Sixty five years normally would not be considered a significant anniversary, but Victory Day is special for all Russians, so every official fanfare was blown last weekend and military parades were held from Sakhalin to Sevastopol. The holiday has always had a sad undertone because many millions of lives were lost in the Great Patriotic War, but for the authorities it is the unifying impulse that matters most, and the public relations campaign trumpeted the victory theme as the major triumph of the Russian state (www.gazeta.ru, May 7). Five years ago the then President, Vladimir Putin, turned the celebration into a demonstration of his international profile bringing to Moscow some 50 heads of state, including US President, George W. Bush; this time President, Dmitry Medvedev, invited only his key peer-friends and the main guest of honor was China’s President, Hu Jintao (www.lenta.ru, May 5).
Despite Medvedev’s sincere commitment, the sustainability of this trend remains problematic. Economic recession dictates a moderate and pragmatic course in international affairs but the crisis of the petro-authoritarian system of power determines further spasms and zigzags in political behavior. Putin is far more organic to this system than Medvedev, but he also remains a personification of its inadequacy to the task of steering Russia across the sea of global troubles. Powerful bureaucratic forces, as well as personal preferences, are at work aimed at returning Putin to his “natural” place in the Kremlin, but that would inevitably signify a major setback in Russia’s unfinished transition from Stalinism.
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