Apologists and critics of the Putin’s epoch are similar in contrasting it to that of Yeltsin.

Some say that Putin’s times were dedicated to overcoming the consequences of the “chaos” and “disorganization” of the early 90’s. Some say that, on the contrary, this has been a period of giving up any democratic and reforming achievements. Some curse the “troubled” 90’s; others blame the “gloomy” 2000’s. Some demand for continuation of today’s course, while others call to returning to the previous one.   

All that reminds of a popular in its time hypothesis about “Stalin’s perversions” of the Lenin’s doctrine. In Perestroika times it turned out that there was no principal difference between Lenin’s and Stalin’s course, and that it was necessary not to look for authentic drawings and designs, but use the absolutely different design for building the society and the new social system.   

Alas! We are facing the same vicious circle, and it is necessary today, like it was in the 80’s, to replace the whole system.  

The Putin’s epoch is a logical continuation of the Yeltsin’s one: all what happened during “gloomy” 2000’s was originated in the “troubled” 90’s. Yes, we got a gulp of freedom then: multi-party system, independent media, and market competition. But believing that the negative processes started only in Putin’s epoch would mean misunderstanding or even hushing up the essence of what is going on.  

The Putin’s epoch is symbolized with the authoritarian vertical, irremovability of the authority, state control over the media, actual abolition of the federalism, flourishing of the corruption, and dependent courts. Of course, the war in Chechnya is to be added in the list. But practically all that was also characteristic of the previous regime. 

Yes, the vertical was built and the authorized representing on behalf of the President was institutionalized, and the governor elections were canceled at Putin. But the first discussion about whether governors should be elected or appointed took pace in autumn 1991. And the arguments by Boris Yeltsin about necessity of appointing the heads of the regions instead of electing them were similar to those used by Vladimir Putin in 2004. The only difference is that Putin convinced that the elected governors would not be able to provide for the unity of the authority under conditions of war against terrorism, while Yeltsin argued that the adversaries of the reforms might win in the governor’s elections. The electiveness of the governors was anyway chosen at Yeltsin’s times, but that happened only in 1996 after the “promoted” people had built up a system of administrative resource allowing them getting re-elected without any problems. And later it was only one elector to remain for the governors – that’s the president.        

The authorized representative offices acting on behalf of the president were also first introduced at the Yeltsin’s period, but that was done in the regions, not in the federal districts. The purpose was same – holding the governors under control and having possibility, if necessary, to make a pressure on them with the use of the law enforcement agencies. Finally, the word “vertical of power” is no Putin’s invention; it first appeared 20 March 1993 in the Yeltsin’s decree about so called “special governing” the country. 

Yes, today the system of political competition has been eliminated, and the elections are held with a predicted result, and the authority can afford ignoring the citizen’s opinion. But the political system allowing the authority being independent on the society was also started to be built in the Yeltsin’s epoch where it was decided to sacrifice democracy for the sake of economic reforms. 

Those who carried out the reforms ignoring the interests of the majority, they realized they would be replaced at the free elections by people discontent with their policy. To prevent that, they dissolved the parliament and composed an authoritarian Constitution putting the president out of parliamentary control. Then they built an elective system that manifested itself first in 1996 when all the power of the state machinery was used for the victory by Boris Yeltsin. The governors and mayors “provided” for the right figures, while Central Elective commission and the prosecutor’s office turned a blind eye to any violations by the President’s campaigning staff. 

Exactly such a system was used in all further elections, becoming the mechanism of self-preserving by the authority. Incidentally, the elective legislation of the 1990 has been the most liberal in the modern Russian history, as then it was easy to run for being a deputy of any level of authority.  

Today most part of the media is controlled by the Kremlin.

But this began not at Putin. It’s enough to remember the infamous Federal Information Center headed by Mikhail Poltoranin. That was a propagandist monster uniting the state electronic media. Only odious figures like Makashov or Anpilov were allowed to be opponents to the President speaking on the air. That was done so that president’s supporters could say “can you see who our opponents are?”   

Now systematic elimination of federalism and redistribution of the budget revenue to the advantage of the federal center is going on. But in Yeltsin’s times the center was also trying to get hold of more budget means: in 1993 65% of the collected taxes remained in the regions, and at the beginning of 2000 the figure was only 50%.

It’s exactly Yeltsin’s decrees that formed the authoritarian regimes in the provinces, making local parliaments to be just appendages to the administrations. It’s Yeltsin’s decrees that actually eliminated the local self-government. Corruption, theft of the means from the budget and appropriation of the revenue out of the use of the natural resources became the system problem at Yeltsin too. 

All the mentioned above processes were not so well developed in the 90’s as they became to be in the 2000’s. Well, the river demonstrates its force in the downstream. The authoritarian stream that accumulated the force in the 90’s – and some today’s critics of the Putin regime have contributed to that! – has absorbed the country today, and no one knows how long it will take us to stop it.