2012 Russian presidential election

The 2012 Russian presidential election settled the uncertainty built into the 2008 transfer of the presidency: Vladimir Putin returned to power, while Dmitry Medvedev did not challenge his mentor. In Emmanuel Carrère’s account, the result confirmed both the durability of Putin’s authority and the narrow space left to Limonov as an opposition figure.

The succession arrangement

In 2008, Putin respected the constitution by not seeking a third consecutive presidential term. Instead, he became prime minister while Medvedev took the presidency. Carrère renders the arrangement as a two-seat driving-school car: Medvedev occupies the learner’s seat and drives, while Putin sits beside him as the teacher, ready to guide him if necessary. The image presents the transfer as a formal change in office accompanied by the continuing presence of an experienced power-holder.

The constitutional rule described in the book prohibited three consecutive terms, not a return to the presidency after an intervening term. That distinction left two possibilities open. Putin might take the wheel again in 2012, or Medvedev, having acquired a taste for power, might confront and even overcome his mentor. The election therefore carried the question of whether the arrangement was temporary delegation or the beginning of an independent presidency.

The result

Writing retrospectively as the translation went to press, Carrère states that the 2012 elections answered the first question yes and the second no. Putin returned to the presidency; Medvedev did not break with him. The outcome made the 2008 arrangement look less like a transfer of political control than an interval before Putin resumed the office.

Carrère adds that Russia appeared resigned to eight more years under Putin. The election’s significance in this account lies not only in who won, but in the closure of the uncertainty that had surrounded the succession: the possibility of a Medvedev-led challenge gave way to the continuation of Putin’s rule.

Opposition and political significance

The election’s setting was already adverse to Limonov’s opposition politics. The Other Russia coalition, formed under the leadership of Garri Kasparov, Mikhail Kasyanov, and Limonov, had ceased to exist after what Carrère calls its failure in the presidential elections. Kasparov, harassed, did not even try to run. Limonov responded by creating Strategy 31, organizing demonstrations on Triumfalnaya Square on the thirty-first of months that had thirty-one days; the gatherings generally drew about a hundred demonstrators against roughly five times as many police officers, and arrests were routine.

Carrère places the confirmed return of Putin against Limonov’s increasingly incongruous position as a virtuous opposition figure, defending values such as democracy and human rights that he did not believe in. The election did not resolve that contradiction. Instead, it fixed the political circumstances in which Limonov had to inhabit it: Putin remained in power, while Limonov’s public role was that of an opponent of the order he had hoped to displace.