Eight years of Putin in the Russian Presidency: A balance

Problems to Resolve

Also there are immense economic and social inequalities between Moscow and the rest of the country: the urban zone of the Russian capital contributes with a third entire national GNP, having only 10 % of the population. Though the situation in many regions has improved in the last years, they are far from presenting the same energy as Moscow. This is due to an administrative system that, though it is a federation according to the constitution, in practice is too centralized. Also the number of ethnic crimes is growing against respective non-Slavic persons, principally in Moscow. For an enormous country, stretching out of the Baltic to a peace-loving one and with more than hundreds of different peoples, the centralism and the intolerance are serious threats.

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Conclusion

It is obvious that Putin will not disappear from the political scene in next four years, but will keep on practicing an enormous influence when he in no longer president, since the population will vote in mass for the person who was designated his successor (Dmitry Medvedev, current deputy prime minister), and will do something to be formally inside the government and to be able to control it better (probably he will be a prime minister, according to his last declarations). But while doing a careful and fair study of his government, it is difficult to identify the Russian president with a tyrant thirsty for unlimited power, and the attempts to compare him with Stalin or Mussolini are absurd.

Also the conspiracy theories, defended mainly for Litvinenko and Politkovskaya, credulously repeated by many western media, do not hold up to the facts: they allege that all of the terrorist attacks in Russia in fact were plotted by the president and the FSB, with the intention to maintain an eternal war in the Caucasus and to perpetuate himself in the power. The efficient battle against terrorism, the relative stability of the Caucasian republics and the choice of Medvedev (a man that never was part of the intelligence service or security forces, and with reputation of being a liberal) as the successor of Putin are facts that testify to the emptiness of such theories.

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