John Rapley

Russian President Vladimir Putin once called the Soviet Union's collapse a catastrophe. This past week, he lamented that the world now has only one superpower - and it isn't Russia.

At home, he has locked up some of the oligarchs who got rich off the massive organised theft that was Russia's 1990s privatisation programme, and then taken some of their assets back into state hands. All in all, one could be forgiven for concluding that Mr. Putin has launched a gradualist counter-revolution in Russia, bit by bit restoring Russia's communist ways.

But there is more to it than that. Counter-revolution there may be. But if Mr. Putin is trying to return Russia to its past glories, it may be to bring his homeland all the way back to its pre-1917 Tsarist past.

Despite its populist rhetoric, the Kremlin campaign against the oligarchs is not motivated by socialism. Notall the oligarchs are being reined in, only those who have used their wealth to patronise the political opposition or support critical media. The smart oligarchs content themselves with buying English football clubs and cozying up to Moscow, and thereby escaping unscathed.

Opposition politicians and journalists feel the Kremlin's heavy hand the most. Just this week, electoral officials used a dubious technicality to bar a liberal opposition party from running in the St. Petersburg legislative elections. As if such harassment is needed: Putin virtually controls the country's Parliament, which is filled with pro-Kremlin legislators, and he can all but appoint his successor.

Nevertheless, he leaves no hostages to fortune. When the muckraking journalist Anna Politkovskaya was recently murdered, suspicion fell upon the Government. Pressed for a comment at a press conference - which, because it was abroad, Mr. Putin couldn't stage-manage - the Russian president let slip the icy remark that she wasn't an important journalist anyhow, hardly the stern denial solicited.

Little desire to use media

However, there's no sign the Kremlin wants to control the media for ideological reasons. It shows little desire of using newspapers, magazines, television or radio to convey the party line, as happened in communist days.

Despite Mr. Putin's personal religious faith, he does not seem concerned that Russian airwaves are filled with reality television programmes that would make Paris Hilton smile with admiration.

As long as they do not offer hostile political messages - and it's a bit of a stretch to imagine Ms. Hilton and her ilk ever bothering much with that - the media enjoy plenty of freedom. Indeed, Russia's arts are thriving once again.

'In the meantime, the Kremlin has been taking more direct control of the country's oil industry. The legal means it is using to do so are questionable, but oil companies - desperate not to miss out on the energy boom - are generally complying. And, largely beneaththe radar, the Kremlin is imposing more controls on the activities of non-governmental organisations.

'Taken all together, what we are seeing is not a creeping reversion to communism. Indeed, Russia's communists are as harried as the liberal opposition. Mr. Putin is not doing anything to reverse Russia's turn to a market economy. On the contrary, he seems to be inching towards a Chinese model: freeing up the economy, while reinforcing the state's power and centralising command in the presidency.

A good many historians would say that what we are seeing is in fact very much the Russian model: one handed down by its tsarist past, never fully abandoned by the communists, and recently restored. It privileges central state power above all.

Russian liberals bemoan the defeat of their revolution. But if polls are anything to go by, ordinary Russians seem to love it.