@RusA #9858754 I don't know about Soeharto, but I do know a bit about how Putin became so powerful.
The Soviet Union was falling apart in the Seventies, and when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader, he decided to do something about it. Reforming the Soviet system didn't work, so he declared the Soviet Union dissolved, replaced by a commonwealth consisting of the Russian Federation and all the former SSRs that were now independent states.
Boris Yeltsin was elected President in 1991, but he was an inept leader, and nobody really knew how to run a democratic system. So the oligarchs (businessmen who controlled enough resources to influence public policy) bought up state assets and made themselves even richer, plus the Mafiya (organized crime) came to control much of society. You had to pay bribes to everyone, even the police, to get anything done. Common news story at the time: Prominent businessman is shot to death in a restaurant; police first investigate his ties to organized crime. Or: prominent businessman found dead in his swimming pool with his hands and feet bound with duct tape; police rule it a suicide.
When Putin was elected, he started taking control away from the oligarchs and mobsters. He either folded the oligarchs into his government or had them eliminated, eventually re-taking control of former state assets (like radio and TV and various business interests) by accusing the oligarchs of "corruption" and throwing them in prison. He also reduced the reach of the Mafiya, forcing many to set up shop overseas.
And to be sure, a lot of Russians like Putin as a strong leader who keeps things in good order. His party, United Russia, is by far the largest, and each election is pretty much vote for Putin or vote for the candidate of a dozen or so fringe parties that nobody in their right mind would vote for anyway. After the chaos of the Yeltsin years, many Russians are happy that things are ordered and predictable; plus they've lived under authoritarian leaders (first the Tsars, then the Soviets) for centuries, so Putin's authoritarian ways is just kind of normal for them. Also, in spite of what the Soviets wanted us to think, Russians are a deeply religious people, and Putin's freeing up the Russian Orthodox Church and making the Patriarch of Moscow practically a government official, appeals to them in ways that others really can't understand.
To many Russians, "democracy" means disorder and upredictability, and they're perfectly fine with what Putin used to call "managed democracy", with him as the manager, of course! If there's one reason people vote for Putin in every election, it's the fear that if they don't, the whole country is going to fall into chaos again, with nobody running the government, oligarchs collecting bribes and criminals running loose, and the average person being poor and miserable.
0
@RusA #9858754 I don't know about Soeharto, but I do know a bit about how Putin became so powerful.
The Soviet Union was falling apart in the Seventies, and when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader, he decided to do something about it. Reforming the Soviet system didn't work, so he declared the Soviet Union dissolved, replaced by a commonwealth consisting of the Russian Federation and all the former SSRs that were now independent states.
Boris Yeltsin was elected President in 1991, but he was an inept leader, and nobody really knew how to run a democratic system. So the oligarchs (businessmen who controlled enough resources to influence public policy) bought up state assets and made themselves even richer, plus the Mafiya (organized crime) came to control much of society. You had to pay bribes to everyone, even the police, to get anything done. Common news story at the time: Prominent businessman is shot to death in a restaurant; police first investigate his ties to organized crime. Or: prominent businessman found dead in his swimming pool with his hands and feet bound with duct tape; police rule it a suicide.
When Putin was elected, he started taking control away from the oligarchs and mobsters. He either folded the oligarchs into his government or had them eliminated, eventually re-taking control of former state assets (like radio and TV and various business interests) by accusing the oligarchs of "corruption" and throwing them in prison. He also reduced the reach of the Mafiya, forcing many to set up shop overseas.
And to be sure, a lot of Russians like Putin as a strong leader who keeps things in good order. His party, United Russia, is by far the largest, and each election is pretty much vote for Putin or vote for the candidate of a dozen or so fringe parties that nobody in their right mind would vote for anyway.
To many Russians, "democracy" means disorder and upredictability, and they're perfectly fine with what Putin used to call "managed democracy", with him as the manager, of course! If there's one reason people vote for Putin in every election, it's the fear that if they don't, the whole country is going to fall into chaos again, with nobody running the government, oligarchs collecting bribes and criminals running loose, and the average person being poor and miserable.