Russia

"A lot of the continuities I see are really more focused on the internal evolution of the system. I think that a lot of what people, certainly in the West, criticize Putin for certain kinds of authoritarian behavior, reining in the regions, control of the press, galloping corruption–all of these things were not only present under Yeltsin, but actually the foundations were laid during the Yeltsin years for what then developed under Putin. The clearest example I can think of this is the constitution. That was imposed after this slightly dodgy referendum in 1993. All of Putin’s presidential power derived from that moment where Yeltsin resolved the conflict with the Parliament by force.

If you want to undo this contrast between Yeltsin, the democrat, and Putin the authoritarian, all you’ve got to do is look at that moment and then you understand that in that particular moment when a liberal, or someone committed to a liberal free market transformation of Russia, when Yeltsin was in charge of this quite authoritarian constitutional setup, that was perfectly fine. When someone with a slightly different emphasis is placed in charge of the same structure, the West suddenly has a totally different attitude. But fundamentally, that structure, what Russian leaders were able to do is legally the same."

Russia Without Putin
An interview with Tony Wood