The bland leading the bland

Minutes after the polls closed on March 2 in8230; Kaliningrad8230; the men of the hour made an appearance at a massive concert8230; in Red Square. The action duo climbed onto the stage, and Dmitri Medvedev 8212; a professed headbanger who had had a box reserved at the Led Zeppelin reunion show in London on the day Putin named him his successor 8212; got to live out a rock 8216;n8217; roll moment. He grabbed the mic and yelled 8220;Privet, Rossiya! Privet, Moskva!8221; the Russian equivalent of 8220;Hello, Cleveland8221;. The square went wild8230; The crowd began chanting 8220;Con-grats! Con-grats!8221;8230; Medvedev passed the microphone to his benefactor, and the chant immediately changed. 8220;Pu-tin! Pu-tin! PU-TIN!!!8221; Medvedev politely smiled.

This episode is likely to repeat throughout the first months and even years of Medvedev8217;s rule. If it seems as if Russia has elected a man nobody knows anything about, it8217;s because Russia8230; didn8217;t really elect Dmitri Medvedev at all. It reelected Vladimir Putin8230; The rubber-stamping8230; illuminates a useful truth about Russian society: Putin8217;s stifling regime and the country8217;s oil-fuelled prosperity are viewed not as unrelated phenomena but as cause and effect. Medvedev, even as he formally represents the end of that regime, is also its ultimate triumph.

Putin8217;s historic achievement is the creation8230; of suverennaya demokratiya 8220;sovereign democracy8221; and what8217;s been rechristened, in liberal circles, suvenirnaya demokratiya: 8220;souvenir democracy.8221; This system consists of a narrow executive silo8230; through which all policy is funnelled, and a collection of decorative Western-style institutions pivoting around it. Unlike Gorbachev8217;s perestroika, the key word of the Brezhnev era 8212; zastoi, or stagnation 8212; never gained currency in English, but it describes late-Putinist Russia fairly well. Economically booming, politically resurgent, today8217;s Russia is also culturally stagnant8230; Its only identifiable passion is to be taken seriously abroad.

Excerpted from 8216;The Hibernation8217; by Michael Idov in the latest New Republic