Despite Spotlight, Putin's Heir Still Shadowy

Medvedev, however, pursued an academic career. He "was an A student from the beginning to the end," said Marina Mitina, a former fellow student. "My other impression of him was his modesty. Modest, but with great self-confidence."

Medvedev was one of three students in his year invited to study at the postgraduate level and become a professor. "He had quite a reserved and strict manner of teaching," said Sergey Belov, a former student in Medvedev's class on Roman law. "There were very few jokes in his classes, partly because of the subject, but to a large extent it was connected with his own nature. He was very demanding."

Putin and Medvedev met through Sobchak and formed a bond that Putin later described as "comradeship." He calls Medvedev "Dima," the familiar diminutive of Dmitry.

In 1990, while still with the KGB, Putin became an assistant to the president of the university, responsible for international outreach. At that time, Sobchak was chairman of the Leningrad City Council. He became the first mayor of St. Petersburg in 1991, and both Putin and Medvedev worked for their former professor, sharing a desk and managing the city's committee for foreign liaison.

In 1996, after Sobchak lost a mayoral election, Putin went to Moscow and began his remarkable ascent in the administration of President Boris Yeltsin, first heading the FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB, and then becoming prime minister.

When Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999, Putin became acting president. He was elected to his first four-year term in March 2000.

In 1999, Putin, then prime minister, brought Medvedev to Moscow as his deputy chief of staff. Medvedev later managed Putin's first election campaign, became a deputy chief of the presidential staff and was appointed chairman of Gazprom, the energy company noted for its bloat and insider deals. In 2003, he became Putin's chief of staff.

Under Medvedev's chairmanship, Gazprom has become a state behemoth with profits last year of $25 billion. But the natural gas exporter's turnaround has not been without controversy. The company has been accused of serving as a political bludgeon to intimidate Russia's neighbors and of strong-arming its way into potentially highly lucrative foreign-controlled enterprises such as Royal Dutch Shell's $22 billion oil and natural gas project in Russia's Far East.

Some observers, however, believe Medvedev acted as the state's legal caretaker at Gazprom -- an executive who scrutinized the fine print in contracts but did not set policy.

"Gazprom was always Putin's personal company," said Vladimir Milov, head of the Institute of Energy and a former deputy energy minister under Putin. "Putin, not Medvedev, decided everything, and to a very detailed extent."

For all the positions he has held, including as legal counsel for a timber firm in the 1990s, Medvedev remains a man of modest means, according to the recent income declaration he was required to make as a presidential candidate. He listed his assets as $113,000 in savings, an apartment in Moscow and a Volkswagen Golf registered in his wife's name.

Medvedev emerged as a potential successor to Putin when he was appointed first deputy prime minister in November 2005 and given the task of reforming such key troubled sectors as health care, education, agriculture and housing. State-controlled media have portrayed his management of what are called the national projects as an unqualified success.

But in a lengthy report on the Putin years, Milov, the energy expert, and Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader, dismissed the projects as "the replacement of systematic reform by random, one-off, modest injections of cash which do not really solve anything."

None of this has been discussed in the campaign, for the simple reason that Medvedev didn't debate any of his opponents. The three of them squared off on television without him -- at 7 in the morning.