Miami Student

Issue date: 3/4/08 Section: Editorials

Sunday marked the formal end of Russian President Vladimir Putin's resurgent and dominating tenure over the Russian state with the landslide election of his hand-chosen successor, Dmitry Medvedev. In a state that has seen a tumultuous history of post-Soviet development, the Putin era ushered in a resurgent Russian economy on the back of rising energy costs and billions of dollars in weapons exports all over the globe. Capturing 70 percent of the general election vote, the continuation of Putin's United Russia party with the rise of Medvedev still represents a type of hope for the Russian people that have been traumatized by decades of Soviet oppression and a rollercoaster ride of economic shocks and political turmoil during the Boris Yeltsin years. The Miami Student editorial board believes that given the current state of politics in Russia, Medvedev represents at least a chance for solidifying relations within Russia and continuing to stabilize the country.

While it may be easy for us to criticize Russian elections and the country's brand of "sovereign democracy," this board recognizes the continuous comprehensive transformation that Russia is trying to see itself through. Pro-Western, liberal political parties poll embarrassingly low numbers and we see a large part of the remaining vote swinging back to the Russian Communist Party, which is still run by Gennady Zyuganov who has been the party's nominee since the Yeltsin years. Since Yeltsin handed the reins to Putin at the dawn of the 21st century, there has been no flux in Russian politics-only top-down control that is perpetuated by a one-party system which has monopolized major TV and print media.

However, at the very least, we can look positively toward the fact that Russia has not reverted to the inter-institutional fighting of the early 1990s, but instead has some sense of continuity that has prevented chaos. While we must ask ourselves what cost must be paid for stability, this board does not believe that Medvedev is the worst candidate who could have been chosen. In a state increasingly run by former KGB agents, and following years of centralizing reforms under Putin, Medvedev currently represents a slightly more moderate, more Western-looking choice. A man who was not KGB, Medvedev understands the energy industry (he was chairman of Russia's oil giant Gazprom). For that reason, Medvedev may be more open to understanding Western posturing-especially in terms of Russia's relationship with the European Union in terms of the tightly interdependent economic relationship that is forming. While almost all Western analysts agree that democracy in Russia is far from perfect, Medvedev's election could still hold the same surprises that surrounded Putin's rise to power and take Russia down an entirely different path.

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