好英语网六个要点，了解俄罗斯政坛地震和普京的权力计划
In his annual state-of-the-nation speech on Wednesday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shook up the country and its political class by calling for constitutional changes that would give him a new path to holding onto power after his current — and, in theory, last — term ends in 2024.
在周三的年度国情咨文演讲中，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·V·普京要求修改宪法，赋予他保住权力的新途径，令整个国家及其政治阶层为之震惊，他的本届任期理应在2024年结束。
With that, the entire cabinet, led by a long-serving Putin ally, Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, abruptly resigned. The head of the Federal Tax Service, Mikhail V. Mishustin — a little-known but skilled technocrat — will become the next prime minister.
与此同时，由普京的长期盟友、总理德米特里·A·梅德韦杰夫(Dmitri A. Medvedev)领导的整个内阁突然辞职。鲜为人知但经验丰富的技术官僚、俄罗斯联邦税务局局长米哈伊尔·V·米舒斯京(Mikhail V. Mishustin)将成为下一任总理。
俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京周三发表年度国情咨文演讲。
The spate of moves offers some clues about Mr. Putin’s plans and priorities, but also raises questions about what may lie ahead for the Russian president. Here are answers to some of them.
这一系列举动提供了一些线索，让人们可以了解普京的计划和优先事项，但也让人对这位俄罗斯总统可能面临的前景产生了疑问。以下是其中一些问题的答案。
What is Putin doing?
普京在做什么？
Mr. Putin’s hold on power in Russia is unrivaled, built up over the last 20 years in his posts as president and prime minister.
普京对俄罗斯权力的掌控无人能及，这是他在过去20年担任总统和总理期间建立起来的。
But Russia’s Constitution bars a president from serving more than two consecutive terms. To maintain his grip on power, as he has hinted he intends to do, Mr. Putin needs to find a way to engineer a leadership transition that will allow that to happen.
但是俄罗斯宪法禁止总统连任超过两届。为了如他所暗示的那样维持对权力的控制，普京需要找到一种方式，来安排能让他继续掌权的领导层换届。
To that end, it appears, he has proposed changes to the Constitution that would weaken the presidency while increasing the sway of the Parliament and the prime minister.
似乎正是为了这一点，他提出了修宪建议，这将削弱总统的权力，同时增加议会和总理的影响力。
He said, for example, that the president should in the future be required to accept the prime minister’s cabinet appointments. This and other changes could give Mr. Putin more leeway to find a position in which he can maintain power without violating the Constitution.
例如，他说，将来应该要求总统接受总理的内阁任命。这一变化和其他变化可能会给普京更大的回旋余地，找到一个既能维持权力又不违反宪法的位置。
What position will he hold?
他将担任什么职务？
That’s not entirely clear.
目前尚不完全清楚。
Mr. Putin could become prime minister again, taking advantage of the position’s expanded influence. Alternatively, some analysts have pointed to a leadership maneuver engineered by Nursultan Nazarbayev, the longtime president of Kazakhstan, another former Soviet republic.
普京可能会再次成为总理，并利用这个职位扩大的影响力。此外，一些分析人士指出，另一个前苏联加盟共和国哈萨克斯坦的长期总统努尔苏丹·纳扎尔巴耶夫(Nursultan Nazarbayev)也曾搞出一种延长领导权的策略。
In 2018, Mr. Nazarbayev increased the power of Kazakhstan’s Security Council and made himself its chairman for life. When he resigned from the presidency last year in favor of a handpicked successor, his position at the helm of the Security Council allowed him to hold on to key levers of power.
2018年，纳扎尔巴耶夫增强了哈萨克斯坦国家安全委员会的权力，让自己成为终身主席。他去年辞去总统职务，让一位悉心挑选的继任者上台，而他在国家安全委员会的领导地位使他得以保住关键的权力地位。
On Wednesday, offering few details, Mr. Putin dangled the possibility of a similar move in Russia. The State Council — currently an advisory body made up of the governors of Russia’s regions — should have its “status and role” fixed in the Constitution, he said.
