Last week was marked by two events of special importance. The first one was Vladimir Putin’s phone-in session, which he held for the first time not as president. On the whole, the answers to questions were not sensational and were aimed at reassuring the population amid the financial crisis and the upcoming job cuts. There is an important political component in such statements, which is becoming clearer and clearer. This is an idea that preparations for the crisis had started long before it occurred and many measures that had been criticized for being anti-liberal (e.g. strengthening of the state’s role in economy) were the elements of those preparations.
The second event was the decease of the first and the only Patriarch of post-Soviet Russia, Alexy II. During almost 20 years of his active work he managed to reestablish the Church’s positions lost during the Soviet time. The main project of his recent work, which he managed to launch, has been restoration of unity of the Church. At the same time the future of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as well as continuation of implementation of this project will depend to a great extent on the next patriarch. It seems there is no consensus regarding the candidature. Thus, in the next six months that the ROC has to elect a new patriarch, there will be bitter struggle inside it.
The 7th national congress of judges took place last week – an important event held once in four years as a rule. The president traditionally attended it and indicated directions of modernizing the court system. However, the congress is interesting in the context of intensified activities of the heads of the supreme and supreme arbitration courts, who have traditionally struggled for leadership in the judicial branch of power. About two years ago, Supreme Court chair Vyacheslav Lebedev was in a more privileged position; however, in his speech Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that he would support ambitions of his protégé, supreme arbitration court head Anton Ivanov. In particular, the president put forward an idea to substantially broaden competence of arbitration courts, which will considerably increase their influence on the country’s economic and even political life.