Timothy Post.com

Holy cow, Serge Schmemann has written a most thoughtful well-reasoned and yup, fair snap-shot of Vladimir Putin in today’s IHT. The article titled, A Visit with Putin, resonates very strongly with me and my viewpoint of Russia today. Here’s a couple quotes from the article:

….He does not disown the Soviet Union, which he served as an agent of the KGB, but the Russia he repeatedly invokes is a great, powerful, divinely ordained state that stretches back a thousand years. He is there to restore its glory, its power, its faith, and above all its proper place in the world.

….And that is the unifying context of his presidency: Russia will be great and strong. It explains the repeated contradictions in the world view he expounds: Russia must have a multiparty democracy, but it cannot exist without a strong president. The economy is free, but the state must control its wealth. He is prepared to cooperate with the West, but promptly switches to confrontation when he senses a snub.

….Now, Russians are suddenly living better than they ever have. They have a combination of personal freedoms and prosperity they’ve never had before. They can travel abroad and surf the Internet to their heart’s delight; the arts are booming; stores are overflowing; they can make money. Lots of it. Politics? O.K., there’s a problem there, but in this new Russia, with its glittering streets and fast pace, who cares?

// 09.16.2007 at 10:05 pm // Tagged culture, putin, russia