What’s happening in Moscow? The elections are drawing near: for the legislature this autumn, for the presidency in spring 2012. The two deadlines are forcing everyone from the Kremlin down to the very last voter to decide whether to change directions or continue with a policy of compromise.

Vladimir Putin (left) with Dmitry Medvedev.

While President Vladimir Putin’s eight years of almost absolute power (2000-2008) saw a growth in internal stability, economic improvement and a resurgence of disinterest in politics, the four years with Putin as Prime Minister and Dmitry Medvedev as President (2008-2012) have been characterized by stagnation which, paradoxically, has revived collective participation in the country’s affairs. This, along with the global economic crisis that also struck Russia, has led to a series of political protests and initiatives that took both the legislature (Putin) and the presidency (Medvedev) by surprise.

Even the compromise between Putin and Medvedev has become difficult to sustain. The former is committed to affirming the state’s role in running the economy, the latter to insisting on the need for a free market. However, “good cop” Medvedev has actually fallen into step with “bad cop” Putin, with the aforementioned consequences. The result: all the problems of 2008 are still on the table, while foreign entrepreneurs are persistently diffident of an economy controlled by mobsters and regulated mainly by the nature of their relations with the central power.

Specifically citing the perpetual scarcity of foreign investments, President Medvedev passed a law prohibiting ministers and deputy prime ministers from being on the boards of the major state-owned companies. This means many figures will need to step down, such as Igor Sechin (Deputy Prime Minister and President of Rosneft, an oil company), Aleksei Kudrin (Minister of Finance and President of VTB Bank), Sergei Shmatko (Minister of Energy and board member of Gazprom and Transneft), Igor Levitin (Transport Minister and President of Aeroflot) and various others.

Theoretically, this move could tear apart the very same vertikal vlasti (chain of command) that Putin established to ensure the central power’s control over the country. It’s too early to tell whether Medvedev is trying to advance his own more open, more liberal party line. But elections are right around the corner, so we’ll find out soon enough.