By Reinhard Krumm, Head of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation Moscow Office

For a long time, photojournalists believed that their goal was to capture “the decisive moment.” The phrase belongs to Henri Cartier-Bresson, a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism, who used it in the mid-20th century to describe the moment when photographer must click his camera to perpetuate a moment in history.

In Russia, the phrase “the decisive moment” has recently acquired the opposite meaning. The Moskovsky Komsomolets daily has recently published an article under the same headline to tell its readers why the political regime needs a thaw: “The feeling that something must change is becoming increasingly widespread.”

Thaw as an aggregate state of water is traditionally used in a metaphor describing the political situation in Russia. The word “thaw” was used to describe the famous period of reforms initiated by Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, in the late 1950s.

Half a century later, the phrase was used in connection with Dmitry Medvedev, the third president of Russia. Political weather is changing again 18 months after Medvedev became president, promising not a hurricane or a tornado but a warm front with areas of low pressure around it.

The change is due to the economic crisis, which has been shaking Russia for over a year and mercilessly exposing the drawbacks of its economic and political systems.

In the first nine months of 2009, Russia’s GDP fell 10% and industrial production 13.5%. Unemployment grew 8.1%. Russia’s ambitious goal sealed in its Security Strategy through 2020 – to become one of the world’s top five economies – has become unattainable.

Even before that, President Medvedev grimly enumerated Russia’s problems in his article, “Forward, Russia”: the age-long economic lag, a primitive raw-materials economy, endemic corruption, and an inveterate habit of relying on the state, foreign countries or some all-powerful doctrine to solve our problems.

Seeking to resolve these problems, Russia has introduced a magic word, “modernization,” applying it to all spheres, including politics, the economy, technology and management. But how can “the decisive moment” be expected in modernization if there is no unity among the top leadership in Russia, which is, in fact, deeply divided?

There is indirect evidence proving that Putin and Medvedev have different views of Russia’s future. “Russian conservatism,” the new ideology of the all-powerful United Russia party chaired by Prime Minister Putin, hardly reflects the pro-reform aspirations of President Medvedev, who has received support where it could be least expected.

Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is serving a prison term, wrote an editorial called “Generation M” for the economic daily Vedomosti. The article talks about the “modernization generation” needed for perestroika. However, he writes, “Representatives of Generation M by definition do not like the “vertical of power,”” that is, the power structure the previous president, Putin, created to implement decisions in the regions “without unnecessary friction.”

So far Medvedev has not proposed any alternative to this system, and lacks a sufficient number of supporters to implement his new ideas. Meanwhile, time is running out and “the decisive moment” will not wait. This is why Moskovsky Komsomolets writes: “History will never forgive us if we miss the chance.”

So, a permafrost again?

A shorter version of the article published in German in Suddeutsche Zeitung on January 2, 2010