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International News Title: Head to Head in Moscow Power Play Over the past few weeks, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has publicly rebuked his Prime Minister Vladimir Putin over Libya, distanced himself from Mr. Putin's model of state capitalism and now, on Chinese television of all places, dared to suggest that his mentor is stuck in the past, and that he himself is the better man to steer Russia for the next six years. Meanwhile, over at the White House, deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, the architect of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's downfall and a man widely perceived both inside and outside Russia as Mr. Putin's strong right arm, is facing at least a tactical defeat, if not a strategic one, at the hands of a trio of oligarchs over a flagship project to develop oil resources in the Arctic Ocean. What is going on? Certainly, capital flight of $21 billion in the first quarter of the year suggests some very real uncertainty on the part of those who have accumulated assets under the current regime. Capital flight aside, it's easier to say what is not going on. As much as anything can be sure in the world of Russian politics, there is no likelihood of Mr. Medvedev running off in open competition against Mr. Putin in next year's presidential elections. The men are political intimates and have been for a decade. There is a bond of trust between them that would be remarkable in any country's leading politicians. Another thing that is not changing is Mr. Putin's seniority in the partnership, at least not immediately, and not to any degree that makes a jot of difference to the safety of foreign investments in Russia. There is, probably, also no change in the relative realities of power and office in Russia. Mr. Putin, for the past four years, has not needed to be in the Kremlin to exercise effective supreme power. Whether, after 2012, Mr. Putin is in the Kremlin and Mr. Medvedev is in the White House, or the other way around, is of limited importance. They will continue to exercise real power. The only change that one can be truly sure of is a generational one, and this will be a very gradual one. Russian political cycles have tended to be longer than those in western Europe. Its transition from centrally-planned, autarkic and dysfunctional empire to a more pluralistic, modern and dynamic element of a multi-polar world is lasting decades. Even if it has been inevitably buffeted by external events and retarded by misjudgments and creeping venality, that process is Mr. Putin's life mission. He knows that, at some stage, control of a 20-year project will have to pass to another generation. Mr. Putin took power, after all, at the relatively young age of 47, allowing him a realistic shot at a 20-year career at the top of the power structure. For a decade, he led a national-conservative counter-revolution with extraordinary energy and success, stamping his and his allies' outlook on the political, economic and cultural life of his country. There was little room, in those years, for the toleration of dissent. The oligarchs and regional governors who had seized wealth in the 1990s, Mikhail Khodorkovsky included, were no more scrupulous about democracy and the rule of law than the Putin clique was. But Mr. Putin has never been a one-dimensional tyrant of the Mugabe or Gadhafi type. Having spent his formative years watching gerontocratic totalitarian states collapse around him, he knows what happens in countries that don't allow political competition. It is conspicuous that many of the "siloviki" who dominated Russian life in Mr. Putin's Kremlin years between 2000-2008— Sergei Chemezov, Viktor Ivanov, Alexander Bastrykin, Vladimir Ustinov, Sergei Ivanov, Viktor Cherkesov, Nikolai Patrushev and Alexander Bortnikov—are all between 58 and 61 years of age. At some point, all of them, Mr. Putin included, will put more value on a comfortable and lengthy retirement than on fighting every day for political supremacy. Mr. Putin will need a succession strategy, and one that can guarantee the necessary popular consent. This is why Mr. Putin has only bent the democratic process, not broken it completely. This is why constitutional niceties will continue to be observed, even if for much of the time they are made mock of by the "legal nihilism" of which Mr. Medvedev complains. And this what makes Mr. Medvedev a pivotal figure in the evolution of Russia's political class. He is, in Mr. Putin's eyes, a pole around which a more liberal, but still loyal, counterweight to the national-conservative power bloc can coalesce over time. But for that to happen, Mr. Medvedev needs credibility, and that has been hard to win in a country acutely attuned to the realities of power. Ominously for the succession strategy, Mr. Medvedev's popularity ratings have been falling faster than Mr. Putin's since last year's routine disasters with drought and forest fires. He is facing an uphill struggle to mobilize voters who have long grasped the reality of the electoral process under Mr. Putin. Over the next six months, Mr. Medvedev somehow needs to be able to show to the Russian people, and to the younger elements of government, that he can make a difference, without scaring the old elite that he is making it too quickly. The funny thing is, although the capital flight suggests heavily that the old guard is indeed scared, there is scant visible evidence so far that there is anything to be afraid of. There may be more material concessions to the liberal wing in the offing. But it would be a major surprise for them to be a serious challenge to the old guard's pre-eminence. Write to Geoffrey T. Smith at geoffrey.smith@dowjones.com
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