Much speculation about President Putin has plagued the media for a few years now. Putin was chosen as Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” and is often featured on the front page of publications worldwide. While regularly compared to Russia’s great leaders of the last one hundred years, the Russian President has been vilified as the next Stalin by many as they ignore what may in fact be an unfamiliar patriotism: pragmatic and devout. Writers, with tilted heads and curious pens, hypothesize as to his ambitions, hostilities, and credibility; they attempt to solve the strange riddle that is President Putin.Modern Russia has more than one hundred years of history; consequently, the riddle won’t be solved apart from a historical perspective. Though a Stalinist hue may refract on occasion, Putin’s authoritarian genius has a stride and manner that resembles more closely his personal hero, Peter the Great.
By the end of the 20th century, Russia had crumbled. Her President, the gangster turned patriot Boris Yeltsin, couldn’t help but do wrong in spite of his passionate vision for a strong and proud nation. Through years of drunken cameos and sloppy leadership, he made Russia a jester in the international court.
Putin has a rare solemnity about him, a cast-iron composure with no signs of incapability or personal weakness. If he really were the next Stalin, he certainly could be a ruthless despot. Nonetheless, the shadow that follows him is not one of purges and famine but rather one of order and progress. While Russia is stepping away from Soviet style governance she has not, for the first time since the fall of the Berlin wall, felt obliged to curtsy whenever Western leaders care to dance.
Putin’s demeanor exhibits a remembrance of the nightmare that was Russia for the last one hundred years. It’s as though Putin is taking all the prima facie steps, missed by Tsar Nicholas the last Romanov, which would have stabilized the Russia he lead from the same Kremlin—one hundred years ago—before disorder turned into revolution.
Since his inauguration, he has maintained a high rate of approval for what have been an anything but clumsy two terms as president. In stride with his success, Putin has restrained the trend of his predecessors by avoiding a national incorporation of American-style democracy and freedom. Layered in Putin’s personality are two notable characteristics: patriotic zeal and charmless fortitude. He is deliberate, though enigmatic, and soberly rigid as he maintains a courteous fellowship with other leaders.
It was an obvious time for change when Putin accepted the reigns from Yeltsin and, in December of ’99, a desperately discouraged Russia welcomed her new leader while bidding farewell to an embarrassing, unpopular regime. Putin’s political savoir-faire coupled with personal discipline contrasted with the charlatans who ruled before him. He proved an unexpected success as President.
As such, Putin’s administration has become a signpost of Russia’s history, fettering internal corruption and courting non-western powers consequently fashioning a new image, one of success and respectability.
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