Journal articles on the topic 'Russia (Federation). President (1999-2008 : Putin)'

Legal-political changes in the Russian Federation during the first presidency of Vladimir Putin, covering the years 2000-2008, are the subject of the article. The study first focuses on the strengthening of executive power, both at the central and regional levels, consolidating the power camp and shaping the political system of the state. In the period under analysis, the powers of the President of the Russian Federation were increased, the Federation Council was weakened, control over the regions was strengthened, and a number of rights and freedoms of citizens were limited. In his actions, Putin relied on the power ministries and secured the loyalty of the State Duma and the oligarchs. The United Russia party became his political base. Putin’s political opponents and competitors were ruthlessly eliminated from political life. An analysis of the features of the political system of the Russian Federation indicates that it had become an authoritarian state.

AbstractIn the present article, it is assumed that V.V. Putin will not have the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation changed in order to help him arrange for a prolonged stay as President of Russia after his second term expires in 2008. It is also assumed that there will be no constitutional changes as to the power and the position of the prime-minister which would allow for an immediate 'return' of V.V. Putin in another capacity, namely as prime-minister, with much the same powers as he presently holds as President. The author expects that Putin will be true to his word in that he will maintain the 1993 Constitution (with the exception of minor change), that he will show to be—to use the Russian constitutional terminology—the garant of this Constitution.Nevertheless, within the framework of the 1993 Constitution, substantial changes have been made in the ordering of the Russian state, by federal law, by other means. The subordination of the subjects of the Russian Federation to the federal center, the 'emancipation' of state-politics from party politics, the 'emancipation' of democracy itself from party-politics, the penetration of societal organizations by state institutions (upravliaemaia demokratiia or suverennaia demokratiia), and the accompanying (state-) ideological changes, which have come about especially during Putin's second term, all add up to what is expected to be a lasting legacy. Putin has not changed the 1993 Constitution; he has given it its definite reading (interpretation) as it were.

In contrast to his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, Russia's President Vladimir Putin continues to successfully neutralize legislative opposition and push his reform agenda through the State Duma. His success is due in large part to the transformation of the party system during the 1999 electoral cycle. In the face of a less polarized and fragmented party system, the Kremlin-backed party of power, Unity, became the foundation for a stable majority coalition in parliament and a weapon in the political battle to eliminate threatening opponents such as Yuri Luzhkov's Fatherland-All Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

The Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic declared itself sovereign in 1990 but did not replace the 1978 constitution until 1994. Already in 1996, under the new President Lukashenko, a constitutional reform followed which provided for a strong concentration of power in the hands of the president and largely abolished the separation of powers. In 1999, the foundations were laid for a Union State consisting of the Russian Federation and Belarus. However, the Union State remained strongly underdeveloped for a long time. Russia did not want to transfer sovereign rights and Belarus defended its national sovereignty. It was not until 2019 that Russia ultimately demanded deeper integration of the two states, also to help Vladimir Putin as President of the Union State to extend his term in office. Belarus knew how to resist this approach. After the rigged presidential elections in Belarus in 2020 and the suppression of civil protests, Belarus became completely dependent on political decisions in Moscow. The concept of the Union State revived in the form of 28 union programmes with profound harmonisations in the economic sphere. Deepened military cooperation with Russia and Belarus' participation in the war in Ukraine brought the country further and further under Moscow's power. Belarus lost national sovereignty in no small measure.

The article is devoted to both the «eternal» and the actual problem of poverty which actually reflects the development of any state. The relevance and the urgency of this matter are predetermined by the decree of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin dated May 7, 2018 «On the National Goals and Strategic Objectives of the Russian Federation for the Period until 2024» [Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, from May 7, 2018 No. 204 «On the National Goals and Strategic Objectives Development of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2024», 2018, 1]. According to the document, the key tasks for the coming years are reducing poverty by half, ensuring the growth of the welfare of citizens which should be reflected in the national project developed by the Government of the Russian Federation.Implementation of these tasks is rather complicated by the fact that in the current Russian practice only a monetary approach to determining the level of poverty is used, which does not reflect the characteristics, causes, factors of poverty of a particular group of the population; the adopted methodology for calculating poverty does not fully take into account the real situation of citizens. Solving the problem is limited only to raising incomes to the subsistence minimum as well as to the payment of various types of social benefits.In this regard, it is important to identify and apply social indicators that are based on a comprehensive account of the accumulated wealth of science approaches to poverty assessment.Object. Population unable to meet the minimum basic needs.Subject. Features of poverty in modern Russia.Aim. Identification of social indicators to manage inequalities.The Main Theoretical Provisions of the Article. Poverty exists in any society, characterized by inconsistency, diversity. In scientific practice, there are three main theoretical and methodological approaches to measuring poverty: absolute, relative and subjective. Due to several concepts being known, there are different estimates of poverty. In this regard, a number of social indicators to characterize the individual sides of the level of welfare of the population have been determined.

