyst says, suggests that Putin’s directive was quickly implemented. And the more recent discovery of “spies” within TNK-BP as Moscow seeks to oust British interests there suggests that the FSB has been given the same charge. Thus, the longtime researcher on Russian security agencies suggests, “the general trend of converting [Moscow’s] special services into agents of Russian business” begun under Putin “has been followed” by Medvedev in the latter’s “choice of people to head the two main Russian special services – the SVR and the FSB.”

Like Fradkov whose career and even connections with the intelligence services were in the economic area – in the 1970s, Fradkov served in the Soviet embassy in India where he was involved in the sale of Soviet armaments to New Delhi –Aleksandr Bortnikov, Medvedev’s choice to head the FSB, is someone more concerned with economic issues than anything else. Bortnikov throughout his career at the FSB has focused on economic issues, rising to the position of head of its economic section prior to his appointment as director. In that capacity, he did not display the kind of naked ambition or interest in high Kremlin politics that have landed others at the FSB in trouble.

Soldatov concedes that “the actions of the Kremlin are not always logical, but in this case, we see an absolute consistency in the actions first of Putin and then of Medvedev,” a pattern that makes nonsense of claims that the new president has displayed his “liberalism” by such appointments. Instead, the editor of the Agentura.ru portal suggests, what is on view both in Putin’s actions and those of Medvedev is the “’corporatization’ of the Russian state:” the transformation of the intelligence services into instruments for the promotion of the economic and hence political interests of the Russian state.

It is of course possible that Medvedev may prove to be in some way more liberal than his predecessor was, Soldatov clearly implies, but the current Russian president’s latest personnel moves in the intelligence area are not convincing evidence of that, however much some in Moscow and even more in the West want to believe.

Georgy Bovt, writing in the Moscow Times:

Two years ago, I met with a high-ranking Kremlin official who confidently asserted, "The next president will surely become more of a moralist than former President Vladimir Putin, who is not suited to that style of behavior." Now, Dmitry Medvedev has become president, but he has yet to mention the issue of morals or ethics in society. In fact, it is hard to picture Medvedev speaking with enthusiasm on such topics, arguing over an ethical issue or driving home a convincing point on morality.

Furthermore, his professional record does little to support the claim that he will become a president committed to morality. A lawyer by profession, he is accustomed to responding to the letter of the law, and not the underlying moral framework. A career bureaucrat, his logic follows a dry pattern of reasoning divorced from emotion. His manner and style are more suited to conducting a routine meeting of bureaucrats than to addressing mass meetings and inspiring his listeners to uphold high standards of integrity and fairness.

Meanwhile, there is a widespread feeling that not all is well with the country -- particularly as far as morality is concerned. A VTsIOM survey conducted last year revealed that a majority of Russians feel the moral and ethical climate in society has worsened over the last 10 to 15 years. Fifty-four percent of respondents agreed that Russians had become more cynical, while over 60 percent felt that they displayed less honesty, goodwill, sincerity, generosity and mutual trust than before.

As a result, the issue of morality is being addressed more frequently in public forums. This stems in part from the fact that there is little to discuss about the country's political system because it is entirely predictable and held under tight Kremlin control. Also, people understand that Russia has lost its moral foundation. We see this not only in national survey results, but also in the enormous level of corruption permeating every level of society. We also see a decline in the educational system over the last 15 years and an increase in the level of rudeness we encounter from others in everyday life, in the beer cans and liquor bottles littering our parks and public squares, in the aggressive and rude driving habits of motorists, and in countless other ways.

Public initiatives to address the morality problem appear sporadically. For example, to combat the alarming rise in drug addiction, the Interior Ministry proposes testing students for drug use. The Public Chamber is discussing the possibility of chemically castrating pedophiles to address the 26-fold increase over the last five years in sex crimes committed against children across the country. In addition, Lyudmila Verbitskaya, president of St. Petersburg University and a friend of Vladimir Putin's family, proposes creating a commission on morality.

But most of these initiatives -- and especially those proposing controls over the media and the Internet -- would place the burden of defending morality on the state. According to polls, over 70 percent of Russians believe that the state should play the leading role in maintaining morals and ethical standards. But what about churches? And the media? And what about the members of society itself, especially the active members of nongovernmental organizations who could apply their creative talents to make their country cleaner, kinder, more honest and generous?

