Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved an eerie calm at home. Shortly after assuming the presidency in 2000, he tied once independent oligarchs to the state while placating the growing middle class with rising living standards and greater material comforts.
Gradually, he assembled a ruling ideology from bits and pieces of Russia’s past, one that was nationalistic enough to inspire pride but not so nationalistic as to be divisive.
As a result, after a quarter century in power, Putin has brought Russia to a point of equilibrium. Russian life can now be soothingly predictable, even if it demands adaptation at times. Chaos is engulfing the Middle East, American politics can be tempestuous,
and Europe is witnessing its worst war since 1945. But Putin has given Russians the gift they were most eager to receive: stability. The country is not enduring visible disruptions or political tumult. Indeed,
Russia hardly has any politics at all—it lacks real political parties and does not stage meaningful elections. The state, which reserves the right to repress, mostly represses those who dare to display their disapproval, a vanishingly small minority of Russians.
In this arrangement, the Kremlin retains control, and most Russians can go about their business, provided that their business is unobtrusive.
Another reality shadows this carefully crafted equilibrium. Putin has long promised Russians a country gilded with ambition, power, and glory. He stressed a “belief in the greatness of Russia” as early as his 1999 “millennium manifesto,”
an article published in a Russian daily shortly before he assumed the presidency. In that essay, Putin implied that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin, the first president of a post-Soviet Russia, had brought Russia to its knees,
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