The focus of this paper is based on the analysis of bilateral relations between Federal Republic Germany and the Russian Federation in the period from 2000 to 2017. Until November 2005, the German Government was led by Social Democratic party leader Gerhard Schroeder. After the triumph, the Christian Democrats at extraordinary parliamentary elections that were held in September the same year the rudder of the government is in hands of Angela Merkel until the present. Vladimir Putin largely determines main directions of Russian politics and represents a dominant political figure since the beginning of his first mandate as the Russian Federation President. These three political leaders have mostly dictated bilateral relations dynamics between FR Germany, as an economic leader in Europe, and the Russian Federation as the biggest country in the world. Germany settles its needs for energy and vital resources mostly from Russia, while the great importance is paid to the import of the German technologies and capital by the Russian side in order to diversify its economy and ceased to be an economy based on the export of the national resources. Unlike most of the growing economies, Germany's relations with the Russian Federation overcomes the capacity of the economy and relates to political and security aspects. The peak of the German-Russian relations had been achieved in 2008 by the project Partnership in modernization. The European Union attempted in 2010 to establish a similar partnership with Russia following the same model. The Ukrainian conflict eruption in 2014 and introduction of sanction to Russian Federation by EU, as well as counter-measures undertaken in opposite direction, has frozen, at least until the moment of the Ukrainian conflict settlement, the possibility for further development of German-Russian relations and partnership agenda between EU and RF.

The year 2024 has been declared by the head of state, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, the Year of the Family. As stated in the presidential decree, the decision was made in order to popularize state policy in the field of family protection and traditional values. It should be noted that in the XXI century in Russia, the Year of the Family was announced twice — in 2008 and in 2024. This indicates the special attention paid by the country’s leadership, political and State institutions and civil society institutions to this topic. In the Russian Federation, many government programs aimed at strengthening the institution of the family have been developed, created and implemented recently. And there are many reasons for this, including those that, unfortunately, are far from optimistic. Russia as a state and Russian society is faced with a number of social problems that threaten many of the established foundations, values, and the future of the country. As never before in the modern history of Russia, issues of social security are coming to the fore. Real threats loomed over the most important social institution — the family. In our state, the family is protected at the highest constitutional level. Article 38 of the basic law of our country establishes a direct norm — the protection of the family, motherhood and childhood by the State. At the government level, a whole system of indicators has been developed that are subject to constant monitoring in order to ensure the relevance of state policy in the social sphere and its continuous improvement. The article presents an analysis of the main problems of state family policy in Russia through the prism of the main socio-economic indicators. Official statistics data were used.

The article examines the key aspects of military-technical cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Syrian Arab Republic in the first two terms of Vladimir Putin's tenure as President of Russia. Relations between Moscow and Damascus in the sphere of arms and special equipment supplies are considered in the general context of the updated foreign policy of the Russian Federation, initiated by Vladimir Putin, and which implied, among other things, the return of Russia's position as an active geopolitical player in the Middle East. Having long-standing political and economic ties with Moscow, Syria was rightly considered by the Russian leadership as the most suitable ally in solving the task mentioned above. Analyzing the history of supplies to Syria of the main articles of Russian military products, the author comes to the conclusion that during the period under review, Moscow managed to lay a new solid foundation for bilateral relations, even though it had to be done to a certain extent with an eye to the position of other regional players and, above all, the countries of the collective West. When building its political course towards the SAR in the period under review, the Kremlin adhered primarily to the principle of restraint and pragmatism, taking into account the realities of international relations in the Middle East region and setting as its main goal the counteraction of the hegemonic claims of the United States, which sought to turn this already conflictogenic point of the planet into a zone of "controlled chaos".

