When Vladimir Putin was still an awkward technocrat plucked from obscurity by Boris Yeltsin to become prime minister in 1999, he was asked by journalists whom he considered to be his "comrades." He cited three names: Sergei Ivanov, Nikolai Patrushev and "Dima" Medvedev.
Of this troika, Patrushev runs Putin's old employer, the KGB-turned-FSB; and Ivanov and Medvedev, both senior aides with pivotal roles in the past eight years, were leading contenders to take over as president, until Putin recently named Medvedev as his preferred candidate in the presidential election next March.
This succession process—"I nominate and the people endorse"—is intriguingly similar to that of Yeltsin when he selected Putin in 1999. It is not the only parallel between the two eras, separated by tightening authoritarianism and swelling oil wealth.
In many ways, the two presidents could not be more different. Yeltsin was a charismatic but ailing, erratic and tipple-fond leader widely perceived as undermining the Soviet Union at home and triggering national humiliation in his appearances abroad. Putin is a cold, ascetic teetotaller and sportsman with a belief in the need to restore Russian pride.
But in the spectacle of a president flailing around to find someone to protect his legacy, there is a striking similarity between 1999 and 2007. Yeltsin, a colourful personality with an unwillingness to clamp down on a lively media, played out his increasingly desperate search in full public view, sacking three prime ministers in less than two years.
Putin prefers continuity, co-opting and exercising firm control over those he (rarely) reshuffles. With the increased restrictions on media freedom over the past eight years, the occasional public eruptions of the conflicts within the Kremlin walls have been all the more striking. And the stakes are just as high.
What seems clear is that Putin, who is still far from retirement age, wants to exert far more control than Yeltsin after the formal end of his presidency—whether through a specific office or through more informal influence behind the scenes.
Conventional wisdom in Moscow had long been that Putin would not seek to change the constitution, which requires a president to stand down after two consecutive four-year terms. To rewrite the rules would not only spark western opprobrium, but sit awkwardly with the lessons Putin learned during his political formation in the 1990s, when the constant disregard of law militated against stability.
But many of the analysts who predicted this scenario had also become confident that Sergei Ivanov was the anointed successor, basing their views on Kremlinological-style analysis of his frequent appearances on national television and meetings alongside his boss.
The problem with Ivanov was that he represented the past. He is older, was more successful and higher ranking in his KGB career, and—despite his charm and greater fluency in English—is reminiscent of the Soviet era in his suspicion of the market economy. Despite his loyalty, he was potentially a threat to Putin and his legacy.
When Putin fired Mikhail Fradkov as prime minister in the autumn and put the still older Viktor Zubkov in his place, it looked as though a constitutional "tweak" could take place: a loyal Zubkov would be elected president, then fall tragically and co-operatively ill within a few months; Putin, reluctantly but at the demand of the people, would be forced to stand in.
By opting instead for Medvedev, Putin has made such a scenario less likely. He has also made the best of a limited range of choices available to him. His youthful aide is more than a decade younger than him, has no obvious security service background (he trained as a lawyer and was an academic) and has associated himself with liberal economic reform.
That leaves Putin with the option of "virtual" constitutional reform, not rewriting the rules but informally shifting the balance of power from the Kremlin to an alternative centre of power. On current indications, that seems to be as prime minister.
Yet it is hard to imagine that Putin would be satisfied resuming a job he previously held in 1999, and which is formally subject to dismissal by Medvedev. Would he be willing to allow Medvedev to hobnob with international leaders while he deals with the daily grind of government?
More likely, Putin will try to turn Russia into more of a parliamentary-led democracy with a symbolic president. The test will be how far his informal authority can remain supreme from what has traditionally been a subordinate post. Furthermore, by so doing, he limits his scope to again run for the presidency in 2012, as the constitution allows.
Putin has the advantage that Medvedev has little independent political support. He is likely to remain reliant on Putin for advice and networks on military and security matters. But Russian history suggests that such a sharing of power is difficult in the long term.
It just as open to debate how far Medvedev will prove able to push through desperately needed reforms, tackling Russia's crumbling infrastructure, beleaguered health system and collapsing demographics.
The legacy of Putin's second term was of stasis more than action. His team's inability to engage politically with people left them running scared each time a planned reform sparked public criticism, such as the restructuring of housing benefits.
Medvedev's main job during Putin's presidency was as chairman of Gazprom. During that time, he helped oust the previous managers, who ran the company for their own benefit. He tossed out a few sweeteners to foreign investors, notably by abolishing the "ring fence" that theoretically restricted them from owning locally quoted shares in the company.
But he did little to cut down on Gazprom's waste, refocus the group on the necessary expansion of its domestic investment, or tackle its growing monopolisation of the energy sector. He oversaw moves to muscle in on investments by foreign investors, and hike gas prices to uncooperative neighbours. Hardly the legacy of a western-style economic reformer.
Putin has chosen a path towards democracy that does not mirror that of Russia's western neighbours. In the feral atmosphere of modern Russia, that may be explicable. But as his time runs out in the Kremlin, his failure to create a more competitive political environment in which the best rise to the top has restricted his options in choosing a successor, and is perpetuating a system more reliant on his personality than on solid institutions.
