>>>>True; what he does is paint himself as the Third Way: free enterprise combined with traditional morals.
The big lie here is not that the West is liberal but that Putin is therefore what Russia needs. For one thing, the “free enterprise” in Russia chiefly consists of ex-KGB cronies stealing whatever is not bolted down and putting the proceeds off-shore.<<<<
South Korea, Singapore, Japan and many other developed nations has started this way. It hasn’t prevented transition to better political structures. What is your alternative for Russians for now? Free republic of old American style could be easily corrupted if implemented carelessly on post-communist society (and Russian history of 1990s with Soros de-facto on top proves it). Putinism is a huge improvement to both Soviet communism and early post-Soviet Yeltsinist ‘Open Society’.
I don’t know about South Korea et al., but in Russian Putin and Putinism actively prevent “transition to better political structures”. For one thing Putin could immediately do an electoral reform so that political parties of any description could be registered and election mechanics are transparent. He can immediately implement media reform so that opposing views can be aired on television. He could release political prisoners and stop jailing new ones, for example, by repealing the “extremism” article of the criminal code, designed to specifically persecute the right wing. These are things he could do in a week’s time if he wanted a “transition to better political structures” at all.
Then there is an issue of non-existent business climate, for which at the present time the Kremlin with its ex-KGB power base is to blame. Presently, to do business in Russia one has to have political connections with Putin’s cronies in United Russia, in which case your business is above the law. If you do it by the books and gain success you will be “raided” by government officials on an arbitrary pretext and lose your business, so that a politically chosen “businessman” can profit from it. This is why Russia has Paris prices and Cairo wages, in case you wondered.
Then there is a constant reintroduction of symbolisms and methods of the Soviet system. In Russia it is not mere symbolism: it is artificially shoring up the servile mentality incompatible with economic and political freedom. There is a cult of the Soviet-German (so-called “Patriotic”) war which fosters a longing for restoration of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. These attitudes are a brake on normal development of Russia as a peaceful European power striving for prosperity alongside its neighbors.
Under Putin the trajectory for Russia is nothing like what happened with the Southeast Asian “tigers”. Instead Russia will further drift into and African style natural resource colony of the West till it breaks up along its internal ethnic lines, and what was under the Czars a European cultural and economic powerhouse will be a starving wasteland.
Lastly, what is exactly wrong with “Free republic of old American style”? Yeltsinist/Soros “open society” was, remember, a system of secret pillage of the natural and at the time yet significant industrial resource among the KGB and the Communist Party cronies, to which a few wily foreigners were given token access. The trouble with Russia is that Yeltsin did not put a clear break with the Soviet past starting with lustration of the communist and KGB functionaries, so that enterprise could develop on a clean slate. He couldn’t, of course, — he would have been himself lustrated. But he did a few things right: for example, he opened the archives so that the horrors of communism could be seen and learned from. Instead of driving away the demons of Communism further, Putin almost immediately started work on restoration of the Soviet mythology and Soviet political climate. As Putin’s rise to power was accompanied by rising oil prices Putin was able to procure hopes for future prosperity, and associate it with his person. Objectively, Putin was a huge step back from Yeltsin.