Word: medvedev
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...started when Medvedev surprised the nation by initiating a fresh debate over the state of democracy in Russia. In a breach of the usual Kremlin protocol, Medvedev wrote a policy paper - a liberal manifesto of sorts - that was published in September on the independent news website gazeta.ru. It was seen by many to be a groundbreaking document. Although Medvedev did not criticize Putin overtly - that would have been political suicide - he did lament Russia's isolationism, its vulnerable economy and its "negative democratic tendencies," all jabs at the authoritarian political system that Putin cultivated during his eight years as President...
...What's more, Medvedev laid out a bold democratic vision for the future. "Russia's political system will be extremely open, flexible and inherently complex," he wrote. "The leaders of the political struggle will be parliamentary parties, which will periodically take each other's place in power...
...such system has ever really existed in Russia, and none had ever been promised in such terms. Talk-show hosts and columnists nearly lost their heads interpreting the paper. Was Medvedev actually taking a stand against Putin? Were they preparing to face off for the presidency in 2012? In the weeks that followed, nearly every public intellectual responded to the piece, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and oil mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had been stripped of his assets and imprisoned under Putin for fraud. Most of them were skeptical. "It is absolutely clear that one leader cannot modernize...
...Putin enjoys the largest support base in Russia, with his political party, United Russia, controlling 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma. Medvedev's manifesto implied that the party's super-majority would eventually need to be broken up and its control of the bureaucratic machinery dissolved. This prospect, though seemingly impossible, provided opposition leaders with a rallying cry heading into elections on Oct. 11 to choose representatives in 76 of the country's 83 regional governments...
...Outside the chamber, the members of the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Just Russia Party, which was created by the Kremlin to attract opposition votes, demanded a meeting with Medvedev to urge him to live up to his promises. "We do not recognize the nationwide election results," said Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the right-wing Liberal Democrats. "We will not sit in a room with fraudsters...