Night of the Long Trousers

This was quite a performance by Medvedev - managed to look like a little boy who's just been let out in public in long trousers for the first time, while invoking the powers of the President of the Russian Federation. Reminds me of the "Who's Queen?" scene in Blackadder. When you have to remind people of your authority, it means you don't have any.

Clearly, Kudrin wanted to be fired, or he would not have spoken out in public.
Why did he want to be fired? One view has it that he wanted to go into public politics earlier this year, and head up Pravoe Delo, instead of Prokhorov. I have no idea why he would want to do this – the only real perk that I can see is that as a deputy you get immunity from prosecution. But even this can be taken away if the authorities really want to get you. Possibly he saw it as a semi-retirement job – you get a blue light, no one bothers you, and he gets to spend more time with his mistress.

Anyway, Kudrin was apparently dissuaded from doing this, and Putin promised him that if he stayed on as Finance Minister another year, Putin would make him Prime Minister when he became President. So basically Putin screwed Kudrin, hence the outburst on Saturday – it was a signal to force Putin to fire him. I imagine that when you want to leave a lucrative job like Finance Minister, you have to pay people in order to get it done, just as you have to pay people to get appointed. Forcing Putin to fire him means that Kudrin doesn’t have to share any of his gains with anyone. In this way Kudrin gets to spend more time with his loved ones (his money and his mistress) – it’s really quite an elegant exit ticket.

Medvedev signed his political suicide note yesterday – his public petulance makes him look weak to any Russian who holds a rank higher than secretary. It’s reminiscent of the boss’s son trying to impose his authority over the harmless department that his dad has given him to run. It also means that Medvedev will now have to fire anyone who disagrees with him publicly, so he could end up without a team quite soon. I think Putin’s plan is to keep him in place until the first minor economic crisis, and then fire him. Or possibly force Medvedev to put his name to an austerity budget in 2013, and then fire him when people protest.

For the record, I got it wrong on Putin – I thought he would keep Medvedev as President, but perhaps Medvedev was letting the power go to his head, and threatened to run against Putin. I had also thought that Putin was getting tired of running Russia and was happy doing butch photo-opportunities, but I guess he has realized that whatever stooge he appoints President will eventually begin to believe that he is worthy of the job.