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The old German saying remains true:

“Russia remains Russia” (Russland bleibt Russland)

Putin made, in my mind, a very good choice early on to blend the “best of Russia” into modern Russia. That is, an ala carte selection of what he thinks was the best of Czarist Russia and Soviet Russia. Importantly, this is mostly symbolic. The critical thing will be what organizational structure he creates, and how well it functions with his successors.

Running Russia was never easy. The Czars were balanced with the noble landlords, who owned large country agricultural estates. But everything of moment happened in Moscow. Over time, this over-centralization became a problem.

Peter the Great build a new capital, St. Petersburg, and tried to embrace European ideas, that ended up making Russia a half-European, half-Asiatic nation. A wise choice because by World War I, Russia was the fourth largest industrial power in the world.

Had the Russian any other form of government than communists, they might have very well dominated the world; but the communists were so incredibly wasteful and inefficient that they kept Russia down. However, even they had one semi-reasonable idea, borrowed from the US. The idea of the balance of power in the government.

However, the balance was odd, between the communist party, the Soviet Army, and the KGB. When one got too strong, the other two would ban together, to cut it down to size.

Because of WWII, the Soviet Army was the most powerful, and only in Brezhnev’s later years were they finally cut down to size in a huge purge of their commanders. Since then, the KGB dominated, and with the fall of the communist party, the KGB effectively took over much of the inner workings of the government. Putin was a KGB man.

Russia is not easy to manage. Fortunately for them, their leader loves his country, is patriotic, and wants to improve it. There are worse things you can get in leaders.