Why "Tsar"? I remind readers that the authors of the "Yeltsin" constitution themselves admitted that they had decided to draft the section on power in such a way as to give the Russian president the powers of a British queen.
Coronation (i.e. inauguration)
Putin's first coronation took place on 7 May 2000. Here is how Putin biographer Chris Hutchins describes the event: "As 30 cannons fired a presidential salute and a company of Kremlin guards marched to the accompaniment of a military band, the boy from Baskov Lane was sworn in as Russia's second elected President"....
Hutchins goes on to quote Time magazine reporters' description of Putin: "He (Putin) is so colourless, so ordinary, that it is impossible to distinguish him in a crowd. The curious eye has nothing to linger on when contemplating his lean figure and polite, inexpressive face" .... "Look at his eyes. Grey as steel. "Cold as Siberian ice. They stare into you, but you can't penetrate them. Sometimes they're a mirror, reflecting what you want to see. Sometimes they're a mask to cover your true intentions. Those eyes are Putin's strongest feature, aside from his indomitable will." (© K. Hutchins: "Putin." - Moscow: ZAO OLMA Media Group, 2012).
(As I recall, my grandmother used to call such an eye expression: "His eyes are like those of an ice-cream pike-perch" - my note).
After being sworn in, Putin and his wife (then Lyudmila Putina) went to the Annunciation Church in the Kremlin, where Patriarch Alexy II conducted a blessing service. It is probably not by chance that this service resembled very much the rite of crowning. True, Russian emperors were crowned not in the Church of the Annunciation, but in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin.
The inauguration also differed from the crowning ceremony in that its state part (the presentation of the symbols of power) took place not in a church but in the Grand Kremlin Palace, but then (after Putin and his wife had entered the church) during the divine service the church part (the sacrament of anointing) corresponded to the traditional rite of crowning Russian emperors.
Hutchins in his book "Putin" quotes one of Putin's "friends" as saying that when the "friends" congratulated Putin and asked him what it was like to be President, Putin replied, "Better than selling bananas."
And after the celebrations were over, Putin moved on to solving problems, including those he had "inherited" from Yeltsin.
And then Putin discovered that many problems can be solved very easily if you use the "powers of the British Queen," which are not written in the Constitution, but are tacitly embedded in it. Except that unlike Queen Elizabeth II, who traditionally did not use these powers, Putin decided to discard unwritten British traditions, and then it turned out that he actually received unlimited royal powers, which only a small number of absolute monarchs left in the world today have.
And this allows him to completely abandon the liberal ideas of the "rule of law", even without formally violating the letter of the Basic Law of Russia.
Therefore, Putin has chosen for himself the image of a strong and harsh father of the nation, a "good and just tsar", which serves as a justification for his authoritarian rule and a way to win the support of citizens.
I will try to write a brief history of the construction of "Putin's Russia":
- An introductory article on the succession to the throne.
- About the first sweep that gave the future opportunity to rebuild the country.
- Putin inherited a rotten kingdom, but he got the first steps right, but then.
- What is the difference between "Putin's Russia" and the rule of law.
- Why is Putin in fact the tsar of Russia? What is "Putin's Russia" and what is "Putinism".
- Putin's Russia is not a dictatorship but a mafia state.
- Bom and Bim at the United Russia congress.
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