The article discusses the constitutional problems of consolidation, implementation and improvement of the mechanism of interaction between the parliament and higher courts in parliamentary procedures. The research methods are analysis, synthesis, normative (formal-logical), and historical-legal. The key aim of the study is to identify a mechanism for ensuring the control function of the parliament to control the implementation in the Russian Federation of laws adopted by the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. The author came to the following conclusions. In recent years, the higher courts of the Russian Federation have been more actively involved in the work on improving legislation in various ways. At the same time, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on January 15, 2020, President of Russia Vladimir Putin outlined proposals to strengthen the role of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the legislative process. Since 2008, a trend has been outlined in Russia to strengthen the control powers of the parliament. One of the most important control powers of the Russian Federal Assembly, fixed in the Federal Law “On Parliamentary Control”, is, in the author’s opinion, the study of the application of laws (legal monitoring), the development of proposals for their improvement. However, along with the annual reports of the General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation at the Federation Council regarding effectiveness of legislation, it is seen necessary to oblige the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to present reports on judicial practice in the State Duma. The Supreme Court, realizing the constitutional function of summarizing the judicial practice of the courts of the Russian Federation and developing a uniform interpretation of the norms of the law, often quite independently eliminates legal gaps, sometimes developing new legal rules, which is not fully consistent with the doctrine of separation of powers in continental law systems. Such new rules are developed within the framework of not only procedural law, but also substantive (civil and criminal) law. In fairness, it is worth noting that this is not a modern trend, it is the Russian practice that has developed over centuries: the Senate of the Russian Empire, being the highest court, developed new legal rules long before the legislator. All this, of course, does not fully correspond to the role of the court in the continental legal system. However, the same Senate of the Russian Empire, in accordance with the decree of Emperor Alexander I, also had the right to inform the emperor of the need to improve legislation. In this regard, taking into account the historical parallel, the author comes to the conclusion that there is an urgent need for Russia to introduce the annual practice of the Supreme Court’s reports to the State Duma as part of the parliamentary legal monitoring of legal gaps and conflicts identified by the Supreme Court when summarizing judicial practice, with its proposals for improving legislation.

The subject of the research is the BRICS countries activities. The purpose of the work is to assess the initiatives for creating the intergovernmental cooperation format BRICS+ as a factor of economic development of member states, as well as to suggest ways of the interaction mechanism perfection in the fields of trade, investments, multilateral cooperation of development banks, creating international financial centers and payment systems and making use of national currencies in mutual settlements. It is concluded that it is necessary to form favorable conditions for cooperation within new regional associations with the leading role of Russia, India and China. The urgency of the research lies in the fact that the assessment of achievements and prospects of the countries in the spheres of finance, trade and investments presented in the research allows to draw a conclusion about a positive character of the initiative to create the intergovernmental cooperation format BRICS+ and about advisability to expand multilateral interactions through trade agreements with mutual settlements in national currencies of partner countries, through simplification of investment mechanisms and their respective financial provision, primarily in financing major infrastructural projects that have an integration effect. The authors argue for the importance to create a decentralized integration model of interaction for parties via cooperating of a bigger number of participants, which will enable developing countries to meet global challenges and to solve developmental problems effectively. The authors also emphasize that the creation of BRICS+ is a significant initiative that will contribute to fulfilling the tasks formulated in the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin Decree “About national goals and strategic objectives of the RF development for the period till 2024” and in his message to the Federal Assembly on 20.02.2019.

The problems of Russian-US relations during the second Vladimir Putin presidency are considered in the article. The author is analyzed the main directions of cooperation and rivalry between Moscow and Washington in 2004–2008. He is paid special attention to Russian and American approaches to combating international terrorism, solving strategic security problems and issues of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In addition, the author is shown a different vision of the new world order by Russia and the United States, American interference in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation and Moscow’s response, geopolitical rivalry between the two powers in the post-Soviet space. It was concluded that during the second Vladimir Putin presidency in Russian-US relations, cooperation between the two powers in important areas of world politics and international security began to give way to confrontation. The main reason for this deterioration was the conceptual divergence between Moscow and Washington regarding virtually the entire agenda of their relations – from the creation of the new world order to the political development of the post-Soviet space and Russia itself.

24.07.2016 a large group of academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) wrote a letter to the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin, in which they gave an unfavorable assessment of the current state of Russian science. The letter listed a number of measures aimed at correcting the current state of science, and noted that "the time of political correctness is over, it is high time to speak out openly calling things by their proper names".Meeting with a group of academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences in December of 2016, the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin stressed the timeliness of setting the above problems and the need to eliminate the noted deficiencies, drawing attention to the fact that only outstanding scientists of international standing with significant scientific achievements should be elected as academicians of the RAS.In connection with the critical assessment of the current state of Russian science in its various fields, expressed in the aforesaid letter of the academicians, it is of some interest to analyze the scientific activities and scientific achievements of some Russian scientists, in particular, in the field of thermal power engineering. For this analysis, articles were used published in the Teploenergetika (Heat Power Engineering) journal as well as a Report prepared under agreement No.14.574.21.0017 with the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (hereinafter — MoE&S) on improving the thermodynamic and technical-economic efficiency of trigeneration plants at distributed and small-scale power generation facilities.As follows from this analysis, the authors of the aforesaid publications mislead the scientific community and the MoE&S concerning the alleged increase of thermodynamic and technical-economic efficiency of trigeneration plants considered by them. There are no grounds for such conclusions, since the listed materials contain no specific results of experimental and/or calculation studies of thermodynamic and technical-economic efficiency of trigeneration plants. It is therefore very strange that a Committee of the MoE&S signed an Act certifying “proper” implementation of Agreement No. 14.574.21.0017.

