Far from destroying the legacies of Yeltsin’s neoliberal restructuring, Putin in many crucial ways preserved and extended them. There are, to be sure, differences between the style and temperament of the two leaders, but there has been no fundamental change in the character of the system itself. Indeed, the 1990s and 2000s should be seen as two phases in the evolution of the same system: first, a turbulent period in which the Soviet order was destroyed and a new capitalist model installed — with enthusiastic backing from the West — followed by a period of stabilization and consolidation, as the new model sank its roots deep into the country’s socio-economic soil. Throughout, the system’s main priority has been to defend capitalism in Russia — if necessary at the expense of democracy, as the consistent resort to electoral rigging, from the 1990s to the present, demonstrates. The authoritarianism for which Putin is widely criticized is not the product of any sinister personal preference, but rather an integral feature of the system he inherited and has continued.

—Tony Wood, Russia Without Putin, (Verso, 2018), 4-5.