MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Tuesday announced the reassignment of Vladislav Y. Surkov, the architect of the highly centralized political system that has come under waves of protest from middle-class Muscovites over the last month.

Mr. Surkov, a former advertising prodigy, coined the term “sovereign democracy” to describe his system, which preserved the electoral process but hollowed out institutions capable of challenging the Kremlin’s power. He created an array of political tools — the youth movement Nashi, the United Russia party and the overwhelming force of fully controlled television — that helped Vladimir V. Putin consolidate his authority during his first two presidential terms.

The last several months have exposed many of those tools as outdated, and Mr. Surkov had become a lightning rod for a rising generation of Russians raised on the Internet, who are calling for an end to the manipulations.

Aleksei L. Kudrin, a former finance minister, called Mr. Surkov’s transfer a “serious bid to renew the political system,” and said it had been agreed upon by both President Dmitri A. Medvedev and Mr. Putin, the prime minister.