Excerpt: The church’s “Third Rome” legacy-reinforced by Soviet personality cults and a pervasive prison culture that celebrates strong leadership-underpins the concept of the ideal Russian leader as a divinely chosen autocrat. Thus Putin simply couldn’t afford a second-round runoff in the presidential elections. From a democratic point of view,a runoff-even if staged-would have helped confer legitimacy by introducing an element of competition. But any sort of challenge would have been a blow against Putin’s quasi-monarchical aura.
Read the full article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/09/putin-s-god-squad-the-orthodox-church-and-russian-politics.print.html
One comment
I believe the Russian population is far above all this and they are smart enough to chose the right one from the religious one.