Since the mid-1990s, and even more Vladimir Putin’s accession to the presidency, reaffirmation and recognition of Russia’s status as a great power has been erected as an existential political imperative. The restoration of Russia's global influence is one of the parts of this high-powered policy implemented by the authorities. It manifests itself repeatedly through hard power initiatives outside national borders in Georgia, Ukraine or Syria. But the “color revolutions” in the post-Soviet space, primarily the Orange Revolution of 2004, prompt the Russian government to rethink its foreign policy in order to project a better image of Russia abroad. This late awareness is reflected in the adoption of a clean soft power strategy and its main key instruments are created during the second term of Vladimir Putin (2004- 2008). The notion of soft power will be institutionalized in the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation on February 12, 2013. This article is therefore intended as a contribution to the analysis of the issues surrounding the cultural variable in foreign policy. of the Russian Federation. It is therefore more precisely his ambition to decipher the motives underlying the mobilization of resources for the purpose of cultural outreach by Russia. A country with many contrasts and, moreover, in a world cultural field traditionally controlled by strong Western powers, Russia has opted for soft power, with the triple vision of making its way, to feed its current rise and to pose as a “responsible” and “conciliatory” power. For the twelfth largest economic power in the world, it is also a question of reducing the mistrust and criticism that its presence already arouses on the international scene. The choice made on the cultural variable is therefore not insignificant; because, it is a strategy, through which Russia would like to build, if not regain its greatness of yesteryear.

Abstract The Russian Constitution enacted after the violent end of the destructive “dual rule” between the two-tier double-decker-parliament and the first publicly elected Russian president in 1992 and 1993 is often characterized as hyper-presidentialist and even outright authoritarian. This narrative overlooks that a different interpretation of the constitution seemed possible during the first years of post-Soviet parliamentary development in the Russian Federation. While a large majority of State Duma deputies heavily criticized the new constitutional order, mainly because of the obvious disbalance between the powers of the executive and the legislative branches of government, it accepted the document as a binding working basis and immediately engaged in a serious, mostly constructive debate about necessary amendments. During the first two legislative periods between 1994 and 1999, members of all parliamentary groups not only started to refer to the initially unloved constitution as “theirs”. Some of them even perceived themselves as guardians of this basic institutional order because it did offer the weak legislative branch of government certain room for action and protection against arbitrary encroachment by the executive branch. Whereas the brief window of opportunity for consensual constitutional amendments in 1998 and 1999 closed without tangible results when Vladimir Putin came to power, an alternative trajectory of the Russian political regime was for some time conceivable.

Abstract After decades of violent separatist conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the region stabilized and peaceful in 2008. Despite this grand proclamation of peace, Chechnya today operates under an environment of violent repression and the conflict remains un-managed. This article argues that a threshold of sufficiency exists which settlement strategies must pass to achieve peace. While a perceived peace may occur when the armed conflict ends, without sufficient management strategies the identity-based roots of the conflict will manifest in other forms beneath the surface. By examining co-optation, power-sharing, autonomy and reconciliation, this research finds that while Russia’s incomplete conflict management strategy may have ended the violent insurgency within Chechnya, the failure to apply these principles sufficiently has allowed violence to continue. This research hopes to be applicable in informing strategies to resolve conflicts in multi-ethnic states within and beyond the North Caucasus.

Introduction. Social-economic development of the Russian Federation in the XXI century are determined by three types of strategic documents – for the long-term, medium-term, and short-term prospects. From 2000 to 2008 the Government of the Russian Federation has approved three development programs. The purpose of this research is а study of the priorities of reforms implemented by President Putin from 2000 to 2008, based on the materials of three medium-term socio-economic development programs. The researcher used various modern methods of historical and political science research, including: content and comparative analysis, the method of comparative institutional analysis. Results. At the first stage, from 2000 to 2003, the government declared the solution of social problems - levelling the poverty level, raising incomes, solving problems with social benefits, and only at the second and third stages it was planned to implement administrative and economic reforms. In the second program, the priority was shifted towards economic and institutional transformations. In the third document, on the one hand, the focus of the Government’s attention returned to the social agenda and on the other, the country’s leadership did not declare new reforms, only continuing the ones being implemented. Discussion and Conclusion. The relevant decisions on prioritization and implementation of reforms could be motivated by several factors: firstly, successful economic stabilization, and secondly, strengthening the power and economic foundations of the state. Thirdly, the decrease in motivation to reform the economy could be caused by the new rental income (oil and gas).

