The Bear Rises

The symbol of this great Eurasian power perfectly characterizes modern-day Russia under the enigmatic Vladimir Putin, a man even his friends refer to as "the black box" – a book written in a strange language nobody can yet translate.

Putin has tamed the bear and is training it to do his bidding.

As NewsMax.com columnist Col. Stanislav Lunev has repeatedly warned, Putin has two main goals: to restore the Kremlin’s absolute power and to once again make Russia a dominant world power to be reckoned with. He is moving steadily toward both goals

In a recent in-depth examination of Putin’s slow but steady process of training the bear to do his will, Canada’s Toronto Globe & Mail newspaper detailed the Russian president’s victory over the once all-powerful oligarchs who control most of Russian business and industry and much of its wealth.

During his campaign to succeed Boris Yeltsin, Putin swore to eliminate the oligarchs, but only two of them – media barons Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky – have been forced into exile.

It is apparent that the Russian president found it convenient to allow the rest to hang on to their empires – as long as they know who the real boss is.

And now they do.

Vladimir Potanin is a 39-year-old banker and nickel tycoon who claims to control an astounding 4 percent of Russia’s gross national product.

"It is impossible to live in a country and to fight against the government's politics," Mr. Potanin told the Globe & Mail. "That might be all right for politicians, or for revolutionaries, but not for businessmen. Business cannot and should not fight against the state."

"The state" at the moment is Vladimir Putin, a man the newspaper says has "few apparent ideological convictions."

A political cipher, Putin on the one hand has harked back to the old Soviet state and resurrected the melody of the Soviet anthem, yet he has also sparked a new campaign to make capitalist market reforms.

And while he has used Russia's remaining military might in the brutal campaign to subjugate Chechnya, he has also pledged to pare down the size of the military dramatically.

"Yet if most of Mr. Putin's beliefs remain obscure (even his own election guru refers to him as a "black box"), one central tenet has emerged," The Globe & Mail observed.

"The President is convinced that in the 10-year transition from communism to something else, the Russian state has become catastrophically weakened.

The one unambiguous goal that has emerged from his first year in office has been an all-out campaign to rebuild the central state.

"On every front, Mr. Putin has won the battle."

• Despite the legislative power the Communists exercise as the largest party in the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, Putin has reined them in and they have remained more or less resigned to his dominance.

• The Upper House, the Federation Council, is loyal to Putin.

• The once-independent regional governors have been "battered into submission."

• The media, aside from a few outlets owned by Mr. Gusinsky, are now largely controlled by the state or its corporate allies. And the oligarchs have been tamed.

Putin has also launched a campaign abroad, building alliances that have restored Russia’s influence in central Asia, forged military and commercial ties with Communist China, and concluded mutual defense and cooperation treaties with India.

This past week, during a visit to Cuba, he has restored Russia’s relationship with Castro and promised economic cooperation with the Cuban dictator.

Putin’s so-far successful campaign to gather the reins of power in Kremlin hands is an attempt to overcome the anarchy that reigned supreme under Boris Yeltsin, but it has made the West uncomfortable as it recalls the bad old days of the Soviet Union when all power flowed from the Kremlin.

"A year ago, the response to the question "Who rules Russia?" was the terrifying "Nobody" – or an even more frightening answer: "Whichever local business prince has the most money and the biggest private army," according to the Globe & Mail.

Today there is no doubt who’s boss ⏇ Vladimir Putin rules Russia.

Under his rule, there has been a "consolidation" of Russian society, he told the Globe & Mail. "Today, we are able to secure consolidated voting on many key issues."

"If there is anything that Russia as a democratic society suffers from today, it is the complete and utter absence of opposition," Vitaly Tretyakov, editor of the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, told the Globe & Mail.

After silencing the governors and the oligarchs, the Kremlin has "seized the commanding heights of the electronic media," Mr. Tretyakov wrote recently. "The anti-Putin opposition that thrashed about feebly at the beginning of this year has long since been routed. ... In Russia today, there is no ideology that is competitive in the eyes of the people, other than the one indicated by the word 'Putin.' "

The idea of one-man dominance is not new to Russia. Stalin comes to mind. Putin has said he is an admirer of the ruthless dictator, and recently had the old Soviet anthem, first picked by Stalin, restored as the country's national anthem.

Most troubling to Putin’s critics is his tendency to give free rein to the security forces.

In the absence of any serious opposition, the FSB, successor of the infamous Soviet KGB; the oligarchs; and the small group of liberal reformers who remain in key posts in the finance and economics ministries dominate the Putin administration.

When Putin appointed seven "super-governors" to supervise Russia's 89 regions, almost all came out of the ranks of the military, the police or the security community, giving rise to further concerns that the president is slowly reverting to the repressive police-state mentality that ruled the Kremlin in the Soviet Union.

Clearly the Bear is awake – and thanks to Vladimir Putin, it’s baring its teeth and sharpening its claws.