NEW YORK TIMES: Vladimir V. Putin on Monday published his most personal explanation to date of his decision to return to the Russian presidency, rejecting the possibility of swift political change and casting himself in a historical context as the figure who must lead Russia out of a long, painful “zone of turbulence” that is just beginning. …
“A recurring problem in Russian history is the desire of a part of its elites to make leaps, to embrace revolution instead of sequential development,” the document said. “Not only Russian experience, but all world experience shows the fatal result of historic leaps: haste and subversion , without creation.”
Mr. Putin went on to argue that a new set of leaders would be equally vulnerable to corruption, “parasitism,” and stagnation, failings he says are chronic in Russian officialdom. “At every opportunity,” he wrote, “the ‘subverters’ before our eyes become ‘self-satisfied gentlemen,’ who oppose any changes and jealously guard their status and privileges. Or the reverse — the ‘gentlemen’ turn into ‘subverters.’ … (more)
