Strongman, The

autocratic rule (and the residual fears of a KGB state) mean that many Russians give answers to pollsters (even independent ones) that they think the government wants to hear.
    Putin remains, though, the most popular politician in Russia, despite his failings and failures. For part of the answer to this conundrum, read again his favourite song, which I translated at the end of Chapter 11. It may sound maudlin and cheesy to Westerners, and it might be scorned by the sophisticated and cynical Russian intellectuals who loathe Putin and everything he stands for. But you could go into millions of Russian homes and find people going watery-eyed over Sovietera classics. It doesn’t mean they are all old communists! The chord that Putin strikes among millions of Russians is one of nostalgia – for simpler days, for ‘equality’, for comradeship, unity, the wartime spirit that lasted so much longer in Russia than anywhere else. These things are real. Alien perhaps to most Westerners, but real.
    The mass of the Russian public is not generally the same as ‘average’ Westerners. In a television contest in 2008 to find ‘the greatest Russian’, Stalin came in third place – and, it is thought, would have come first if the authorities had not rigged the result to avoid complete embarrassment.
    In Chapter 1 I pointed to the mistaken Western (especially American) belief that Russia was just a Western country waiting to be freed. Putin plays to that part of the Russian mind that rebels, instinctively, against that. He speaks for those who want to have a Western economy and enjoy all the benefits of it, but who want to find their own path towards that future, and recoil from some of the West’s failings. He speaks for those who want Russia to be respected in the world – and, sadly, for those millions who mistakenly confuse respect with fear. And he speaks for those who simply love Russia and savour its uniqueness – those who infuriate Westerners like myself who genuinely endeavour to ‘understand’ it, by smirking at us, saying: ‘You’ll never understand the Russian soul.’
    If only Putin had combined his intuition with an instinct for democracy, and trust in the people’s choice, he would have been a great leader.
    But Putin does not really understand democracy. As we have seen, he believes that American presidents can have pesky newscasters removed from their jobs. He falls for conspiracy theories (the Georgia war was started to help Senator McCain) and believes nonsense served to him by his intelligence service (America has separate poultry factories producing substandard chickens to sell to Russia). He has created a system where (he believes) nothing will happen properly if he does not personally supervise it: after the outbreak of wildfires in the summer of 2010 he even had CCTV monitors installed in damaged villages so that he could monitor the progress of reconstruction work from his own office.
    His style of leadership includes publicly berating officials on television, sometimes forcing them to change their policies on the spot, because the cameras are whirring. An example:
    Vladimir Putin: I want to understand how many Russian airplanes Aeroflot is going to buy. Otherwise the situation is that you want to dominate the domestic market, but don’t want to buy domestic equipment. That’s no good.
    Vitaly Savelyev (Director General of Aeroflot): But we are buying Russian-built planes ...
    Vladimir Putin: Not enough of them.
    Vitaly Savelyev: All right, we will draw up plans. I will report back.
    Vladimir Putin: Good.
    Putin instituted a tradition (continued by Medvedev) of having the opening of every cabinet meeting recorded and shown on television news, apparently in the belief that this demonstrates openness and democracy. In fact, it means that government sessions turn into shows. Instead of a natural and perhaps difficult discussion in the privacy of the cabinet room, there is a speech by Putin and, at best, a stilted dialogue with ministers. No Western government televises its cabinet sessions, and no one would expect this to happen, because difficult decisions can only be taken in private. Putin has thus taken a superficially ‘democratic’ idea – televising the decision-makers – and turned it into an instrument of dictatorship.
    Putin revealed his flawed understanding of media freedom when he visited the studios of Channel One in February 2011. He told journalists: ‘I think representatives