周三，普京几乎没有透露任何细节，但提出了俄罗斯采取类似行动的可能性。他说，国务委员会——目前是一个由俄罗斯各地区州长组成的顾问机构——应该在宪法中确定其“地位和作用”。
That quickly raised speculation among Russian political analysts that a revamped State Council could become a vehicle for Mr. Putin to maintain power if he relinquishes the presidency, particularly over the military and foreign policy.
这很快引发了俄罗斯政治分析人士的猜测，他们认为，如果普京放弃总统职位，改组后的国务委员会可能会成为他维持权力的工具，特别是在军事和外交政策方面的权力。
Why doesn’t he just seize power?
他为什么不直接夺取权力？
Despite Mr. Putin’s immense sway, he’d be taking a risk if he simply declared himself president for life.
尽管普京拥有巨大的影响力，但简单地宣布自己是终身总统会是一种冒险。
Mr. Putin served two consecutive presidential terms from 2000 to 2008, and then became prime minister. His announcement in 2011 that he would seek the presidency again, followed by parliamentary elections widely seen as rigged, helped trigger Russia’s biggest street protests since the 1990s.
普京从2000年到2008年连续两届担任俄罗斯总统，然后成为俄罗斯总理。他在2011年宣布再次竞选总统，随后举行了被普遍认为受到操纵的议会选举，这引发了俄罗斯自1990年代以来最大规模的街头抗议活动。
This time around, Mr. Putin looks determined to orchestrate his next move in a slow-motion fashion that’s less likely to produce a backlash. The changes to the Constitution he called for give him several options to hold on to power — while affording him as much as four years’ time to set his course.
这一次，普京似乎下定决心要以一种不太可能引起强烈反对的慢动作来策划下一步行动。他呼吁修改宪法，这给了他几个继续掌权的选择，同时也给了他四年的时间来制定自己的路线。
Is he really worried about public opinion?
他真的担心民意吗？
“Our society is clearly calling for change.” Mr. Putin said at the beginning of his speech on Wednesday.
“我们的社会显然在呼吁变革。”普京在周三的演讲开始时说。
Indeed, over the last year, Russia has seen its most vigorous street protests since the anti-Putin rallies of 2011 and 2012.
事实上，在过去的一年里，俄罗斯发生了自2011年和2012年反普京集会以来最激烈的街头抗议活动。
Polls show that Russians increasingly distrust pro-Kremlin TV channels and are getting their news on the internet, which remains largely uncensored.
民意调查显示，俄罗斯人越来越不信任亲克里姆林宫的电视频道，他们从互联网上获取新闻，而互联网基本上不受审查。
And the Kremlin’s appeal to patriotism — so effective after Mr. Putin’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 — has lost its visceral power, overshadowed by Russia’s economic problems.
在普京2014年吞并乌克兰半岛克里米亚之后，克里姆林宫对爱国主义的呼吁非常有效，但由于俄罗斯的经济问题，这种呼吁已经失去了打动人心的力量。
All of this means that the Kremlin is likely to portray the resignation on Wednesday of Mr. Medvedev and every cabinet minister as a sign that Mr. Putin has heard Russians’ demand for change.
这一切意味着，克里姆林宫可能会把周三梅德韦杰夫和全体内阁的辞职描述为普京听取了俄罗斯人要求改变的信号。
While Russians do increasingly blame Mr. Putin for their ills, many more blame the bureaucrats below him. Mr. Putin’s approval rating has fallen to 68 percent from 82 percent in April 2018, an independent pollster, Levada, says. But Mr. Medvedev is in far worse shape, with an approval rating of 38 percent.
尽管俄罗斯人确实越来越多地因他们的困境指责普京，但更多的人指向了他下面的官僚。独立民意调查机构列瓦达(Levada)说，普京的支持率已从2018年4月的82％降至68％。但是，梅德韦杰夫的境况要差得多，支持率为38％。
What about his new prime minister?
