Russia has changed fundamentally over the past year, and more changes are on the horizon. Russia's energy-based economic model is being tested, the country's social and demographic composition is shifting, and its political elites are aging. All this has led the Kremlin to begin asking how the country should be led once its unifying leader, Vladimir Putin, is gone. Already, a restructuring of the political elite is taking place, and hints of succession plans have emerged.
Putin is trying to install a system that will outlive him once he exits Russian leadership (whenever the time may be) without destabilizing the government as a whole. First, he wants to create a system in which personalities can be interchanged more easily so that he does not rely on specific people to keep the system afloat. Second, he wants a system that is not vertically built of two clans; rather, he wants one that can be defined in collective sectors. The hope is that if one person fails, the other sectors will not be affected. Third, the system should have neutral players popular with the Russian people, or at least to whom the Russian people can relate. And fourth, the system must have a method by which a new generation can rise to the top, creating a succession plan for the elite.
This new system has been dubbed the Politburo 2.0, a title initially used by a Russian consulting group called Minchenko but now common in the Russian media. Currently, the 10 people on the Politburo are not technocrats, but overall strategists for Russia's social, political, economic, military, security and business interests. The technocrats under the Politburo do not hold true power or play roles in decision-making. In place of two clans with their own hierarchy, Putin is creating an overarching group of people, each of whom has his own portfolio where he makes his own decisions but none of whom is competing with one another.
