Medvedev’s Moscow Spring

Medvedev is trying a different approach: invite the activists to the Kremlin. Two weeks ago he met with representatives from 36 of Russia's leading nongovernmental organizations—groups that Putin had practically tried to eradicate with strict registration laws. Medvedev's guests included the head of Memorial, a human-rights group whose offices had been brutally raided last year by police who confiscated the group's files on Russian ultranationalists. The president said he regretted that Putin-era laws had been taken as meaning "all NGOs are enemies of the state." On the contrary, Medvedev said, their work is "essential for the health of our society." He asked them for reports on government corruption and legal reform, and Kabanov's National Anti-Corruption Committee submitted a whole list of recent cases in which government-connected businessmen took over companies that had been bankrupted by allegedly false tax claims.

The new tolerance goes far beyond the rights groups. State-controlled television has also undergone a marked liberalization. There's been a revival of televised political satire, and in February, Channel One gave serious airtime to Aleksandr Shokhin, head of the influential Russian Businessmen's Union, as he denounced the new charges against Khodorkovsky as a complete sham. Russia's progressives remain cautious. "It is too early to talk about freedom of speech yet," says former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov. "But there are positive signs, maybe of a political spring." He's currently running for mayor of Sochi, the south Russian city that will hold the 2014 Winter Olympics. Two of the leading opposition candidates were bounced from the ballot on technicalities, and others who remain in the race, like Nemtsov, complain of too little TV coverage for their campaigns. But at least it's a genuine political contest, in contrast to most Russian elections in recent years.

Despite the apparent differences between the presidencies of Putin and his handpicked successor, there are few signs of any real disagreement between the two men, personally or politically. "Medvedev came from Putin's state apparatus—he is a reformer, not a revolutionary," says Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow think tank. "Like Russian historical reformers, he is part of the old machine." Some people say the very idea of Medvedev challenging Putin is no more than wishful thinking. "All we see is just a change of style," says Alexei Venediktov, the director of Echo Moskvy, Russia's leading liberal radio station. "The president does not make a single decision without consulting with the prime minister first."

Putin loyalists say much the same. "Russia's state institutions, created by Putin, are stable and powerful," says Mikhail Leontyev, anchor of the prominent political talk show "Odnako." "There are not two branches of power, only one." He points out that Medvedev has replaced only about one sixth of Putin's appointees and holdovers with his own people.

Nevertheless, Medvedev's approach could transform Russia—if it succeeds. That's a big if. The president has decreed that all senior bureaucrats must publicly disclose their incomes and business interests and those of their immediate families. But his war on corruption in high places is by definition an attack on some of the very men he has relied on as his chief power base. "Russia's bureaucrats just laugh at Medvedev's income-declaration law," says Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB general on the Duma's Security Committee. "This is not a real struggle, but an imitation of struggle. There is no one to check these Potemkin declarations." With Russia's federal budget slashed by a third and inflation and unemployment rising, Russians want action, not just noble words.

One major test will be the Khodorkovsky trial's outcome. "Authorities, observe your own laws," the oligarch says. The slogan dates back to Soviet-era dissidents, and Medvedev has made it his main theme. Russians will be watching how the court handles the Putin adversary's case in comparison with other ongoing trials involving defendants who are better connected.