President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia may be dreaming an impossible dream when he talks about his nation becoming a democracy.

During his second State of the Nation address Nov. 12, Medvedev discussed democracy as an avenue of modernization, but whether he actually means to do something about it is questionable especially while Vladimir Putin, Medvedev’s “political godfather,” remains on the scene as prime minister.

Native Russian journalists like Masha Gessen describe Putin as a roadblock to democracy. During Putin’s own near-10-year term as president, he reshaped Russia into “a rigidly hierarchical, tightly controlled system closed to outsiders,” said Gessen.

Although Medvedev is leader in name, Putin is still Russia’s key political figure. Many credit him “with re-establishing law and order and boosting living standards after the chaotic 1990s that followed the demise of the Soviet Union,” according to Reuters.

Most of us familiar with Putin probably know him more as the man into whose eyes President George W. Bush said he looked and “saw his soul.”

Or you may have heard that a bronze bust of Putin himself will soon be given to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

No matter how we know him, Putin is prominent, beloved and celebrated — but controversial.

What most of us don’t know is what native Russian journalists do know — and have shared, while they live. Unfortunately, life is often short for journalists who report the truth about Putin.

Gessen boldly shed light on Putin’s “shadowy” past, in a Vanity Fair article last year.

Based on her own experience in the 1990s as a journalist in Moscow, Gessen’s article tells how Putin was placed in the position of president after achieving his teenage dream of becoming a KGB agent.

Putin hoped and worked to reshape Russian government to fit the KGB structural model: killing the media, emasculating the representative branch and creating an atmosphere where blackmail was normal and murders and disappearances were everyday occurrences, said Gessen.

Just how common these killings have become is revealed in the stories of various journalists who have died under mysterious circumstances.

First, Dmitry Rozhdestvensky, a TV executive who was a close ally of Putin in 1996. He was later jailed for four years and died four months after his trial ended. Officially, the cause of death was a heart attack, although his mother believes he was poisoned. In 2003, a journalist named Yuri Shchekochikhin, who investigated several sketchy explosions after Putin’s inauguration, died in a Moscow hospital after suffering a week of odd symptoms. His colleagues were convinced it was murder.

These brutalities of Putin have road blocked Medvedev’s modernization.

The dreams of the people hinge not on the efforts of their president, but on the man whose agenda continues to cloud efforts to move Russia into the 21st century.

Will Medvedev make an effort to outmaneuver Putin? I doubt it. But we can always dream, right?

Reach Catherine at Catherine.E.Smith@asu.edu.