I'm a long-time student of Russian history. If you watch what's happening in Russia today culturally, there is a great deal of nostalgia for the Tsars. The Russians are also mythologizing of the old Tsarist White Army and its betrayed leader, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, who somewhat resembles Putin.
In fact, one of the most successful recent films in Russia was Admiral, which presents a romanticized "lost cause" view of Kolchak's later career as an Imperial Russian naval officer and leader of the White forces in Siberia during the Russian Civil War, never minding the inconvenient fact that Kolchak was in reality just as big a butcher as Trotsky.
Anyway, Communism aside, the Russians have always loved their Tsars and still do, and Putin plays on that to maintain his hold on power. I suspect that he thinks that he is indeed a modern day Kolchak.