Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

Another interesting resemblance between Putin’s and Mussolini’s systems was the diarchy at the top. Mussolini was prime minister and Duce, but until the armistice in 1943 Italy was a monarchy and Mussolini had to deal with King Victor Emmanuel III, the Italian head of state. In Mussolini’s case this diarchy was not of his own making. It was forced on him by the specificity of the Italian situation. After the election of Dmitry Medvedev as Russian president in March 2008 and Putin’s appointment to prime minister, there was created, in Russia also, a diarchy, called the tandem. But unlike the Italian situation, where the diarchy was an unintended consequence of a historical situation, the diarchy in Russia was the result of a deliberate choice. In the beginning there was a lot of speculation about the reason for this construction. Some Western observers obstinately wanted to believe—even as late as the fall of 2011—that this diarchy did have some real substance. It did not. The reason for Putin installing the tandem was to guarantee Putin’s iron grip on power for at least another decade. The second reason was to hide this manipulated usurpation of state power behind a smokescreen of formal legality. The Russian constitution did not permit a president to run for a third term. Putin easily could have changed the constitution, but he chose to step down and leave his place to his young cabinet chief Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev was the ideal choice for Putin. He had no political experience, no apparent power ambitions, nor an independent power base in society, and he was, moreover, totally devoted to his boss. Playing the game of “the constitutional president,” who “scrupulously applied the existing legal rules,” Putin planned to become a “legal” ruler who would remain in office longer than any of his foreign colleagues.^[51] Putin served as a prime minister under Yeltsin for almost five months, was subsequently president for more than eight years, remained prime minister for another four years, which already makes altogether twelve and a half years. During Medvedev’s presidency the presidential term for the next president was extended from four to six years. After his reelection on March 4, 2012, Putin had, therefore, theoretically the possibility of remaining at the apex of the Russian power system until 2024, which would make for a reign of almost a quarter of a century. This would bring the total time span of his reign close to that of an average Russian tsar (Alexander II, for instance reigned from 1855 to 1881 and Nicholas II from 1894 to 1917). It even comes close to the almost thirty years’ reign of Putin’s admired geopolitical genius, Joseph Stalin.^[52]

Notes

1.

Quoted in Boris Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000), 330.

2.

“Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Met with Members of the Sixth Valdai Discussion Club,” Ria Novosti (September 19, 2009). http://en.rian.ru/valdai_op/20090914/156117965-print.html.

3.

These were the Christian-Democratic Union, the Liberal-Democratic Party of Germany, the National-Democratic Party of Germany, and the Democratic Peasants Party of Germany.

4.

Apart from the political parties, also representatives of communist mass organizations (youth and women’s organizations, the communist trade union FDGB, etc.) were also on the National Front’s list.

5.