Apparently, very few people believe that these organizations hold responsibility for society's moral health. This means that the situation will only worsen in the near future, as neither Putin nor Medvedev put morality and ethics high on their political agendas.

We're the first ones to admit that we're not perfect, so maybe we missed it.

In our own defense it would have been pretty easy to miss, perhaps, since many people couldn't even name Vladimir Putin's predecessor as prime minister of Russia.

Did that man -- Victor Zubkov -- who assumed office on September 14, 2007, ever pay a state visit to France?

How about his predecessor, Mikhail Fradkov, who ruled between March 2004 and the time Zubkov took the reins?

Were either of them ever photographed arriving in Paris and shaking the hand of the French president, as "Prime Minister" Putin is shown in the photograph above taken last week? The Moscow Times reports that "Putin then headed for a working dinner with President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace late Thursday evening, a rare honor from the French head of state for visiting head of government." Has any other Russian prime minister ever been treated in a remotely similar manner?

Because, as far as we can recall, no such thing ever happened. As far as we know, when Vladimir Putin was "president" of Russia it was he who made such trips and shook such hands. And now that he's "prime minister" -- he's still doing it. And in particular, French presidents do not normally receive visiting prime ministers from other countries. It's particularly odd in this instance, since Medvedev is scheduled to negotiate a major agreement with the EU in the coming weeks with Sarkozy as a key player, and yet it is Putin and not Medvedev who carries out this meeting.

One could not ask for a more emphatic statement that Putin has not relinquished the reins of power than this photograph. In no way is Putin a "prime minister" remotely like those who have come before. He cannot be dismissed by Medvedev, and he is not acting like a "prime minister" but rather like the head of state, and he is being treated as such by other countries. As the International Herald Tribune reported: "In general, Putin spoke for Russia as if he still ran it - which most analysts believe he still does."

Meanwhile, state propaganda organ Russia Today is bragging that Putin has just acquired "final say on foreign bids to buy Russian companies in 42 ‘strategic’ sectors including oil, gas, media and telecoms" by means of a new law passed specifically to formally expand his ministerial powers. And that's just a few weeks after he took office! What will be left of the presidency by the time Medvedev completes "his" first term? Nothing at all.

The malignant little troll is urinating on the institution of democracy and laughing as he does so, secure in the knowledge that the world will allow him to act with impunity just as it did Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, waiting to respond only once the crisis stage has been reached.

Writing in the Weekly Standard Michael Weiss, a senior editor at Jewsy magazine, offers the following analysis of Dimitri Medvedev:

IT ALL SEEMS so familiar. Whenever the West expresses optimism about the advent of a Europeanized Russian "liberal" as the head of state, there's a good chance reference will be made to Peter the Great, the man credited with dragging Russia out of the dark ages and founding the pre-Soviet empire. An entire history of social and political thought used to rest upon this czar who whose very name was a synecdoche for Russian glory (Stalin's famous worship of Ivan the Terrible notwithstanding).

Peter founded the city that bears his name as a "window into Europe," created the country's first standing army and navy for purposes of warring with Sweden, and converted the pedigreed nobility, or mestnichestvo, into a bureaucratic military class with an open enrollment policy. For this, he became an icon of promise and reform to the 19th century intelligentsia, which tended to downplay his more dubious accomplishments, like merging slavery and serfdom in order to expand the Russian tax base, establishing the internal passport system, one of Lenin's main grievances with the ancien regime (before the Soviet one restored it), consolidating a hyper-loyalist cadre of czarist nomenklatura known as "Peter's Fledglings," nationalizing the incipient state industry, bringing the Orthodox Church under his all-commanding sway, overseeing a 25 percent drop in the population during his 44 year reign, and, most perilously of all, enacting the Law of Succession. This abolished primogeniture in the dynasty and gave the sitting czar complete freedom to choose his heir. Court intrigue and assassinations were the result of this disastrous policy, which not a few historians have seen as the first domino to fall before the revolution 200 years later.

