Russia like America has people that are way to conservative in their views and postures to survive the emerging massively youthful feminine and religiously liberal technology based communications and information revolutions. Call it Marxist dialectic, Marcusian one dimensional development, whatever? Old ideas are dying faster than band aids to prop them up. The events we see today will make Putin seem like your great great great great grandad. Out of touch, obsolete, a mouse.....
Russia is still embedded in Stalinism. The polemic is the blame game. Blame failure on everyone else other than Russia's philosophical and socially depressing peasant underpinnings. Russia is a troubled community plagued by hangovers of a slave like past, where brilliance was the possession of the few and blandness the possession of the vast majority. Steeped in oppression the Russian mind has not emerged from the enormous limitations of its dull cold past. Frozen in time like a thought stuck in a ice cube Russian leaders expose ideas that serve only to diminish human dignity and perpetuate servility.
One has to really wonder now while Russia rattles it's sabres near the Ukraine border whether long term weakness of the Russian economy and recklessness under Putin SFB leadership might not precipitate its internal decline. Russia has blamed everyone but itself for its catastrophes in history. A slave mentality still lingers. In a country where soldiers have been, for many decades, treated no better than slaves, such historical logic could unfold as the charisma of Putin, the warrior hero, wears thin. It's too much a cliché. Unable to diversify to compete effectively within the world economy as fossil fuels are to be deliberately left disused, Russia needs to join a political and economic arrangement that secures it's peaceful development. Failure to do so means it would lag behind. Russian leaders are still more nutty than the American tea party. Don't get me started on what ails conservative America.
While Putin has allowed freedom of religious expression this has been restrained because of the religious duality existing across Russia's sphere of influence. Chechen revolution damaged Russia as can fear that the Russian economy as it is developing has limited potential despite vast resources useful to other economic communities. Putin is more dependent on the West and it's ethos of individual greed and development than he realizes. What's needed is individualism with a social conscience as is so common in Western societies. Putin needs this more than he presently realizes. It would save Russia, giving it great status in the world as a social economic leader. First curb the greed of oligarchs then promote true socialism in Russia combined with liberal ideals favouring youth and women. It's an opportunity for Putin if he could only put on another thinking cap, use his brain, and become more West than the West and more East than the East.
More and more economic strength comes from freedoms derived from sharing liberal ideas, genuine socialist principles of sharing and caring and building on a wide diversity of services for the people. Willingness to embrace a more open secular society may not be characteristic of Russia, which muzzles genuine participation of youth and women in a truly open pluralistic society. Putin anchors the country to its historic past which does not serve the Russian community's need to express itself in self sustaining business and social arrangements that are not vulnerable to the wims of archaic dictatorial leadership under the late Yeltsin appointee, Putin turned hero.