Transfer of supreme political power in Russia can be a dicey business. Under the tsars, succession to the throne often was accompanied by intrigue and bloodshed. This held true during the communist period as well, although it became less deadly after Stalin. In December 1991, Yeltsin effectively overthrew Gorbachev and dissolved the Soviet Union in a bloodless coup. Eight years later, a politically moribund Yeltsin resigned as President of Russia three months before the end of his term and named Putin Acting President, circumventing the normal electoral process. With this "leg-up," Putin easily won election in March 2000 and was reelected with no real opposition four years later. Putin's presidency was a period of relative political stability, but as the end of his second term drew near, the succession question reemerged as a burning issue. Putin is a very popular leader, enjoying nation-wide public approval ratings in the 70%-80% range during most of his presidency. Pro-Kremlin political parties in the Duma (the lower and by far more powerful chamber of Russia's bicameral legislature) have long held more than the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. The question on everyone's mind was, would Putin step down at the end of his second term? In 2007, many Russian officials and politicians publically urged Putin to stay on as president. Numerous scenarios appeared in the Russian press, suggesting that Putin might override, amend, or do an end-run around the constitution in order to retain power. On September 10, 2007, Putin made a surprise announcement dismissing Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov—whom he had plucked from obscurity to take that post in 2005—and nominated in his place the even more obscure Victor Zubkov, who had previously headed the Financial Monitoring Service, an arm of the Finance Ministry that investigates money-laundering. Zubkov is 65 years old and has no political power base or constituency of his own—other than Putin's backing. Putin explained this move as necessary to "prepare the country" for forthcoming elections, which immediately triggered speculation that Zubkov might be Putin's choice for president in 2008, perhaps as a "place holder," a mechanism that would allow Putin to retain control and/or return to the presidency after a brief interregnum. This brought the issue of the "Putin succession," which had been heating up since 2006, to a full boil. But in Russia's election cycle, the vote for president (March 2, 2008) was preceded the parliamentary election (December 2, 2007), which was seen as a harbinger of the presidential contest. The Kremlin decided to make the 2007 parliamentary election a referendum on Putin and Putinism. And despite Putin's apparent genuine popularity, they were determined to take no chances on the outcome. In the run-up to the Duma election, the authorities used myriad official and unofficial levers of power and influence to assure an overwhelming victory for United Russia, the main Kremlin party. On October 1, 2007, Putin announced that he would run for parliament at the head of the United Russia ticket, making the outcome doubly certain. The state-controlled media heavily favored United Russia and largely ignored or disparaged the opposition. Opposition party literature was seized and their rallies often shut down or harassed. Potentially popular opposition candidates were bought off, intimidated, or barred from running on "legal technicalities." In March 2007, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that Vladimir Ryzhkov's Republican Party—one of the few remaining liberal democratic parties—must be disbanded because it violated the 2004 law requiring parties to have at least 50,000 members and 45 regional offices. Russian authorities effectively prevented the main election observing body of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from sending an observer team, first by limiting their number to 70 (compared to 450 OSCE observers for the previous Duma election) and then delaying issuance of visas until the last minute, thus blocking normal monitoring of the election campaign. The preordained result of the December 2, 2007 balloting for the Duma was a sweep by United Russia, which reportedly won 64.3% of the popular vote and 315 of the 450 seats—more than the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. A second pro-Kremlin party, A Just Russia—widely believed to have been created by Kremlin "political technologists" in 2007 to draw leftist votes away from the Communists —won 7.74 percent of the vote and 38 seats. The platforms of United Russia and A Just Russia consisted of little more than their slogan,"For Putin!" Vladimir Zhirinovsky's misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), with 8.14% of the vote, won 40 seats. Despite Zhirinovsky's buffoonery and reputation for right-wing extremism, the LDPR is also a reliable supporter of Putin in the Duma. Thus, the Kremlin can count on the votes of 393 of the 450 Duma Deputies. The only opposition party in the Duma is the Communist Party, which, according to the official vote count, won 11.57% of the vote and 57 seats. The remaining parties failed to cross the 7% threshold required to win seats in the legislature. The traditional liberal democratic parties, Yabloko and the Union of Rightist Forces, reportedly received 1.59% and 0.96% of the vote, respectively. The official voter turnout was total 63%. (See CRS Report RS22770, Russia ' s December 2007 Legislative Election: Outcome and Implications , by [author name scrubbed].) Despite some allegations of ballot-box stuffing, voter intimidation, and other "irregularities," there is little doubt that by dint of Putin's widespread popularity, an honest vote count would still have given United Russia a resounding victory. The main problem with the election was not the vote count, but the entire process leading up to the balloting. In the words of the deputy head of the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly, "the executive branch acted as though it practically elected the parliament itself." On December 10, barely a week after the Duma election, Putin announced his choice for president: Dmitri Medvedev. The 42-year-old Medvedev, a long-time Putin protégé, had headed the Presidential Administration before Putin made him First Deputy Prime Minister in 2005. Like Putin and many of the Kremlin inner circle, Medvedev is a native of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). But unlike so many of the inner circle, he does not have a background in the security services. His academic training is as a lawyer. He is viewed by many in Russia and the West as one of the most liberal of the generally illiberal cadre surrounding Putin. One day after his anointment, Medvedev announced that, if elected, he would ask Putin to serve as prime minister. One week later, Putin formally accepted this offer. This carefully choreographed arrangement presumably was meant to assure political continuity for Putin and to dampen political in-fighting among the rival clans within the Putin camp. But it does not clearly define the forthcoming political constellation, nor does it assure political stability. Competing scenarios and rumors abound. One thing that all observers agreed on, however, was that Putin's selection of Medvedev made the later's victory in the March 2 presidential election a certainty. Immediately after Putin announced his support for Medvedev as his successor, Russia's bureaucratic and political elites raced to affirm their loyalty to the chosen one. The leaders of United Russia, A Just Russia, Civic Force, and the Agrarian Party all agreed to support Medvedev. "Each of the parties, in its own way, is realizing its political program by supporting a single candidate.... [T]his shows how the political system in Russia is maturing, and we now have the chance to make consolidated decisions, despite our differences," enthused Aleksandr Babkin of A Just Russia. Pavel Astakhov, head of the For Putin! movement, called Medvedev "a multifaceted person who suits the interests of completely different political forces and segments of society." Federation Council member Yury Sharandin observed, more pragmatically, that Medvedev would win the March 2 election in the first round because "the popularity of Vladimir Putin will be transferred this time not to an entire party with an enormous number of people, but to one concrete person." Putin, apparently concerned that lack of credible opposition might lead to low voter participation, approved a law eliminating the requirement for a minimum 20% voter turnout for an election to the Duma and a 50% turnout for a presidential vote for an election to be valid. In March 2007, Putin removed Aleksandr Veshnyakov as head of the Central Election Commission (CEC). Veshnyakov, who had served on the Commission since 1994 and been its chairman since 1999, criticized legislation that expands "pretexts for [the authorities] to disqualify candidates they find inconvenient..." and warned that Russia was in danger of becoming a one-party state. The new Chairmen, Vladimir Churov, said that "the principal difference between me and...Veshnyakov is that I am less likely to comment on election legislation and more inclined to get things done." One of Medvedev's few credible rivals was Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin's relatively liberal Prime Minister from 2000-2005. In 2006, a year after his dismissal, Kasyanov declared that he would form a new political party and run for president in 2008. The Federal Registration Service soon declared that it would not register Kasyanov's Russian Popular Democratic Union party because its registration documents "did not meet technical requirements."