At the United Russia congress, President Vladimir Putin (above) rose even higher after giving the forefront to Dmitry Medvedev (below).
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Vladimir Putin Follows Dmitry Medvedev
// The president promised to become a prime minister without extended powers
Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the United Russia party congress on Monday, where he accepted the offer to head the government. Besides, the congress nominated Dmitry Medvedev for the new Russian president. Just one man voted against. Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov knows that man.
The United Russia party 8th congress’ second part took place in the same building as the first one. However, Gostiny Dvor looked crucially different on Monday. The chairs were put lengthwise instead of widthwise, and upper rows were lifted above lower ones. So, as political observer Sergei Markov aptly said, the congress as if froze in wait for Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, and reminded an avalanche ready to remove everything on its way. Apparently, Markov was still impressed by the morning news programs picturing out the fall of avalanches on several Russian TV journalists and the story of their miraculous salvation from the snowy imprisonment. However, there was nobody to fall on here. Evidently, there were no dissidents in the hall. Yet, it turned out I should not have hurried to make that conclusion.
The hall’s appearance changed as well, to which Independent Newspaper’s owner Konstantin Remchukov turned my attention. Unlike the last time, the hall was decorated with blue-black cloths, which made the act taking place here look simply sinister. Remchukov confessed he cannot stay for more than 15 minutes in a hall like that, and said he leaves Gostiny Dvor with a feeling of accomplished duty. Indeed, he was just a guest here, unlike several hundred delegates who felt like masters not just in Gostiny Dvor, but also in life in general, as it seemed to me.
Alas, that is not the case when it has no grounds. After all, it was these people who were given the honor to nominate the presidential candidate and to choose the man who will actually become the president.
Medvedev entered the hall together with Putin by a small door behind which they had left their coats. They had to walk several tens of meters before the delegates would notice them, because the president and the first deputy PM were coming from behind. However, both Putin and Medvedev knew perfectly well that cameras will catch them as soon as the door, behind which they were waiting for their time to go, opens.
So, they made just a few first steps without looking at each other. Then they began smiling and joking (actually vying to make jokes), and behaved like very-very close friends. Strictly speaking, they behaved in a natural manner. However, that naturalness was a result of double affectation (here was the case when minus by minus gives plus).
The delegates noticed them at two thirds of the way, and immediately stood up, or rather jumped up. The delegates, the guests of the congress, journalists – everyone stood up. If just one of them, either Putin or Medvedev, had entered, someone would probably have remained sitting, so as to have something to tell about himself to his grandchildren. But here, simply no choice was left to people (later I thought this observation rather concerns the day of March 2, 2008).
Boris Gryzlov said the congress is attended by “Russian President and our national leader Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin”. Gryzlov was as if tasting how this new phrase sounds. He seemed to be rehearsing it for the future, -- and it was coming out well, better that before. Later, he’ll just have to replace “Russian president” with “Russian prime minister” in the hammered wording. In the presidium, beside Putin, sat Tataria’s President Mintimer Shaimiev, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and Gryzlov. Medvedev settled in the parterre. He could enjoy the show as a spectator for a while. However, just for a few more minutes.
Gryzlov immediately gave the floor to Putin. All formalities were settled in his speech.
“The nation itself acted as the main guarantor of our political system, and defended the country from going back to the time of populism and social split,” said Putin. “Now, the new Duma can take purchase on the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens.”
That was a weak paraphrase of his own pre-election populism, when he raved and stormed, tearing Russia’s past to pieces, and when he so demonstratively split the society into those standing with him and those against him. Thank goodness, he became disinterested in strong wordings after he had won the election.
Then the president started speaking as if a tense pre-election campaign was awaiting him again. He spoke of raising salaries to public sector employees (by 14% instead of 7%, and since February 1, and not since September 1, 2008) and raising the pay to army servicemen (by 18%, and since February 1, 2008, as well).
“It has become essential to work out suggestions for changing the very approaches to forming the military pay,” the president went on. “There should be more fair principles of pay formation in the military link’s interests. Army people know what I am talking about.”
If Putin had had a task of enlisting military people’s support for the March 2 election, he would have accomplished it in that moment. Yet, he did not have that task. They are already voting for him with a 99-percent turnout, and they can be rivaled only by Chechnya’s population in that sense. However, Putin is systematically paying them ever-increasing attentions. He celebrated his last birthday with them. He commissioned Medvedev personally with solving their housing problem, at a morning meeting with the Cabinet in the Kremlin on Monday. (That must have been one of the last publicly-given Putin’s assignments for Medvedev. Later, Putin can give suggestions only. Besides, it would have already looked non-pedagogic.)
Apparently, the president still thanks the army men for their help to him precisely in Chechnya.
“We, including myself, promised to people to index the necessary elements of national projects, including child-support allowances. However, I do not see any compensation in the budget for 2008, as well as for 2009. Meanwhile, we have to keep our promises. It is necessary to be consistent, honest, and not saving on people. I ask the State Duma deputies to make necessary amendments to the budget, and to index the allowances since the next year, 2008, due to the consumer prices growth.”
So far, the Russian president – an author and largely a performer of the three-year budget idea – was never bothered that the promised compensation was not budgeted. He spoke of it only now. If it was campaign rhetoric, we should be glad its tone has changed precisely in that direction.
However, then I suddenly realized that Putin actually speaks not as a president and not as a man who faces a pre-election campaign. He speaks as a prime minister.