他的新总理是一个怎样的人？
Mr. Putin’s choice of Mr. Mishustin seems to reflect his concerns about Russia’s declining standard of living, which has contributed to spasms of unrest over the last year.
普京选择米舒斯京，似乎反映出他对俄罗斯生活水平下降的担忧，这导致了去年的动荡不安。
Mr. Mishustin is widely seen as one of Russia’s most effective technocrats. He has headed Russia’s Federal Tax Service since 2010, modernizing a notoriously ineffective and corrupt tax-collecting system. The Financial Times dubbed the computerized, real-time approach to taxation he developed as “the taxman of the future.”
人们普遍认为，米舒斯京是俄罗斯最有效率的技术官僚之一。自2010年以来，他一直担任俄罗斯联邦税务局局长，对一个以低效和腐败而臭名昭著的税收系统进行了现代化改造。英国《金融时报》称，他开发的计算机化实时税收方法是“未来的税务员”。
In his early years as president, Mr. Putin built his popularity on soaring living standards, which coincided with a period of rising oil prices. But with lower oil prices and Western sanctions, those steady improvements are now a thing of the past. Disposable incomes are still effectively below what they were in 2013.
普京担任总统早期，其声望因民众生活水准的飙升而高涨，这一时期恰逢石油价格上涨。但随着油价下跌和西方的制裁，这些稳定的改善已成为过去。可支配收入实际上低于2013年的水平。
Mr. Putin also used his state-of-the-nation speech to make a raft of pledges to improve Russians’ daily lives. For example: free hot meals for all elementary school students from grades one through four.
普京还利用国情咨文发表了一系列承诺来改善俄罗斯人的日常生活。例如：为所有一至四年级的小学生免费提供热餐。
Unlike Russia’s more prominent economic reformers, the 53-year-old Mr. Mishustin has no political base of his own, reducing the likelihood that he might use the powers of his new office to chip away at Mr. Putin’s authority.
米舒斯京与俄罗斯更加著名的经济改革家不同，现年53岁的他没有自己的政治基础，这降低了他利用新职务来削弱普京的权威的可能性。
Could he be loosening his grip?
他是在放权吗？
Not at all.
完全不是。
In theory, at least, Russia’s system of governance echoes that of France — a powerful presidency checked by an independent judiciary, by parliament and by a cabinet of ministers headed by a prime minister with his own locus of authority.
至少在理论上，俄罗斯的治理体系类似法国——强大的总统被多方制约：独立的司法机构、议会和内阁，后者由具有自己权力圈子的总理领导。
But Mr. Putin has steadily subsumed the authority of all those institutions, often justifying crackdowns on political pluralism as necessary in the face of external threats. He reprised that language in his speech on Wednesday, signaling that no political thaw is in the offing.
但是普京一直稳固地将所有这些机构的权力纳入自身，常常辩称，在面对外部威胁时对政治多元化进行镇压是必要的。他在周三的演讲中重申了这个说法，这意味着政治解冻还未到来。
“Russia can be and can remain Russia only as a sovereign state,” he said.
他说：“俄罗斯可以并只能以主权国家的身份存在。”
That was an allusion to Mr. Putin’s frequent charge the West is fomenting political opposition to undermine Russian sovereignty.
这是在间接提及，普京多次指控西方国家煽动政治反动派破坏俄罗斯主权。
To drive home the point, Mr. Putin proposed a constitutional amendment that offered the day’s clearest statement of how he views his successor: Russia’s future president, Mr. Putin said, may not ever have had citizenship or permanent residency in another country.
为了阐明这一点，普京提出了一项宪法修正案，给出了当天关于他对继任者看法的最清晰的声明：普京说，俄罗斯未来的总统不可以拥有或曾经拥有过外国公民身份或永久居留权。