SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE RUSSIAN WINTER I

WHITE HOUSE

KREMLIN

KREMLIN

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

GOVERNMENT HOUSE ("THE WHITE HOUSE")

MOSCOW (right), AT TWILIGHT

The beginnings of some musings re Prime Minister, President, President, Prime Minister, Russia/The USSR:

Once upon a time, just a bit over two decades ago now, when there still was a Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin got himself elected first (in 1990) to chair the Russian parliament, and then (in 1991) to occupy the newly established office of President of a "Russia" still a constituent republic of the USSR. The white marble building above came already with the first post, and soon it was being called "The White House." After winning a popular election for President, Yeltsin finagled an office in the Kremlin too. Twenty years ago yesterday, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was deprived of both his Office and his office in the Kremlin.

The White House went back to being the Government House, home of the Russian government, headed by the prime minister, while the Kremlin was the bailiwick of the Russian, rather than the Soviet, president.

Vladimir Putin has been both, twice (prime minister both before and after he was president). The trouble seems to have started when he decided he preferred the latter to the former, the Kremlin to the "White House" which was not the president's house.

For the last almost four years, his man, Dmitry Medvedev, has been president. Strange how quickly commentators have accepted the rationale for Putin's giving up the presidency after two terms: because the constitution forbade it! This is not some ancient document; it was only a decade old when the time came to set up the Tandem, and surely has been otherwise honored in the breach.

Nonetheless, we catch a glimpse of the value of the presidency, the name and not just the power he was thought to have anyway, to Vladimir Putin. For it seems to have been the announcement on September 24 of this year that Putin and not Medvedev would run for president this coming March 4 that really tore it -- tore away the strategic ambiguity of the Tandem, and tore away any possible chance of projecting "modernizing" desires on Medvedev. An earlier change of the length of the term of president contributed to the sense of "Enough!" -- for now there lay in prospect not just two more four-year terms, but two more six-year terms for President Putin.

The Duma elections which had helped make Putin in 1999 backfired this December 4 -- too much fraud findable by an already motivated part of the populace, and -- just in time for the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union -- a massing of some sizable numbers of the citizenry in real mitings again, protest mitings.