Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s victory in presidential elections “may be both Putin’s last and the final one for Putinism”, The Washington Post reported on Friday, quoting Former U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice.
“The future turns on the behavior of a rising Russian middle class that is integrated into the world and alienated by the Kremlin’s corrupt politics,” Rice said.
“He has gotten his way - replacing his protege Dmitry Medvedev and reclaiming the Kremlin to solidify authoritarianism and political stagnation,” she said, describing Putin’s victory in the presidential election in a landslide on Sunday.
Rice remembered the first time she was in the Soviet Union in 1979 and was struck by the Stalin’s repressions imprint that imposed Soviet people. She says that things now are different, despite the fact that Putin destroyed the judicial independence, closed the independent television and appointed governors rather than voters elected them.
Former U.S. State Secretary says that the representatives of the Russian creative class are studying at prestigious business schools in Europe and the United States and no longer watch “Kremlin’s mouthpiece”, Russian TV. “The Internet flourished as a place where alternative voices were heard,” Rice said. But even the middle class in Moscow, St. Petersburg, “or Vladivostok” have become used to normal lives and “have different expectations for the future.”
“Putin has staked his legitimacy on prosperity and order, but he seemed not to understand that a prosperous population would demand respect, too. Many are fed up with a political system that sometimes behaves more like a natural resources syndicate than a national government,” Rice added.
