26.04.09

Dmitriy Medvedev signed his first pardon decrees almost a year after becoming president. Last Thursday (16 April) he pardoned 12 people sentenced for crimes like petty theft. If he had thought about the matter a little longer, these people could have had their freedom even without his mercy, because all of them were serving sentences of between one and two years. But many people perceived even this news as a sign of an impending thaw -- Medvedev's predecessor Vladimir Putin, when he was president, was increasingly reluctant to issue pardons from one year to the next and, you could say, almost eradicated the institution of pardons.

The fuss over a possible thaw arose in connection with the fact that the pardons were Act Four in the play performed by Medvedev day by day last week. Monday-- a sensation: For the first time, Medvedev gives an interview to the Russian print media, and his choice falls on the oppositionist Novaya Gazeta. Tuesday -- a meeting with democratically inclined economists from the Institute of Contemporary Development, which is customarily regarded as the only think tank that is close to him, Medvedev. Wednesday -- a three-hour conversatio nwith human rights campaigners, at which tough demands and questions are heard.

"Of course this is not a coincidence," Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of theCenter for the Study of the Elite, says. She was previously an independent liberal expert, and is now a member of United Russia. Indeed, coincidences like that do not happen: Medvedev has decided to show everyone that he is more democratic than has customarily been thought and that he is, in short, capable of broad gestures. And he decided to devote a whole week to this.

Monday. Day One

The main news was, of course, the interview. Putin once said, on the subject of the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, that the murder was more damaging to the state than that newspaper's publications were. In January, when Anastasiya Baburova, a young nonstaff reporter for the same newspaper, was killed together with (human rights) lawyer Stanislav Markelov, Medvedev waited for a while, but then received in the Kremlin the paper's chief editor Dmitriy Muratov and former President Mikhail Gorbachev, who is one of the publication's shareholders. Muratov says that it was Gorbachev who proposed the interview to Medvedev, who agreed. Two months later he received a call from the president's press service.

They met in Gorki. The conversation was totally free. Muratov quoted his favorite philosopher Mamardashvili, Medvedev quoted (philosopher David) Hume. The Novaya Gazeta editor thinks the Kremlin was pleased that the interview turned out far from trivial. "We worked easily and cheerfully," he said, quoting his interlocutor from the Kremlin staff. "(They wanted) a newspaper that does not express the official view to ask questions that it is high time to answer" -- that is how Muratov explains the Kremlin's reasoning.

Muratov handed the president a letter from journalist Ilya Barabanov, whose colleague and wife Natalya Morar, a citizen of Moldova, was expelled from Russia and is still not being allowed in. Medvedev did not correct the interview. "Four words were changed in the text. Four stylistic amendments," Muratov says. After the interview the president explained that he gave it specifically to Novaya Gazeta because that newspaper has never licked anyone's boots or anything else. Muratov complained that he should not have turned off his dictaphone. Medvedev gave him permission to quote from memory.

Tuesday. Day Two

The visit to the Institute of Contemporary Development (INSOR) was devoted to a specific working issue -- combating unemployment. But this was also a gesture-- it was only Medvedev's second visit to INSOR since he was elected. The first was a year ago. "The authorities do not need compliments or flattery from the expert community," Medvedev said at the time. Since then, INSOR has been firmly associated with the president -- they say this organization is close to him specifically.

INSOR regards itself as a liberal body. Its chief Igor Yurgens even criticized Putin for his harsh attacks on the Mechel corporation last summer, when its share prices collapsed. "You cannot do that," Yurgens said. The liberal economist Yevgeniy Gontmakher, an INSOR member, wrote the trenchant futuristic article "Novocherkassk 2009" not so long ago, and because of this, the pro-Kremlin Young Guard created obstructions for him. On Tuesday, after the meeting, the first and second TV channels interviewed Gontmakher almost for the first time.

The discussion at INSOR was closed to journalists. One expert who took part in the meeting told Newsweek that Medvedev was basically offered a "program for the social modernization of the country" -- that is to say, an action plan that could, for the sake of argument, be called the "Medvedev plan." If you remember the Putin plan with which United Russia went into the fall 2007 elections, this phrasing -- the "Medvedev plan" --might reveal a sedition that threatens Putin's position.

Wednesday. Day Three

At the presidential Council for the Development of the Civil Society, the economist Aleksandr Auzan was the first to be given the floor. And he began with quotations from the interview that Medvedev had given to Novaya Gazeta, about the tacit contract that supposedly exists between society and the authorities -- sausages in exchange for freedom. "You said that in essence a new structure is required that would make it possible to combine both plenty and freedom," Auzan reminded Medvedev.

The meeting on Wednesday was the longest -- three and a half hours -- and the most heated: The human rights campaigners said a lot, and much of what they said was of a kind that representatives of the authorities are not used to hearing. Medvedev gave everyone some passing encouragement when the subject arose of the harsh law adopted three years ago restricting the activities of noncommercial organizations. "There are a great many cases when (their) activities are restricted without sufficient reason," Medvedev stated, adding that it is necessary to think about amendments and giving instructions that a working group be formed for that purpose. Medvedev also said that a feeling has arisen that all noncommercial organizations are enemies of the state, but nobody had intended that.

Human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alekseyeva asked for the opposition to be allowed to hold rallies in Red Square, which she has been wanting for more than 40 years-- ever since those who share her views came out to protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Medvedev promised to think about creating a counterpart to London's Hyde Park (Corner) in Moscow. He was joking, Alekseyeva later told Newsweek. "Measures must be adopted to change the climate in the country," the president was told by Aleksey Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation. He was talking about the political climate.

Former Constitutional Court Judge Tamara Morshchakova spoke about judicial reform, and the president listened to her very attentively, reacted quickly, and promised support, according to the recollections of another member of the council, television anchor Svetlana Sorokina. The economist and human rights campaigner Irina Yasina again raised the question of Natalya Morar. Sorokina herself spoke about the fate of Svetlana Bakhmina (jailed former Yukos executive whose plight has had a high profile because she has young children, one of whom was born in prison) in particular and the issue of pardons in general. The discussion turned to the subject of mercy. "I would like to hope, like Irina, that we do not live in the least merciful of countries. I would very much like to hope that," Sorokina told the president.

This week the court is yet again examining the question of Bakhmina's early conditional release. "You could tell nothing from his face when Bakhmina's name was mentioned," Sorokina says, "absolutely nothing. Nor Morar's name. I think he has learned to control his face. Although of course he was listening carefully." But one of the experts associated with the human rights campaigners later recalled how Putin conducted similar meetings at the beginning of his first term: "He would listen and argue. He would defend his own opinion. About Chechnya, for instance."  As for Medvedev, he did not argue with the human rights campaigners at all, and the expert thinks this is suspicious.

The following day, the Western press came to the conclusion that Medvedev has begun to develop his own line and distance himself from those they call the siloviki (security chiefs). Russian political experts are more cautious in their comments on the liberal Medvedev week. "There is hope that not all of this is just theater," Kryshtanovskaya says.

About Alinga Consulting Group

    Audit and Taxation     Legal     Accounting and Payroll

Questions? Ask Alinga's Experts!

Source: Russkiy Newsweek