As for Peter's enlightened opinion of his subjects, he was given to statements like these: "Our people are like children, who would never of their own accord decide to learn, who would never take up the alphabet without being compelled to do so by their teacher, who would at first feel despondent. But later, when they have finished their studies, they are grateful for having been made to go through them. This is evident today: has not everything been achieved under constraint?"

Understanding this duality in the Russian tradition, the fusion of the forward-looking technocrat with the hidebound authoritarian, is crucial in assessing today's Russia, particularly in light of the fact that the new law of succession is really more of a law of suspended animation. On Monday came the news the next president will be Dmitry Medvedev. A 42 year-old lawyer and academic from St. Petersburg, Medvedev, now a deputy prime minister, is conspicuous in the Kremlin for being one of the only advisors to Vladimir Putin not moored to the vast KGB-FSB security apparatus. His appointment--which is what Putin's endorsement of Medvedev amounts to--comes as a relief to foreign investors who deem his pro-market orientation as a sign that "state capitalism" is on the wane, never mind that Medvedev is also the current chairman of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas company responsible for 20 percent of the world's natural gas supply.

Andreas Umland, a foreign affairs analyst, writes in the Washington Post that Medvedev, who repudiated Communism and backed perestroika, represents a "serious chance to embark a new on a course of political liberalization and democratization." The Times of London praises his reputation as a "consensus-builder" and takes at face value that his self-proclaimed disposition on international relations is "European" (always a byword, in Russian terms, for a milquetoast). And the Guardian, which just weeks ago compared Putin to Stalin, strikes the common chord that Medvedev is viewed as a "liberal" and--here the contrastive standard is almost amusingly low--"less of a hawk" than Sergei Ivanov, another deputy prime minister and former defense minister who, up until yesterday, was Medvedev's main rival for the presidency.

Such optimism, however, is not borne out by Medvedev's unimpressive and toadying history. (His only distinguishing characteristic is a fondness for heavy metal; he's a collector of original Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath records.) Though not a silovik, he is in many ways more of a harbinger of strengthening Russian autocracy given his status as a behind-the-scenes policy wonk who owes his political rise exclusively to his boss. It's always the quiet ones you have to look out for

In 1991 Medvedev served as a legal expert to the Committee for External Relations in the office of St. Petersburg's first democratically elected mayor Anatoly Sobchak, under whom both men had studied law. (Putin was then the head of the committee). In one of the series of revealing interviews collected in the book First Person, a handy resource on Putin's psychology, the then newly-elected president confessed to feeling an "abstract category-comradeship" with three people in his life: Ivanov, Nikolai Patrushev, now the FSB director, and Medvedev. The latter was entrusted with orchestrating Putin's 2000 election campaign, for which he earned the Gazprom appointment a year later--a position he maintained despite also being named the president's chief of staff in 2003 and then deputy prime minister in a much-scrutinized cabinet shakeup in 2005. This was the same year, you'll recall, that Mikhail Khodorkovsky was railroaded through a farcical "trial" on the pretext of tax evasion, sent to Siberia, and had the assets of his multi-billion dollar petroleum concern Yukos absorbed by the state. On this occasion, Medvedev, who had been in charge of Priority National Projects geared towards domestic reforms, including one of the Russian judiciary, said that the courts were "genuinely independent." As for other renewal projects in the areas of health care, housing and education that Medvedev has spearheaded, the majority of Russians considers them failures, projects whose funds were stolen by corrupt government officials. (It hardly helps that Medvedev thinks corruption disappears in totalitarian countries.) Also, the birthrate continues to plummet despite his efforts to correct the "demographic problem."

As even his own Leningrad State University advisor phrased it, Medvedev sees Putin as an "older brother" and there seems to be little if any sibling rivalry between them. Consider that Medvedev, who will become the youngest leader of Russia since Nicolas II, wasted not a moment of his coronation before supplicating Putin to do what everyone suspected he would do anyway and become the next prime minister: "I appeal to him with a request to give his agreement in principle to head the Russian government after the election of the new president of our country." Putin will of course accept the assignment he all but drafted for himself, counting on one of three possible outcomes in the forthcoming administration, which will glide into office in March.

