The political trajectory of post-Soviet Russia was profoundly shaped by a combination of the circumstances of independent Russia's birth and the actions of its two major figures, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, in building the new regime. One of the chief legacies of the Soviet period and the way it ended was the weakness of autonomous political forces outside the bounds of the political elite. There had been no room for legitimate autonomous political activity in the USSR, with the only room for political activity being in the official structures of the Soviet system. Accordingly when perestroika created space and impetus for the emergence of autonomous political forces, that emergence was both tentative and fragmented. Civil society forces remained weak and unable to have a major impact on elite politics, so that it was overwhelmingly the latter that shaped the circumstances of the Soviet collapse, albeit assisted materially by social movements in some of the republics (but not Russia). The result was that as the new Russian political system struggled to take form, autonomous social forces were not well placed to exercise substantial influence in it. The weakness of such forces, be they political parties or civil society organizations, left the way clear for the dominating role to be played by political elites, and within this by the dominant figures, Yeltsin and Putin.

As well as this relative absence of opposition to the building of an authoritarian polity, another factor noted in Chapter 1 contributed to the resilience of authoritarian rule: the more authoritarian aspects of Russian culture provided a favorable environment within which authoritarian rule could prosper. For both elite and mass, appeals to Russian tradition could be a potent source of support for authoritarian political arrangements. Other factors too played a part. The initial dispute with the parliament, the Chechen wars, the incidents of terrorist activity (apartment, metro, airport and railway station bombings, the Nord Ost and Beslan sieges), and the growing perception of hostility and challenge on the part of the West were all developments that successive presidents were able to exploit to reduce the scope for opposition and strengthen central control. But it was the drive of the post-Soviet political elite to build an authoritarian system through the structuring of the dimensions of rule in an authoritarian fashion that was central and most important to the emergence of authoritarian rule.