By Dmitri Trenin, Director, Expert Council...

Westerners often see Russian politics in terms of a high-level struggle between liberals and conservatives: Ligachev and Yakovlev under Gorbachev; reformers and nationalists under Yeltsin; siloviki and economic liberals under Putin. They also view Russia in terms of a tradition whereby every new tsar partly repudiates the legacy of his predecessor, creating a political thaw at the beginning of a new reign. Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization is Exhibit A.

Both methods were used to describe the Putin-Medvedev relationship – to understand its nature and dynamic, and what it portends for Russia. But observers remain puzzled.

To dismiss Medvedev as a mere Putin puppet, a constitutional bridge between Putin’s second and third presidential terms, would be both unfair and wrong. Russia’s third president has a broader role and a distinct function. Conversely, portraying Putin as “a man from the past,” and Medvedev as “a hope for the future,”

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