The theme setting and particular relevance of artificial or man-made famines seems to come up in intervals, when tensions re-arise between ‘Western’ powers and Russia and seems to be useful for the purposes of ‘demonizing’ ‘Putin’—the current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (2000–2008; 2012–)—, ‘the Kremlin’, the Russian government; or simply ‘Russia’ in the eyes of ‘the West’. In recent years, the famine of 1932–1933 has reached new heights as a politicized event to be instrumentalized in a ‘memory war’ on many discursive levels (history, mass media, memorialization, etc.) between key-representatives of the current countries Ukraine and Russia (Hordijk 2018). This should, symptomatically, remind us of the sheer power that media narratives have in shaping public imaginations. The reviewed book: Anne Elizabeth Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. ISBN-13: 978–0–241–00380–0. London: Allen Lane, September 2017. Hardcover; 512 pages; recommended retail price: £25.00.

The subject of the study is the image of Russia's national projects in the media space. The relevance of the article lies in the fact that national projects developed in the mid-2010s, which were initially perceived by Russian citizens with enthusiasm and great interest, began to lose their image appeal after the financial crises and the coronavirus pandemic, causing problems in the implementation of reforms. The purpose of the work is to develop measures for image support of national projects, which assume as effects from their implementation not only an increase in the loyalty of the population to the implementation of large—scale economic projects of the authorities, but also obtaining an economic effect. It was revealed that the leading socio-political media of the country publish from 500 to 1000 materials per year with the keyword "national project", while the most frequent words used in oppositional media are the words — failure, corruption, poverty, violations, deadlock, officials, and in publications loyal to the government — results, indicators, control, methods, problem, solution. It is established that the greatest discursive indicators are observed in such national projects as "Safe and high-quality roads", "Health care", "Demography", "Education", "Housing". It is noteworthy that in the entire media field of the country, the most media-visible characters are the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin (26%) and the heads of Russian regions, while at the level of federal ministries only Prime Minister M.V. Mishustin is mentioned.

The subject of the study is the image of Russia's national projects in the media space. The relevance of the article lies in the fact that national projects developed in the mid-2010s, which were initially perceived by Russian citizens with enthusiasm and great interest, began to lose their image appeal after the financial crises and the coronavirus pandemic, causing problems in the implementation of reforms. The purpose of the work is to develop measures for image support of national projects, which assume as effects from their implementation not only an increase in the loyalty of the population to the implementation of large—scale economic projects of the authorities, but also obtaining an economic effect. It was revealed that the leading socio-political media of the country publish from 500 to 1000 materials per year with the keyword "national project", while the most frequent words used in oppositional media are the words — failure, corruption, poverty, violations, deadlock, officials, and in publications loyal to the government — results, indicators, control, methods, problem, solution. It is established that the greatest discursive indicators are observed in such national projects as "Safe and high-quality roads", "Health care", "Demography", "Education", "Housing". It is noteworthy that in the entire media field of the country, the most media-visible characters are the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin (26%) and the heads of Russian regions, while at the level of federal ministries only Prime Minister M.V. Mishustin is mentioned.

