With the inauguration ceremony done the first phase of the “Successor” operation is over. The analysts and journalists continue discussing the future relations between the acting prime minister and the chosen by him president. The rumors of coming changes have got weaker and the reasoning about liberal frame of Dmitry Medvedev’s views begins to look like a yesterday’s festive salad.  

What did Putin start with when he agreed to take on the post of prime minister in December? He made a statement that no redistribution of power would be done.

“If I become the prime minister, I’ll be only engaged in exercising powers invested on the head of government, that’s the current economic and social issues: roads, housing, and education”. And “the key prerogatives of political, administrative and personnel nature, in the field of defense and international sphere will of course remain within the president’s competence”. 

In March, after presidential elections, Putin repeated “Prime minister’s powers are enough for effective working in the sphere of responsibility allotted by the Constitution”. And Medvedev assured that “Both president and prime minister have their own powers defined by the Constitution and legislation, and no one is going to change it”. But what is the prime minister’s post like in Russia with its current Constitution? The definition is simple: this is mostly a “technical” post. The super presidential republic was built in Russia with a concrete purpose of making the president independent and prevailing over other branches of power. President is out of the jurisdiction, uncontrollable, practically indismissable, and his decisions are not possible to be canceled.   

As for prime minister – that’s a bit different. According to the Constitution, he is fully dependent on president. He can be dismissed at any moment without any explanations given and even the majority, embodied in the Duma by the headed by him party, would not be able to prevent that. Also president can dismiss the whole government or single ministers without any explanations again. Finally, any decision by the government can be canceled by president.

Even being supported by the Constitutional majority in the parliament, the president is not able to do anything about that, as the parliament itself is powerless in accordance with the Constitution. 

Of course, with the constitutional majority in the Duma available, president may be restricted with some newly passed bills. However, to overcome the presidential veto for those bills it is necessary to have constitutional majority not only in the State Duma, but also in the Federation Council. And the latter institution is controlled by president, as half of its members are governors’ representatives who are appointed by the head of state. For same reason, it is practically impossible to start impeachment which takes constitutional majority of the both Chambers again. Besides, for impeachment procedure to be started, the president must be accused of high treason or some other grave crime, which is not so simple to do.      

Thus, prime minister is just an official who cannot influence either foreign or home policy. This is the official who can be summoned to the Kremlin and advised about his “voluntary” resignation. This is the official who cannot appoint the judges of the Supreme Court, the heads and auditors of the Chamber of Accounts, Prosecutor General, and the chair of Central Bank, governors, ambassadors, commanding staff of the Army Forces or members of the Central Elective Commission. Foreign ministry, interior ministry, ministry of justice, FSB, intelligence service, Army or Naval is not submitted to this official.     

One may assume, of course, that Putin is ready to play the second role in the system created by himself, but that is hard to believe. It is more likely that he will want to play the first role as before. That would be possible in two cases: either Medvedev gives up voluntarily part of his powers, or the powers are to be changed.

The first option is possible theoretically under condition of really strong friendship between “the freshly baked and the constantly warmed up” (expression by a St Petersburg writer Samuel Lurye). Anyway, no political construction is capable of stable working when it rests only on personal relations between the key figures. For stable working it must be built in the way allowing it not to depend on any personal relations.  

And we are dealing with just the opposite situation now: personal relations of Putin-Medvedev are the only guarantee of the “double-headed vertical”, along with the hope that the new president will always remember that he owes just anything to his predecessor. That’s impossible: any president would refuse being the second de facto knowing that he is the first de jure. Putin, who is used not to trust to anyone due to his first occupation of intelligence officer, realizes that perfectly. This is why the second option of redistribution of powers seems to be much more probable.    

Actually, this scenario is already going on. How else can we interpret the passing of powers of assessment of the governors’ activities to the government? And what about rumors of possible change of the law on government which is about resubmitting the law enforcers to the prime minister? However, it is unlikely that the process of passing the powers will be done with absolute lack of resistance by Medvedev, considering he will be surrounded by people striving for power, money, access to resources and opportunities of getting squared with their enemies. And those people will know for sure that it’s their boss, and not the “national leader”, who is in possession of the autocratic power. 

The conflict is inevitable. It’s only unclear when it will start and who is going to win. But the result is clear: autocracy cannot be shared between two.