President Vladimir Putin urged Russians to envisage the country they wanted to leave behind for their children and grandchildren during a historic vote this week to extend his rule. It was just such an era of stagnation — the infamous “period zastoya” between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s mainly under Leonid Brezhnev — that precipitated the end of the Soviet Union and threw Russia into chaos for years. The president’s cohort “strongly mistrusts” free and fair elections as a way to decide who may one day rule after Putin, he says.
President Vladimir Putin urged Russians to envisage the country they wanted to leave behind for their children and grandchildren during a historic vote this week to extend his rule. It was just such an era of stagnation — the infamous “period zastoya” between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s mainly under Leonid Brezhnev — that precipitated the end of the Soviet Union and threw Russia into chaos for years. The president’s cohort “strongly mistrusts” free and fair elections as a way to decide who may one day rule after Putin, he says.