A politician’s political and personal selves have been in the spotlight of academic scholarship for hundreds of years, but only in recent years has a political ‘persona’ obtained new modes of mediation via networked media. New advancements in politics, technology, and media brought challenges to the traditional politics and personal self-representation of major leaders. Vladimir Putin’s divorce announcement in June 2013, posed a new challenge for his political self-mediation. A rather reserved leader (Loshak), he nonetheless broadcast his personal news to the large audience and made it in a very peculiar way, causing the media professionals and public to draw parallels with Soviet-era mediated politics and thereby evoke collective memories. This paper studies how Vladimir Putin’s divorce announcement was constructed and presented and also what response and opinion threads—satirical and humorous, ignorant and informed feedback—it achieved via media professionals and the general Twitter audience. Finally, this study aims to evaluate how Vladimir Putin’s political ‘persona’ was represented and perceived via these mixed channels of communication.According to classic studies of mediated political persona (Braudy; Meyrowitz; Corner), any public activity of a political persona is considered a part of their political performance. The history of political marketing can be traced back to ancient times, but it developed through the works of Renaissance and Medieval thinkers. Of particular prominence is Machiavelli’s The Prince with its famous “It is unnecessary for the prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them” (cited in Corner 68). All those centuries-built developments and patterns of political self-representation have now taken on new forms as a result of the development of media industry and technology. Russian mediated politics has seen various examples of new ways of self-representation exercised by major politicians in the 2010s. For instance, former president Dmitry Medvedev was known as the “president with an iPad” (Pronina), as he was advocating technology and using social networks in order to seem more approachable and appear to be responsive to collecting feedback from the nation. Traditional media constantly highlighted Medvedev’s keen interest in Facebook and Twitter, which resulted in a growing public assumption that this new modern approach to self-representation may signify a new approach to governance (see Asmolov).Goffman’s classic study of the distinction between public and private life helps in linking political persona to celebrity persona. In his view the political presentation of self differs from the one in popular culture because politicians as opposed to entertainers have to conform to a set of ideals, projections, social stereotypes and cultural/national archetypes for their audience of voters (Goffman; Corner). A politician’s public persona has to be constantly reaffirming and proving the values he or she is promoting through their campaigns. Mediations of a political personhood can be projected in three main modes: visual, vocal, and kinetic (Ong; Mayhew; Corner). Visual representation follows the iconic paintings and photography in displaying the position, attitude, and associative contexts related to that. Vocal representation covers both content and format of a political speech, it is not only the articulated message, but also more important the persona speaking. Ong describes this close relation of the political and personal along with the interrelation of the message and the medium as “secondary orality”—voice, tone and volume make the difference. The third mode is kinetic representation and means the political persona in action and interaction. Overlapping of different strategies and structures of political self-representation fortifies the notion of performativity (Corner and Pels) in politics that becomes a core feature of the multidimensional representation of a mediated political self.The advancement of electronic media and interactive platforms has influenced political communication and set the new standard for the convergence of the political and personal life of a politician. On its own, the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair raised the level of public awareness of the politician’s private life. It also allowed for widely distributed, contested, and mediated judgments of a politician’s personal actions. Lawrence and Bennett in their study of Lewinsky case’s academic and public response state that although the majority of American citizens did not expect the president to be the moral leader, they expressed ambivalence in their rendition of the importance of “moral leadership” by big politicians (438). The President Clinton/Lewinsky case adds a new dimension to Goffman and Corner’s respective discussions on the significance of values in the political persona self-representation. This case proves that values can not only be reinforced by one’s public persona, but those values can be (re)constructed by the press or public opinion. Values are becoming a contested trait in the contemporary mediated political persona. This view can be supported by Dmitry Medvedev’s case: although modern technology was known as his personal passion, it was publicised only with reference to his role as a public politician and specifically when Medvedev appeared with an iPad talking about modernisation at major meetings (Pronina). However, one can argue that one’s charisma can affect the impact of values in public self-representation of the politician. In addition, social networks add a new dimension to personified publicity. From Barack Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ networked campaign in 2008 and through many more recent examples, we are witnessing the continuing process of the personalisation of politics (Corner and Pels). From one point of view, audiences tend to have more interest and sympathy in political individuals and their lifestyles rather than political parties and their programmes (Lawrence and Bennett; Corner and Pels). It should be noted that the interest towards political individuals does not fall apart from the historical logics of politics; it is only mediated in a new way. Max Weber’s notion of “leadership democracy” proves that political strategy is best distributed through the charismatic leadership imposing his will on the audience. This view can be strengthened by Le Bon’s concept of emotive connection of the leader and his crowd, and