Meanwhile, Putin reached at last the main issues on the agenda: the presidential election and the choice of prime minister. While everything was clear with the first issue, many people had doubts concerning the second one.
“Parties of different political views took part in consultations, and it is very significant that a consensus on the candidate was reached. This candidate is Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev,” said the president.
So, Putin keeps insisting on an absurd idea – that choosing Medvedev is a result of that alleged consensus. Apparently, he thinks the consensus between political parties is to prove there is a consensus on that candidate in the society as well.
“I believe that choice is the best,” Putin went on. “I am sure Dmitry Anatolievich will brilliantly manage the work in the supreme state position. I say that not because I have worked together with Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for over 17 years, and not because there have established really good business relations and confidential personal relations between us. There is much more to it. Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev is an exceptionally honest and decent man.”
However, understanding that being a good man is not a profession, the president added:
“Dmitry Anatolievich has turned from a really good law expert into a perfect leader. If our people, Russian citizens, give credence to Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev and elect him as the new president of the Russian Federation, then I will be ready as well to carry on our joint work as the prime minister of the Russian Federation.”
That was an interesting construction. Putin made his further active participation in the country’s life dependent on whether the country’s citizens elect Medvedev as their president. So, Putin never gets tired of trying voters’ patience.
Here the president took a good theatric pause and added:
“Without changing the balance of powers between the president and the Cabinet.”
He could have refrained from saying that. It would be enough just not to change the balance of powers. Yet, he decided to say it precisely here, apparently because he wanted to end the intrigue right there on the spot. Putin does not need assumptions that Russia might now turn into a parliamentary republic headed by prime minister instead of president. Meanwhile, those assumptions would definitely appear right after the congress’ first part, had he omitted saying that. And Putin needs absolute clarity. He wants to calmly meet… no, not the old age! …the new year.
Gryzlov spoke after Putin, making an ultimatum warning to the United Russia deputies that each of them should remember they owe their Duma mandates to Number one of their party list.
While Gryzlov went on to describing already Medvedev’s merits, Putin was quickly writing something in his notebook. I even thought he was taking notes, putting down expressions that he liked, which should be used by a PM when speaking about a president. Yet, Putin then passed the paper to Tataria’s President Mintimer Shaimiev. Evidently, they were in trivial business correspondence with each other, well aware of the impossibility to talk one-on-one that day. In fact, they could afford getting distracted: everything in that congress had already been decided.
Gryzlov suggested nominating Dmitry Medvedev, a non-partisan Russian citizen born in 1965, as a presidential candidate, and secretly voting for that suggestion. (According to some sources, the voting procedure was actively discussed by the ruling party’s top officials, for it was that little which was really in their power.)
While the delegates were voting, there appeared an opportunity to talk to some of them. Here was the case when hardly anything interesting could be heard from professional politicians: everything was already too clear. So, I talked to non-professional politicians instead.
“I am pleased,” said Joseph Kobzon. “I’ve always dreamed of a woman to become president.”
“What are you pleased with, then?” I was surprised.
“He fits in perfectly well,” explained Kobzon.
“So, he will play a woman’s role in that position?” I asked.
“A woman is less amenable to vices than men are, you should agree. And it is Medvedev in the government who deals with children, family, and homes. In this respect, the candidate is precisely what I wanted,” said Kobzon.
I thought that all United Russia singers think (and sing) approximately the same. Before the congress’ beginning, the party’s authorized delegate Lev Leshchenko and its member Larisa Dolina chanted the praises both to Medvedev and to their country which will turn into a garden-city in just a decade of everything goes along Putin’s plan.
Nikita Mikhalkov assured a courageous provincial reporter that he, Mikhalkov, is not someone helping to form a personality cult.
“Have I done anything for it, huh?” Mikhalkov asked the reporter. “Do you think I have done anything? Have I made a movie, or what?! It’s my greatest civil joy that I can respect the president!”
I reminded Mikhalkov that he indeed had made a movie like that, called “55”.
“Right, that was my way of telling him: my friend, happy birthday to you! That’s all!”
“Don’t you think that while you simply congratulated him on his birthday with that movie, you’ve made your precious contribution to forming a personality cult?”
“I don’t give a shit who thinks what! I never spoke this way about anyone except Putin: neither about Brezhnev, nor about Gorbachev…”
“Here you go: you’ve got to begin sometime.”
“What do you mean?” asked the movie director.
“Sooner or later, something happens to a man, and he starts speaking this way,” I had to explain.
“As Bunin said, I’m not a golden coin to please everyone,” Mikhalkov even brought classic writers to his side, so as to paraphrase what he had just said. “And if something goes wrong with him, I’ll be the first to come and say: I was mistaken.”
“I shall remember it,” I said.
“Go ahead,” he agreed.
However, I have a slight suspicion that we’ll hardly ever see that magic moment.
After the congress’ first part was over, there took place a demonstrative regrouping of the main characters in the presidium. There remained the same people, with Medvedev instead of Putin.
He was not interested in the voting’s outcome. He must have thought he knew it. I’m afraid he was mistaken. After all, one person voted against. I wonder who it was. We’ll hardly ever find it out, for the voting was secret, and that person is unlikely to disclose himself, I’m afraid.
Yet, I’d love to know who it was. I thought there was just one person who could vote against. However, Vladimir Putin left as soon as the break in the congress was announced.
Andrei Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 18, 2007
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