The wildly popular political novice Putin ran without a strong opponent, and at this writing looked to face no serious obstacles on his way to the presidency. Putin’s Mapresidential bid wasn’t quite a formally uncontested election of the kind that was a hallmark of the Soviet era, but it still presents a peculiarly Russian phenomenon - the election of a monarch. Putin’s presidency will inevitably be evaluated in the light of the successes (or failures) of the political and economic reforms started under Yeltsin and Gorbachev. But as has been true since the time of Peter the Great, when Western practices are planted in Russian soil, they acquire uniquely Russian characteristics. The trappings of democracy installed in Russia included participatory elections, the creation of an office of the president, and the adoption of a constitution influenced by pre-revolutionary Russian political practice, the French Fifth Republic, and the United States. It is now up to Putin to tackle the future of Russia and its centuries-old problem of integration into the West.Īs the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian reform-oriented elites led by Yeltsin attempted a political modernization that included the wholesale import of Western-style political machinery. He has left much of the job to his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, the steely-eyed former intelligence officer and ex-head of the Russian secret police who only a year ago was a complete unknown.
But Yeltsin only started the long and still unfinished business of reforming Russia. If not for Yeltsin, Russia today might still be ruled by the Soviet Communist Party, either in reformist or Stalinist incarnation. Boris yeltsin’s passing from the world scene demonstrates once again how one man can change history.
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