MUNICH, Germany, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The decisive but predictable victory of President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party in Russia's parliamentary elections Sunday was based on a new ideology of Russian nationalism and on a massive feel-good factor.
Putin's seven years of rule have combined with the explosive rise in oil and gas prices to deliver a surge in incomes, jobs and living standards. When Putin came into office seven years ago, Russia's gross domestic product stood at $260 billion, about the same as that of tiny Denmark. Today Russia's GDP is more than $1.1 trillion, close to that of Brazil.
What that means for Russians is that when Putin came to power, average income per head was less than $2,000, while today it is more than $7,500. No wonder his party won a resounding victory; not many leaders can claim to have more than tripled average incomes in just seven years.
But as well as delivering a prosperity that Russians have not seen for a generation, and probably even greater than in the first oil boom years of the 1970s, Putin has also delivered a great boost to national pride. After the Soviet collapse in 1991 and the chaotic decline of the Boris Yeltsin years, Russia once again matters in world affairs.
Whether in the fate of Serbia and Kosovo, the stability of the Caucasus region and of Central Asia and whether or not Ukraine's reformers will be able to reach their goal of joining the NATO alliance, Russia's views are crucial.
Russia's veto at the United Nations may well prove decisive in the attempt to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions. It is an open question whether the Bush administration will be able to install its planned anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic after Russia has made its opposition so clear.
This new national pride has come with a stiff price. A cult of personality has developed around Putin himself, though his plans for remaining in power (if not in office) after the presidential elections in March are not yet clear.
Opposition and political critics have been suppressed or marginalized, and condemned by Putin in last week's election speech as foreign hirelings, almost as traitors.
"Those who confront us need a weak and ill state. They want to have a divided society, in order to do their deeds behind its back," Putin told a political rally at a sports stadium. "Regrettably, there are those inside the country who feed off foreign embassies like jackals and count on support of foreign funds and governments, and not their own people."
Although opposition newspapers are still tolerated in Moscow, most of the press and all of Russian TV now toe the Kremlin line. The electoral rules were changed to ensure that Russia's liberal or pro-Western opposition parties will not be represented in the new Parliament. The opposition in the new Duma now rests with the truncated and discredited Communist Party, whose support is based on the elderly and is steadily dying off.
Above all, Russia's new presence in the world is based less on respect than on less savory qualities: fear in the case of Georgia and Ukraine and nervousness about energy supplies in an increasingly dependent Europe and Japan. And in the United States, there is growing concern about Russia's ability to play the spoiler in international affairs. The Wall Street Journal in an editorial last week suggested that it was time to start thinking of Russia "as an enemy" again.
All this needs to be put into a clear-eyed perspective. The reality is that Russia is a paper tiger. Its military is a shrunken ghost of the Red Army's glory days. It retains a massive but obsolescent and mostly rusting nuclear arsenal. Its air force and navy are under-equipped, under-funded and lack training. And despite new spending on an enlarged police force, the murder rate is higher than it was under Yeltsin.
Even with its energy wealth, Russia, with well over double the population of Britain, has an economy half the size. It has one of the world's worst demographic profiles. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian population was 151 million. Seventeen years later it is now 143 million and thanks to vodka, suicides, and a drug and AIDS epidemic, there are more deaths than births each year. The birth rate is a pitiful 1.3 per woman of childbearing age; at this rate, Russia's population could dip below 100 million in Putin's lifetime.
The economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas, but Russia's known oil reserves will run out within 25 years. Under-investment in maintenance and notoriously leaky pipelines are putting sharp limits on Russian production, even as domestic consumption eats away at the supplies available for export.
Beyond other raw materials like nickel and metals like aluminum and arms exports there is not much of a non-oil economy in Russia to take up the slack. Inflation has risen back into double digits, and the country's infrastructure -- its roads and bridges and ports and transmission lines -- has barely begun to see Putin's promised improvements.
Maybe Putin knew what he was doing when he promised to stand down as president after serving two terms. His replacement will not only have a hard act to follow, but a tough economic and social agenda, and a daunting political challenge as he tries to navigate the corrupt and fractious clans and interest groups that have gathered around Putin's throne.
Above all, the next Russian president is likely to be in office but not in power, facing the disruptive presence of Putin himself, whether as party boss, as new head of the national security council or whatever other post-presidential slot Putin chooses to retain his influence. However sweeping the election victory, Russia's political future is likely to be messy.
