Putin Restores Middle-Class Confidence

[Purveyor]

When Russia's economy was devastated by financial crisis in August 1998, Roman Pavlov was one of many young graduates soon to feel the consequences. Fired from the marketing job he had secured shortly after graduating from a prestigious St Petersburg university, he was pitched into uncertainty. "There was a large price increase, empty shelves and a lack of work. We didn't know what was going to happen," he says.

Struggling to make ends meet from a tiny room in a rundown student hostel near St Petersburg's Prospekt Bolshevikov, then a grim Soviet parade of high-rise flats, he remembers the sense of national humiliation as Russia lurched from one crisis to another under Boris Yeltsin's erratic presidency.

"There was the sharp feeling we were the losers in the cold war. We didn't just owe a lot of money to the west but we were being forced to dance to the west's tune," he says.

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The economy has soared for seven successive years, while the oil boom has helped Russia pay off most of its debts. "We have begun to talk on an equal level with the US. This is Mr Putin's major achievement."

This renewed national pride and the confidence of an emerging middle class made up by the likes of Mr Pavlov are significant reasons why, as Russia heads towards parliamentary elections on Sunday, ratings for United Russia, the main pro-Kremlin party, have stayed above 50 per cent. Since Mr Putin announced he would head the party list, its rating soared to more than 60 per cent, according to Russian polls, although recent unofficial data suggest that it has since fallen back.

The president's anti-western rhetoric - such as gibes against foreigners poking their "snotty noses" into Russia's affairs and the revival of cold-war practices such as sorties by strategic bombers - have been popular. Independent observers, such as Boris Dubin from the Levada Center, believe Mr Putin's clampdown on demo­cracy has helped shore up the country's fortunes rather than cause harm.

---EOE---

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22044021/

[Captain Hilts]

1. At times, it seemed like all the wrong Westerners went to Russia...

greedy businessmen, and over-sexed businessmen and graduate students who all drank too much.

[liberalmuse]

2. I'm not saying he's JFK or anything, but he's smart...

and knows how to hang onto power. If you secure the approval of the middle class, you can't go wrong, really.