In 25 years, under the guidance of Vladimir Putin“the Russia He made a long way: from being on the edge of the abyss to becoming a sovereign state “. It is the synthetic but significant balance of a quarter of a century of power made by the Cremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, And that explains the reading that Moscow provides to the political parable of the man who in 25 years has transformed post -Soviet Russia into a semi -totalitarian regime.
Election of Putin
Exactly 25 years ago, on March 26, 2000, the Russians elected president for the first time L’E former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, which came to the highest charge in the country after only a few months spent in politics. At that time Russia was suffering the consequences of default and was submerged with debts. Inflation was 36.5%, unemployment at 13%. One in three Russian lived below the poverty linerecalls the Tass state agency today. There were 11 urns candidates, but already at the beginning of the election campaign, Putin was the number 1 candidate after – when he was still a premier – he had been appointed interim head of state by the predecessor Boris Eltsinin the dramatic speech to the nation of 31 December 1999. With a turnout of 68.7%, that March 26 voted 52.9% of the voters for Putin.
Political stability
Since then, the former 007 originally from Leningrado and who had served a Dresden in the DDRhe never in fact left Russia’s guide and his voters recognize him conquered political stability, economic growth, a more widespread well -being and the newfound posture from great power. Even if all at the price of always less freedom.
Personalized dictatorship
Over the course of these 25 years, Putin has transformed his country into the “strongest personalized dictatorship in the world”, said the Russian polytologist Mikhail Komin. He did so because he gradually and constantly undermined all the Russian political institutions and also becoming the archetype for a new world policy model as the financial Times Gideon Rachman journalist wrote in his book ‘The Age of The Strongman’ (2022). Rachman, not surprisingly, starts the “era of the strong man” with 31 December 1999: Putin has been inspired by a generation of authoritarian leaders who admire nationalism, aggressive rhetoric, conservatism, the contempt for the “politically correct”, its placed in the center the rights of the people and not of the individual in controversy with liberal democracies.
Putinian model
In the furrow of the Putinian model, Rachman inserts in his book politicians born in very different contexts: from Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Türkiye at Xi Jinping in China and Narendra Modi in India. But the Putinian model of a strong man has also attracted in more structured democracies, such as Israel with Benjamin Netanyahu, the United Kingdom with Boris Johnson up to the United States with Donald Trump. “The cancellation of a clear distinction between democratic and authoritarian leadership has been the key goal of strong men for decades”, warned Rachman. A statement never as current today.