Medvedev “worships Putin like a father figure, or at least like an older brother” says Valery Musin to the MT (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)

Russia has long maintained a rich texture of public archetypes for its leaders. Mikhail Gorbachev was the “chatterbox”, Boris Yeltsin the “macho”, and Vladimir Putin the “soldier of the empire”. Today the Moscow Times has an interesting profile of Deputy Premier Dmitry Medvedev, who is crafting his image as “The Smart Kid” to position himself for the presidential succession.