Paul Goble
Staunton,
January 5 – Valery Solovey, a professor at MGIMO and a well-connected commentator
on Russian politics, says that the Kremlin has already prepared several innovations
in the Russian political system to resolve and will launch a major campaign in
the coming year to prepare the population for them.
“As
far as I know,” he says, the effort to introduce these reforms will come to a
head in 2020, but “in 2019, most likely, it will be limited to the preparation
of society. Judging from what I hear, the most likely innovation will be the
establishment of a state council” whose head will take on the powers of the
current president (mk.ru/politics/2019/01/04/politolog-valeriy-solovey-nazval-novuyu-konfiguraciyu-vlasti-v-rossii.html).
That of course would allow Putin to
continue in power without a violation of the constitution.
Other changes are under
consideration as well, Solovey says, including “the establishment of a state
ideology and the reduction in the number of subjects of the federation,” the
latter to be achieved by the amalgamation of some existing regions. But the authorities
will not undertake all these reforms at once, he says. That would entail “too
large a risk.”
Also likely, Solovey says, is the
doing away with all gubernatorial elections, “although this is not necessarily
going to be connected with a change in the constitution. Instead, it could simply occur by means of an
extension of the changes Putin has introduced over the past decade or
more.
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