大象传媒

Vladimir Putin came to power determined to halt economic meltdown and re-establish Russia as a world power. He achieved both, but at the expense of democracy: parliamentary powers were weakened, those of the president enhanced; opposition parties were harassed, protestors jailed, freedom of the press restricted. This so called 'managed democracy' was described by critic Lilia Shevtsova as a "smokescreen to conceal the old power arrangements."

Putin revived the trappings of the Soviet era promoting a strong state and the pop song 'Be Like Putin!' shot up the charts. He took on the oligarchs, forcing them to hand over the TV channel that criticized his handling of the Kursk tragedy when 118 sailors died on board a nuclear submarine; and when the oil magnate Khodorkovsky, started to fund political parties he was arrested on bogus tax charges and sent to a labour camp. Russia resumed its seat at the world's top table when Putin reclaimed the oil for the state, using his power to ramp up oil and gas prices to Ukraine when angered by Western encroachment in the former Soviet republics. But after guerrillas seized a school in Beslan, Northern Ossetia, and several of the hostage-takers were Arabs, Putin argued it was proof, that Russia was fighting the same war on international terror as the West. 200 children died, but Putin's response was uncompromising: "the weak get beaten," he said.

Ongoing conflict with Chechnya gave him further chances to demonstrate his toughness, and when Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London, a commentator on Russian state television compared it to the elimination of Trotsky by agents of Stalin. "There was a new willingness to rehabilitate the dictator's memory," says Martin Sixsmith. "Autocracy was back in Russia, and the people liked it."

Producers: Adam Fowler & Anna Scott-Brown
A Ladbroke Production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.