The Return of the Bear

Winning Respect
Possibly the most important legacy of Putin's eight years is the restoration of respect for the office of the presidency in Russia and pride in the office among Russians. He did that partly through his image and partly, in my view, through sheer force of personality. I've spent, with a group of Kremlin-watchers, three meetings of three to five hours each with him, and he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. He goes for three to five hours with no advisers, no notes and no breaks. His iron will and Swiss-watch mind has allowed him to restore respect for the presidency, which is very important for governing any country. On the other hand, Putin did not promote the growth of political institutions, which is important to long-term stability. But in a nutshell, Russia in 1998 was flat on its back; in 2008 Russia is just flat back.
—Cliff Kupchan, a director at the Eurasia Group and former vice president of The Nixon Center

' A Needless Tragedy '
Russians are richer today than ever before in their history. But Putin's real legacy is in the political sphere. When he came to power, three television networks—RTR, ORT and NTV—had national reach. RTR was already state-owned, and Putin forcibly acquired control of the others. Smaller stations got the message and gutted their independent news programming. Ultimately, most major Russian national newspapers transferred ownership to Kremlin loyalists.

Putin moved next against regional governments. He established seven supraregional districts, headed primarily by former generals and KGB officers, and assigned them the task of reasserting Moscow's control. Putin then emasculated the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's Parliament, by removing elected governors and heads of regional legislatures from the seats they would have automatically assumed and replacing them with appointed representatives. And in a fatal blow to Russian federalism, Putin announced in September 2004 that he himself would appoint governors rather than continue the practice of direct elections. Putin also weakened the State Duma, turning this lower house of Parliament into a rubber stamp for Kremlin decisions. Political parties not aligned with the Kremlin are all much weaker today and work in a much more constrained political environment. Elections are a farce.

The tragedy of the Putin era is that none of these autocratic reforms was needed to sustain economic growth, political stability or the president's popularity. In fact, more democracy would have helped fight corruption, protect property and spurred more growth. Yes, the Putin era was economically good for most Russians. But it could have been even better.
—Michael McFaulis a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, professor of political science and director of the Center on Democracy,Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Modern Tsar
The question of Putin's legacy is a difficult one because he continues to be a strong presence in Russia. And because he handpicked his successor, in a way the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev will determine the legacy of Vladimir Putin, who is all but certain to become Medvedev's prime minister.

But for now, we can say that Putin's legacy is no different than that of the tsars or the general-secretaries of the Soviet Union. Putin's goals were the same as these past leaders and despots: to maintain the idea of Russia's greatness, ensure the territorial integrity of the country's 11 time zones and eliminate dissent. After 1991, there was hope that Russia could become a different country, in which the law, not order, would triumph, but it hasn't: Russia turned back on the promise of freedom and the future. Yeltsin attempted to nurture a free press and democratic institutions. But under Putin, transparency has disappeared, and the communist-type secrecy and unpredictability have become the norm. When Khrushchev replaced Stalin, observers could only guess at his agenda; when Gorbachev came to power, no one knew whether he would turn Stalinist or reformist. Luckily, their leadership resulted in positive changes. But this reliance on the leader's whim, rather than on the legal institutions of democracy, continues to be an enduring and worrisome trend of Russia's political system. Putin is recycling that same paradigm, and we're back to deciphering the Kremlin's tea leaves as the only means to understand the country, in hope that Medvedev's presidency will turn more like Khrushchev's or Gorbachev's rather then Stalin's, Brezhnev's or Putin's for that matter.
—Nina Khrushcheva, granddaughter of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, professor of international affairs at The New School and the author of "Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics"

' A Far Better Life '
The laserlike focus on kremlin maneuverings by most Western commentators on Russia has overlooked a critical fact: the lives of Russians today are far better than ever. The economy has grown at an average of 6.5 percent annually for the past seven years, giving Russians occupational mobility, higher earnings and an improved standard of living. Yet the West consistently underestimates the prospects for the gradual emergence of a democratic system. A glance at the Moscow scene in the late 1980s and 1990s provides a clue as to why. Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, aimed at loosening the straitjacket of the planned economy, and glasnost, directed at introducing limited electoral politics, conformed to American values. The reformist earthquakes under Boris Yeltsin reinforced the harmony between Russian and American values and interests. But Yeltsin's policies yielded economic disorder and public discontent. By the time he resigned in December 1999, his approval rating had plummeted below 5 percent. Given the Sturm und Drang of the Yeltsin era, Putin's systematic extension of federal authority under his two terms was almost predictable. Russians, his policies said, will sort out among themselves the pace of democratic change in their own country. Now one question remains: can the nation evolve into a democracy? In the short term, perhaps not. But over time, the improvement in the lives of ordinary Russians can set the stage for their active participation in political decision making.
—Padma Desaiis Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University.