Based on a close monitoring of the election campaign and the reports of Russian political scientists, the author analyzes the remarkable rise to power of President Vladimir Putin.

Putin's ascent is a logical outcome of certain systemic features of the Yeltsin regime, such as patronage, populism, and the concentration of power in presidential hands. At the same time, Putin has a reformist agenda, since he recognizes that given new global realities, some structural features of Yeltsin's system of rule must be changed if Russia is to recover some of its lost strength and prosperity