Medvedev’s Moscow Spring

In the year since he was sworn in as Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev has displayed great prowess at smiling, nodding and sounding liberal—but that's been it. Despite his public praise of freedom as "an absolute value" and his denunciation of Russia's culture of "legal nihilism," there has been little sign until now of any actual departure from the hardline policies of his mentor and predecessor, Vladimir Putin. Dissidents have continued to be harassed, government-connected businessmen continue to prosper at the expense of outsiders and Putin's fiercest adversaries—particularly the jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his associates—face ongoing legal troubles. Real power has remained solidly in the grasp of Prime Minister Putin and his inner circle, while the president has appeared to be little more than their fresh-faced, sweet-talking puppet.

But lately some of Medvedev's detractors are starting to think they may have underestimated him. The president has begun publicly overturning some of Putin's key policies, rolling back repressive legislation and paying attention to the government's critics rather than trying to silence them. "We all want to believe that our ruler is generous, fair and kind," says journalist and human-rights activist Svetlana Sorokina. "Now we're seeing the first signs that he is."

Medvedev's liberalized approach has had little visible effect on the country's hard-nosed foreign policy. So far, Putin seems firmly in charge there. But inside Russia, many activists say they're floored by the recent thaw, after a decade of being frozen out. "We could never dream of being included in a presidential council," says Kirill Kabanov, head of the privately run National Anti-Corruption Committee. "President Medvedev not only listens to us, but he makes decisions based on the reports we prepare for him."

Others aren't so sure. Opinions were particularly divided last week, when a Moscow court unexpectedly ordered the early release of Svetlana Bakhmina, a mother of three and former lawyer for Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company, after five years in prison on charges of tax evasion. Medvedev has always insisted that the courts are kept entirely free from political interference, but no one takes that assertion seriously. "Nothing in our country happens without confirmation from above, especially on something as political as the Yukos case," says Sorokina. Some saw last week's ruling as evidence that Medvedev was finally making good on his promises of reform. Bakhmina's defenders have always argued that she's only a victim of the campaign against Khodorkovsky. But others, pointing out that the state's attorneys endorsed her release, suggest that she may have agreed to testify against her old boss, whose trial on new charges is currently in progress.

Nevertheless, there's a change in the air. The first sign of it came early this year, when the president blocked a draconian treason law, drafted under Putin, that would have criminalized many forms of dissent. Medvedev's decision followed the issuance of a report slamming the bill as a license for political repression. Elena Lukyanova, one of the legal experts who authored the report, says the legislation was meant to benefit the siloviki—the hardline nationalist faction of Putin's inner circle. Many of them are former members of the secret police, like Putin. "They needed a legal method to get rid of independent-thinking people," says Lukanova, who happens to belong to Khodorkovsky's defense team. (The oligarch's supporters contend that his prosecution for alleged tax evasion was politically motivated, so it's only logical that his name keeps popping up in any discussion of reforms.)