Putin has a security forces background. Having served in the KGB was supposed to tell something – if not everything - about him and his mindset. Ten years on we are repeatedly reminded of Putin’s “sinister past.” For some Russia watchers, and the vast majority of the commentariat, everything Putin has done over the past decade somehow relates back to his KGB days. (Though that is never said of George Bush Sr and the US – Bush ran the CIA before his presidency). Over the years the only conclusion I come to about Putin’s KGB days is that it probably taught him discipline and a healthy sense of patriotism.

But doesn’t Putin’s KGB background explain Russia’s so-called democratic backsliding? Being a member of the KGB must mean one is “against democracy,” doesn’t it? That is what the conventional wisdom keeps saying ten years on. But where is the evidence? Yeltsin created, under very dubious of circumstances, a super-strong presidency. Then it was bequeathed to Putin. It was Yeltsin’s very real democratic backsliding that changed Russia – not Putin’s alleged backsliding.

Early on in his presidency, Putin called himself a “statist.” This was interpreted as anti-liberal and anti-democratic. It has never really been explained why being “statist” is inherently at odds with being liberal and democratic. (The Western narrative of political development is so crude and self-serving!). Even today, few are willing to accept that to have a strong democratic system, a vibrant civil society, and a prosperous economy there needs to be a strong state. Putin should be credited with having his priorities in the right order. (Though, at the same time, I am very aware that the follow-up from establishing a strong state has many elements that are less than desirable, to say the least).

What should we learn most about Putin’s political odyssey? Putin was not a KGB plot, far from it. Putin is the result of an important historical corrective. The West’s “Russia Project” of the 1990s was an abysmal failure and someone like Putin was necessary. The political and economic reforms under Yeltsin destroyed much and with little to truly appreciate today. Like it or not, Putin assumed the presidency when his country’s very existence was in question and its population in poverty and humiliated.

The advent of the Putin presidency marked the end of what I have called Russia’s post-Soviet purgatory. No longer would Russia look to the West to solve its problems, nor would it look to the Soviet past to make a better future. At the end of the day, those who can take credit for vaulting Putin into power are the following: Russia’s naïve, arrogant, and just plain stupid liberals and their masters in Washington and other Western capitals. They wrote the script – Putin later played the part, but in his own style and with his country’s interests at heart.