ALABINO, Russia: Dmitri Medvedev, the man chosen to be the next Russian president, sat surrounded by soldiers. It was Feb. 23, Defenders of the Motherland Day, and Medvedev had traveled to the parade grounds of the Tamanskaya Motorized Rifle Division.
The division has been a perennial character in Russian political life. One of its tanks opened fire on the Parliament building in Moscow in 1993, preserving Boris Yeltsin's presidency. Eight years ago, as a new president, Vladimir Putin, was introducing himself to the world, its platoons fought for the capital of Chechnya, helping forge Putin's persona as a leader of icy resolve.
Now Medvedev, the presidential successor Putin has personally selected, is creating his own public identity. And here, in a mix of Soviet and Russian symbols, the man rising to Kremlin power avoided the stern themes that have often accompanied Putin's appearances.
He wanted to talk about living conditions - for soldiers and citizens alike. "Let's talk about the problems that exist," he said to the soldiers beside him. "Let's have a normal conversation. Please."
The monthlong presidential campaign in Russia has become a season of unstated contrasts. The outcome on March 2, when voters will cast ballots, is already known. Barring something extraordinary and unforeseen, Medvedev, a young and unprepossessing bureaucrat who has never held an elected office, will win by a landslide and become the Kremlin's new leader. He has said he will appoint Putin as his prime minister.
But Medvedev, 42, is a protégé for a former spy who lacks his sponsor's imposing KGB resumé. As he has become the country's second most-watched man, he has implicitly presented himself as both a Putin loyalist and president-in-waiting who will wield power in a manner more gentle than what the world has seen under Putin's brand of rule.Medvedev, in commentary outside of official Russian circles, has been cast as a puppet - a president who will labor according to Putin's command. But he has made unanticipated moves.
In a speech Feb. 15, he publicly embraced personal freedom, saying that liberty is necessary for the state to have legitimacy among its citizens. He has laid out domestic policy goals that seem to speak to Russia's expanding consumer class.
Medvedev has also struck a campy pose - hamming it up with Deep Purple, the British band whose music was popular in Soviet times - that suggested a dormitory-life playfulness decidedly un-Putinesque.
His words and behavior have raised unexpected but pervasive questions: Does Medvedev mean what he seems to say? Can he relax the Kremlin's grip on Russian political life that has been a central characteristic of Putin's rule? And if he does, will he clash with Putin, his principal source of power?
Analysts are split. Sergei Markov, a political scientist who is close to the Kremlin and a member of Parliament, said Medvedev, a trained lawyer with roots in St. Petersburg, has an affinity for the West. He expects that Medvedev will push for more political freedom - to a point.
"Medvedev will try to encourage political competition within the system without destabilizing the system," Markov said. "How he does this, we will see. But I think stability will be the priority."
He also said that the model Putin has chosen for his transition from Russia's highest office, and Medvedev's flashes of liberal inclinations, could lead to unintended divides in Russia's circles of power. That, he said, is a reason Medvedev will only push so far.
"The Russian government has weak institutions," Markov said. "A split between two personalities could destabilize the political situation, and because politics plays a main role in the Russian economy, if there is a split, it could destabilize the economy, too. So that is a major risk."
Michael McFaul, director of the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University, agreed that Medvedev has a more Western orientation than many Kremlin insiders. But he suggested that his official embrace of freedom was more packaging than substance. "That's public relations," he said. "That's not strategic shift."
As Russians and analysts contemplate the future, the contrasts between president and president-to-be, and between the Kremlin's latest words and the Kremlin's recent history, are visible in many ways, no less than in the very context of the discussion.
The election season here is not an election season as a Westerner would understand it. It is a certification.
Medvedev, who is a first deputy prime minister and chairman of the board at Gazprom, the powerful Russian gas monopoly, has toured the country without the distractions of competition, in part because the government blocked the sole true opposition candidate from the ballot.
Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister and critic of the Kremlin, was barred in January by the Central Electoral Commission on the ground that more than 13 percent of the signatures he had collected in support of his candidacy were invalid.
There are three other candidates: Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader who has been marginalized in part by Putin's popularity and his mastery of Soviet nostalgia; Andrei Bogdanov, the almost unknown head of an even less powerful Democratic Party, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist who has served as an unofficial jester in the Kremlin's court.
The remnants of the organized opposition have suggested that these candidates are a troika encouraged to run by the Kremlin to create the appearance of a race. Polls predict that they might capture as little as a combined 20 percent of the vote. With no viable candidate to compete against, the Kremlin has used the run-up to the formalities of inauguration to introduce a new leader.
Medvedev, who emanates intelligence and calm but little intensity, is one step short of supreme; only Putin remains above him. State-controlled television covers him extensively and warmly. There is little public contest over competing ideas about Russia's course, and few questions about whether Medvedev is qualified to be the next leader of a country with 140 million people, a nuclear arsenal and the world's largest hydrocarbon reserves.
Instead, Medvedev has used the campaign as an open microphone, outlining an agenda to make Russia a vibrant and economically diversified state. While the country has rebounded from the financial crisis of the 1990s, it has enduring problems with infrastructure, public health, corruption and an economy that relies on the extraction of natural resources.
Medvedev has promised to improve schools, build housing, encourage business and change the tax codes in ways to encourage household and social stability, including offering tax breaks for retirement savings, charitable donations and education and medical costs.
He has said he will change the healthcare system to allow more choice, and he has challenged the persistent sense that Russia's government, whose bureaucracy has grown in size under Putin and remained inefficient and corrupt, is inevitably elephantine and beyond the ability of citizen's to change.
Much of his agenda overlaps domestic plans that Putin himself has outlined, including fighting corruption and reversing Russia's poor state of public health.
Still, the differences between the two men's styles can be stark. When Medvedev arrived to meet the soldiers here, he had to walk past a huge banner that bore Putin's face beside scenes of weapons and combat.
"The work of a real man - to defend homeland, family and loved ones," the banner read. Putin, an exercise buff and martial-arts expert, can emanate a cat-like fitness and comfort with conflict. Medvedev is trim but has no similar aura. He walked briskly by the poster, looking at the ground.
Unlike Putin, Medvedev, in most of his appearances, has also avoided dwelling on foreign policy themes or discussions about Russia's tensions with the West.
Western capitals are hoping for a shift from Putin's assertiveness. But aside from a statement of support for Serbia and a refusal to recognize Kosovo, Medvedev has not offered a detailed sense of how he views Russia's role in the world.
Few analysts expect significant change.
"Personalities change, but that doesn't change a nation's interests," said Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institution for Globalization Studies and Social Movements in Moscow.
McFaul, of Stanford, said he also expects that when Medvedev moves to the Kremlin, the United States and Russia will still face diplomatic difficulties, no matter what Medvedev's inclinations might be.
"He's more pro-Western, and more Western in his attitudes, than any of the other candidates out there," he added. "Having said that, he is weak."
One senior Western diplomat said that those following Russia closely have come up with one possible test of whether Medvedev will marshal power. This summer, the Kremlin will send a delegation to the Group of Eight meeting in Japan. Already, informal bets are being placed, he said: will Putin attend, or Medvedev, or both?
