RIGA – Say hello to Mr. Bear.
Dmitry Medvedev, whose last name is a derivative of the Russian word for a ‘bear,’ is an appropriate last name for a leader of the country, whose image abroad is associated with the clumsy and dangerous animal.
He will lead the country that continues its search for the Russian national identity continues. The pompous ceremony of the inauguration of the new president of Russia this morning in Kremlin mixes the remnants of the Soviet system and the Czarist symbols. And yet, this year it was somewhat different.
Setting all suspicions, reservations, concerns over the question of who really is in power of Russia right now, this is, perhaps, the first time in history when – at least in principle – the power was peacefully passed from the former president to his successor. Whether it is a de facto transfer of power remains to be seen. In the Czarist Russia, it was more or less hereditary. In the Soviet Union, backstabbing was done more or less behind closed doors and required a thorough analysis of the position of the Polutburo members on the Lenin mausoleum.
The Medvedev inauguration a big step for the country where the democracy in its Western sense may never find a listening ear.
The noon ceremony embodied the mix of the Russia’s Soviet and Czarist past. Under the Russian tricolor, a familiar tune was played. It was the old Soviet/new Russian anthem, restored by President Putin months after he came into office 8 years ago. After the oath of office by Medvedev, a closing chorus from Mikhail Glinka’s Russian patriotic opera “A Life for the Czar” blasts through speakers as two men walk outside of the Kremlin hall.
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Choir “Glory” from “A Life For the Czar” performed by the Orchestre Lamoureux, directed by Igor Markevitch, 1957.
The lyrics and the context are telling.
“Glory, glory to czar, the ruler…”
The opera tells how a heroic peasant in 1612 purposely led enemy Polish troops on a wrong path and that way, he saved the life of the young Russian Czar Mikhail, founder of the Romanov dynasty. The Polish soldiers, part of an invading army, naturally get upset and kill the peasant. In the opera’s epilogue, people gather at the Red Square in Moscow to celebrate their victory over the Polish invaders.
The opera premiered in 1836 to the immediate success. Years following Russia’s victory in the War of 1812 against the Napoleonic army, Russia had undergone through its own spiritual awakening. Nobles in the Russian army who often learned to speak French before they’d speak their ‘native’ Russian were amazed at the patriotism of the Russian peasant for his will to fight for the czar against the invading French army.
Since that war, Russian patriotism turned from looking at the West for guidance inward in search for Russia’s own national identity, the same way it had happened under Medvedev’s predecessor. Looking at Russia for the national identity replaced mimicking Western customs and traditions after 1812. Just like Putin’s “managed democracy” replaced Yelstin’s clumsily-implemented democratic reforms.
It’s also notable that it was Putin who restored the forgotten old Russian holiday – November 4, or the Unity Day. Before it was abolished in 1917, it was called Day of Moscow’s Liberation from Polish Invaders.
Whether Medvedev develops his own policies and ambitions largely depends on his own strength and independence. At some point, it ought to be tiring living in the shadow of your predecessor.