The first is that his underling will simply remain just that, arrogating all de facto presidential powers to the prime minister, including those pertaining to foreign and military affairs, in which case, Medvedev's dovish outlook is moot. Leave it to the 21st century Communist to tell it like it is: "Medvedev is insecure, weak. Putin can have full control over him," said senior party official Viktor Ilyukhin.

There is also the possibility that he will revise the constitution to accord the prime minister more de jure power, which can easily be done with United Russia's 70 percent control of the ratifying body of legislators. The problem with this scenario is that it depends on just how slavish Medvedev will be to Putin once he's legally in charge of the country. Bundled into the Western hopefulness of his liberalizing tendency is that he is also a Khrushchev-type figure: someone who has played the game of sycophant in order to inherit the throne and undo the damage of his predecessor. As Yevgeny Volk, the Moscow director of the Heritage Foundation recently said, "Whether he maintains his absolute loyalty to Putin or starts to change, that's a very serious question. Because in politics, there cannot be absolutely loyalty. Situations change, promises are broken. People in power also change."

Perhaps, although Medvedev's only flicker of disapproval with the status quo concerns the term sovereign democracy, which was coined by Vladislav Surkov to describe the strong centralized Russian state and was thoroughly embraced by the glowering architect of it. As a euphemism, sovereign democracy ranks right up there with Lenin's democratic centralism, and so it is, on the surface, encouraging that Medvedev finds the term counterproductive and transparent as a public relations gambit aimed toward winning dupes and apologists in the West. However, he's less bold outside of the field of semantics. The New York Times quotes him as saying, "Any seeker of this position should indicate that if he is elected, he will spoil nothing" of what Putin has insituted. He also told foreign journalists last month that:

"A parliamentary republic--this is my personal opinion--is not acceptable in Russia, either today or in [the] future. Probably, in 200 or 300 years when the idea of democracy is different and we can express our will without leaving our homes, when everything is different as to the current situation, the model we are having in Russia, the socioeconomic model is compatible with the parliamentary democracy. Russia should develop the same way as a number of major countries with strong presidential power."

So the dim prospect that Medvedev is a late-blooming champion of de-Putinization brings us to the other two scenarios that exist for keeping him in check. Unless he purges the cabinet, he will find himself surrounded by the Kremlin "uncles" who aggressively jockey for the coveted spot as second-in-command--to Putin. Medvedev has gone on record as being dismissive of factions or intrigue in the executive: "[I]f you ask me if it is reflected in our work, and moreover, in state decisions, I can firmly answer--no." However, there is no question that the ex-secret policemen who, like their current paymaster, matured in the cask of Andropov's KGB and now masquerade as public servants, will view him as an impotent steward and nothing else. These include Igor Sechin, first deputy chief of the Russian presidential administration and the chairman of Gazprom's sister oil monopoly Rosneft, also the presumed pack leader of the siloviki; Sergei Chemestov, the head of the state defense contractor Rosoboronexport; Nikolai Patrushev; and Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Antinarcotics Service. Garry Kasparov has called Medvedev's selection a "defeat for the Igor Sechin group," which also underscores its inherent danger if that group isn't removed. In the event of a severe power struggle that effectively hobbles the presidency, Prime Minister Putin has the right, under the constitution, to impeach Medvedev with a two-thirds majority vote in the Duma, He can then return to the post himself.

The other scenario is that economy suffers, and so too does the man in charge. Alexei Bayer, a New York-based economist, has limned in the Moscow Times two ways this can happen in the coming months: either oil prices remain high and inflation rises, leading to higher consumer prices (food prices rose an ominous 19 percent over the past year) and more workers' strikes, or Russia's oil bubble bursts and everything goes south:

Either way, the new president is not likely to face such a glowing economic landscape when he assumes office. Whether Medvedev harbors liberal economic views will not matter, since an economic downturn is not the time to introduce reforms--especially not in Russia. His most likely response will be price controls and greater government interference in the private sector, which has already been done to combat inflationary pressures this year.

In the event that this does indeed happen, Putin will have performed his greatest trick yet: Convincing the Russian people that it didn't happen under his watch and that the true father of the nation is ready to come back and restore the good old days.