Adorno’s writings on the authoritarian personality also highlight the significance of the leader’s own natural and mediated persona in politics. What is new is the channels of mediation—modern audiences’ access to a politician’s private life is facilitated by new forms of media interactivity (Corner and Pels). This recent development calls for the new understanding of “persona” in politics. On one hand, the borderline between private and public becomes blurred and we are more exposed to the private self of a leader, but on the other hand, those politicians aware of new media literacy can create new structures of proximity and distance and construct a separate “persona” online, using digital media for their benefit (Corner and Pels). Russian official politics has developed a cautious attitude towards social networks in the post-Medvedev era - currently, President Vladimir Putin is not known for using social networks personally and transmits his views via his spokesperson. However, his personal charisma makes him overly present in digital media - through the images and texts shared both by his supporters and rivals. As opposed to Medvedev’s widely publicised “modernisation president” representation, Putin’s persona breaks the boundaries of limited traditional publicity and makes him recognised not only for his political activity, but looks, controversial expression, attitude to employees, and even personal life. That brings us back to Goffman, Corner and Lawrence and Bennett’s discussions on the interrelation of political values and personal traits in one’s political self-representation, making it evident that one’s strong personality can dominate over his political image and programme. Moreover, an assumption can be made that a politician’s persona may be more powerful than the narrative suggested by the constructed self-representation and new connotations may arise on the crossroads of this interaction.Russian President Divorce Announcement and Collective MemoryVladimir Putin’s divorce announcement was broadcast via traditional media on 6 June 2013 as a simple news story. The state broadcasting company Vesti-24 sent a journalist Polina Yermolayeva from their news bulletin to cover Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Putin’s visit to a ballet production, Esmeralda, at the state Kremlin theatre. The news anchor’s introduction to the interview was ordinarily written and had no hints of the upcoming sensation. After the first couple and the journalist had discussed their opinion of the ballet (“beautiful music,” “flawless and light moves”), the reporter Yermolayeva suddenly asked: “You and Lyudmila are rarely seen together in public. Rumour has it that you do not live together. It is true?” Vladimir Putin and his wife exchanged a number of rather pre-scripted speeches stating that the first couple was getting a divorce as the children had grown old enough, and they would still stay friends and wished each other the best of luck. The whole interview lasted 3:25 minutes and became a big surprise for the country (Loshak; Sobchak).When applying the classification of three modes of political personhood (Corner; Ong) to Vladimir Putin’s divorce announcement, it becomes evident that all three modes—visual, vocal, and kinetic—were used. Television audiences watched their president speak freely to the unknown reporter, explain details of his life in his own words so that body language also was visible and conveyed additional information. The visual self-representation harkens back to classic, Soviet-style announcements: Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Putina are dressed in classic monochrome suit and costume with a skirt respectively. They pose in front of the rather dull yet somewhat golden decorations of the Kremlin Theatre Hall, the walls themselves reflecting the glory and fanfare of the Soviet leadership and architecture. Vladimir Putin and his wife both talk calmly while Lyudmila appears even more relaxed than her husband (Sobchak). Although the speech looks prepared in advance (Loshak), it uses colloquial expressions and is delivered with emotional pauses and voice changes.However, close examination of not only the message but the medium of the divorce announcement reveals a vast number of intriguing symbols and parallels. First, although living in the era of digital media, Vladimir Putin chose to broadcast his personal news through a traditional television channel. Second, it was broadcast in a news programme making the breaking news of the president’s divorce, paradoxically, quite a mundane news event. Third, the semiotic construction of the divorce announcement bore a lot of connotations and synergies to the conservative, Soviet-style information distribution patterns. There are a few key symbols here that evoke collective memories: ballet, conservative political report on the government, and the stereotype of a patriarchal couple with a submissive wife (see Loshak; Rostovskiy). For example, since the perestroika of the 1990s, ballet has been widely perceived as a symbol of big political change and cause of public anxiety (Kachkaeva): this connotation was born in the 1990s when all channels were broadcasting Swan Lake round the clock while the White House was under attack. Holden reminds us that this practice was applied many times during major crises in Soviet history, thus creating a short link in the public subconscious of a ballet broadcast being symbolic of a political crisis or turmoil.Vladimir Putin Divorce: Traditional and Social Media ReceptionIn the first day after the divorce announcement Russian Twitter generated 180,000 tweets about Vladimir Putin’s divorce, and the hashtag #развод (“divorce”) became very popular. For the analysis that follows, Putin divorce tweets were collected by two methods: retrieved from traditional media coverage of Twitter talk on Putin’s divorce and from Twitter directly, using Topsy engine. Tweets were collected for one week, from the divorce announcement on 6 June to 13 June when the discussion declined and became repetitive. Data was collected using Snob.ru, Kommersant.ru, Forbes.ru, other media outlets and Topsy. The results were then combined and evaluated.Some of those tweets provided a satirical commentary to the divorce news and can be classified as “memes.” An “Internet meme” is a contagious message, a symbolic pattern of information spread online (Lankshear and Knobel; Shifman). Memes are viral texts that are shared online after being