What Russia's 2008 election promises to deliver is a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" regime. It will be--in everything but name--a third term for Putin since the same band of Chekisty (Russian slang for those from the intelligence and secret police ranks) will still be in charge.
Even worse, the new man will be trying to show that, like Putin, he can rule with an iron fist. This means belligerence and a search for scapegoats bordering on the irrational will be the order of the day. For a taste of things to come, ponder the anti-U.S. tirade from TASS's Sitov towards the end of the WAMU broadcast. It would have done the Russian ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky proud: "The Putin course will continue," Sitov declared. "He is saying this to the future U.S. president's administration. You need to know that the good old days when you could lie to Russia and steal from Russia, when you could trample on Russia--all those days are over."
In 1995, longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin released his memoirs, In Confidence, which were reviewed by Steven Merritt Miner in Foreign Affairs. Miner's conclusion was that "one puts down this hefty book with a nagging worry. Dobrynin has advanced a stab-in-the-back theory explaining the Soviet collapse. How widespread this view is among the Russian elite remains to be seen. But carrying as it does a sense of betrayal, xenophobia, and imperial longing, it is a dangerous sentiment. One hopes it never becomes the
reigning ideology."
Twelve years later nothing could be clearer than that it is the reigning ideology--and will continue to be so--in Putin's third term.
Reuben F. Johnson writes frequently on Russian politics.
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