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For Russia, a Second Center of Power
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As President Medvedev left the palace to review the Presidential Regiment, he allowed himself an occasional smile. For a man who was dismissed by some before the March election as too lightweight for the office, it had been an unexpected ascent.
In some respects, it began 17 years ago when he met Putin in St. Petersburg, where both worked in the mayor's office. Putin, who calls Medvedev by the diminutive "Dima," has described him as one of the few colleagues with whom he has a feeling of "comradeship."
Medvedev was born in 1965 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, a home town he shares with Putin. Medvedev's father was a physics professor and his mother taught Russian as a foreign language. The new president met his wife, Svetlana, when he was in the seventh grade. They have a 12-year-old son, Ilya.
Medvedev's handlers emphasize his youthfulness and interests -- he practices yoga and is a fan of hard rock music -- as emblematic of a new generation of Russians.
Unlike Putin and many in Putin's circle, Medvedev has no background in the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. Nor has he served in the military.
But he owes his political fortune to Putin, who brought him to Moscow when Putin became prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin. In the last eight years, most recently as first deputy prime minister and chairman of Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, Medvedev has been Putin's faithful servant, with no sign of questioning the centralization of power in the Kremlin.
As a candidate, however, and in his six-minute inaugural address, Medvedev signaled a commitment to modernization and openness that, in tone at least, is at odds with Putin's more strident rhetoric. "Human rights and freedoms . . . are deemed of the highest value for our society, and they determine the meaning and content of all state activity," he said.
As president he can theoretically dismiss Putin, is head of the armed forces and sets foreign policy.
Western diplomats hope he will repair relations with the West, which have been damaged by recriminations over issues including the expansion of NATO, energy security and Russia's direction away from democracy.
Medvedev faces immediate tests at home, however, including rising food prices, an issue with the potential to galvanize the population, and dangerous levels of tension with neighboring Georgia over Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia. Medvedev also needs to diversify an economy heavily dependent on the export of raw materials and to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, from roads to hospitals.
Putin will remain an extraordinarily powerful figure. He is head of the dominant United Russia party, which controls both houses of parliament, and remains highly popular with the Russian people, who credit him with stabilizing and enriching the country after the upheavals of the 1990s.
"The model of power which Putin and Medvedev are testing is new for Russia," Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant close to the outgoing Putin administration, said in an interview. "Each of the centers of power will have to limit itself and at same time limit the other center. It is kind of a Russian system of checks and balances, and that's why it looks so exotic to us. Whether it works, we'll see."