adjusted/altered or developed on the way. Starting from 1976 when Richard Dawkins coined the term, memes have been under media scholarship scrutiny and the term has been widely contested in various sciences. In Internet research studies, memes are defined as “condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others” (Pickerel, Jorgensen, and Bennett). The open character of memes makes them valuable tools for political discourse in a modern highly mediated environment.Qualitative analysis of the most popular and widely shared tweets reveals several strong threads and themes round Putin’s divorce discussion. According to Burzhskaya, many users created memes with jokes about the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. For instance, “He should have tied up his relationship with Dmitry Anatolyevich long ago” or “So actually Medvedev is the case?” were among popular memes generated. Another collection of memework contained a comment that, according to the Russian legislation, Putin’s ex-wife should get half of their wealth, in this case—half of the country. This thread was followed by the discussion whether the separation/border of her share of Russia should use the Ural Mountains as the borderline. Another group of Twitter users applied the Russian president’s divorce announcement to other countries’ politics. Thus one user wrote “Take Yanukovich to the ballet” implying that Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich (who was still a legitimate president in June 2013) should also be taken to the ballet to trigger changes in the political life in Ukraine. Twitter celebrity and well-known Russian actress and comedian Tatiana Lazareva wrote “In my opinion, it is a scam”, punning on the slang meaning of the word “razvod” (“divorce”) in Russian that can also mean “fraud” or “con”. Famous Russian journalist Dmitry Olshansky used his Twitter account to draw a historical parallel between Putin and other Russian and Soviet political leaders’ marital life. He noted that such Russian leaders as Tsar Nikolay the Second and Mikhail Gorbachev who loved their wives and were known to be good husbands were not successful managers of the state. In contrast, lone rulers of Russia such as Joseph Stalin proved to be leaders who loved their country first and gained a lot of support from their electorate because of that lonely love. Popular print and online journalist Oleg Kashin picked up on that specific idea: he quoted Vladimir Putin’s press secretary who explained that the president had declared that he would now spend more time working for the prosperity of the country.Twitter users were exchanging not only 140 symbol texts but also satirical images and other visual memes based on the divorce announcement. Those who suggested that Vladimir Putin should have divorced the country instead portrayed Lyudmila Putina and Vladimir holding candles and wearing funereal black with various taglines discussing how the country would now be split. Other users contributed visual memes jamming the television show Bachelor imagery and font with Vladimir Putin’s face and an announcement that the most desirable bachelor in the country is now its president. A similar idea was put into jammed images of the Let’s Get Married television show using Vladimir Putin’s face or name linked with a humorous comment that he could try those shows to find a new wife. One more thread of Twitter memes on Putin’s divorce used the name of Alina Kabaeva, Olympic gymnast who is rumoured by the press to be in relationship with the leader (Daily Mail Reporter). She was mentioned in plenty of visual and textual memes. Probably, the most popular visual meme (Burzhskaya; Topsy) used the one-liner from a famous Soviet comedy Ivan Vasylievich Menyaet Professiyu: it uses a joyful exclamation of an actress who learns that her love interest, a movie director, is leaving his wife so that the lovers can now fly to a resort together. Alina Kabaeva, the purported love interest of Putin, was jammed to be that actress as she announced the “triumphal” resort vacation plan to a girlfriend over the phone.Vladimir Putin’s 2013 divorce announcement presented new challenges for his personal and political self-representation and revealed new traits of the Russian president’s interaction with the nation. As the news of Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin’s divorce was broadcast via traditional media in a non-interactive television format, commentary on the event advanced only through the following week’s media coverage and the massive activity on social networks. It has still to be examined whether Vladimir Putin’s political advisors intentionally included many symbols of collective memory in the original and staid broadcast announcement. However, the response from traditional and social media shows that both Russian journalists and regular Twitter users were inclined to use humour and satire when discussing the personal life of a major political leader. Despite this appearance of an active counter-political sphere via social networks, the majority of tweets retrieved also revealed a certain level of respect towards Vladimir Putin’s privacy as few popular jokes or memes were aggressive, offensive or humiliating. Most popular memes on Vladimir Putin’s divorce linked this announcement to the political life of Russia, the political situation in other countries, and television shows and popular culture. Some of the memes, though, advanced the idea that Vladimir Putin should have divorced the country instead. The analysis also shows how a charismatic leader can affect or reconstruct the “values” he represents. In Vladimir Putin’s divorce event, his personality is the main focus of discussion both by traditional and new media. However, he is not judged for his personal choices as the online social media users provide rather mild commentary and jokes about them. The event and the subsequent online discourse, images and texts not only identify how Putin’s politics have become personified, the research also uncovers how the audience/citizenry online often see the country as a “persona” as well. Some Internet users suggested Putin’s marriage to the country; this mystified, if not mythologised view reinforces Vladimir Putin’s personal and political charisma.Conclusively, Vladimir Putin’s divorce case study shows how political and private persona are being mediated and merged via mixed channels of communication. 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