Appointment of Kremlin Critic Reveals Political Uncertainty in Russia

MOSCOW, Dec. 22 -- In late August, one of Russia's leading opposition figures addressed a small demonstration in downtown Moscow and laid into Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, comparing his rollback of democratic reforms to the attempted coup by Communist Party hard-liners in the last days of the Soviet Union.

"Everything that is going on now very much reminds us of what they wanted to do back in 1991," Nikita Belykh, chairman of the Union of Right Forces party, told the crowd. "We practically have a one-party system. . . . We practically have a state economy, a personality cult, militarization."

The remarks were hardly unusual for Belykh, 33, a burly, round-faced former deputy governor. Months earlier, he had been arrested while attempting to lead a protest march through the city. In October, when his party agreed to disband and forge an alliance with the Kremlin, he resigned rather than go along.

So it was a surprise when Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev summoned Belykh to the Kremlin this month and offered to appoint him governor of a province in central Russia -- and he agreed.

The appointment, which prompted accusations of betrayal by some of Belykh's colleagues, is a sign of the uncertainty surrounding Russian politics as Putin confronts the country's worst economic crisis in a decade and the fractured opposition tries to tap into rising public discontent and mount a new challenge.

After nearly a decade of rapid growth that buoyed Putin's popularity, plummeting oil prices and tight credit markets have pushed Russia into a severe slowdown, with some economists predicting that next year could bring the country's first recession since the 1998 financial crisis. In November, industrial output plunged nearly 11 percent while the number of unemployed climbed by 400,000, to 5 million people, according to official statistics.

Although more than three-quarters of Russians continue to approve of Putin and Medvedev, 40 percent now say the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with 24 percent in September, according to a recent poll by the Moscow-based Levada Center. About 43 percent said the country was moving in the right direction, and 18 percent declined to answer.

Thousands of people participated in small demonstrations in several Russian cities over the weekend to protest a plan to raise tariffs on imported cars. Riot police clashed with protesters in the eastern port city of Vladivostok for the second Sunday in a row.

Several leading members of the democratic opposition set aside long-standing differences this month to form a new anti-Kremlin movement named Solidarity, after the victorious anti-Communist movement in Poland.

"The crisis means the incompetence of the authorities is on display," said Ilya Yashin, a leader of one of Russia's main democratic parties, Yabloko, and a member of the Solidarity coalition. "It means we have a chance to present an alternative."

He and other Solidarity leaders said they hoped to persuade the public that only democratic institutions such as independent courts and competitive elections can check the corruption and waste that are choking economic growth. But they acknowledged it would be a tough case to make in a society where many people associate democratic reforms with the economic and social turmoil in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"One of the tasks of the Solidarity movement is to rehabilitate those basic principles that, unfortunately, for a significant or even overwhelming portion of our fellow citizens, have become associated with failure, misery or reduction of freedom," said Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and one of the most prominent figures in the Solidarity leadership.