"This week we look at Russia's president Vladimir Putin and where he's taking his powerful, contradictory, and often unknowable country. His Party swept parliamentary elections.Now he can write his ticket to the future. But where does Vladimir Putin want to take Russia? We hear from two veteran correspondents. And...in order to put the Putin era in context, we discuss the book KHRUSHCHEV: A MAN AND HIS ERA. Brian talks with the Pulitzer prize winning historian, William Taubman about the man who tried to humanize the
Soviet system.

This past week, Russia held parliamentary elections. President Vladimir Putin's Party, United Russia, won easily more than 60 percent of the votes despite allegations by European observers of irregularities. This victory is important because Putin, by law, has to step down from power in May after serving two terms. His future is unclear and so his Party's majority now gives him lots of new options. The West is now looking at Russia with increasing alarm, unsure
how to interpret Putin and his ambitions.That's why we turn to two Russia hands here at the CBC: Don Murray, based in London and Alexandra Szacka in Moscow.

Don Murray brings valuable perspective to the question of Putin, having reported from Russia during the exciting years of Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

Alexandra Szacka is the CBC's new reporter in Moscow. She brings to her assignment an exciting history. She lived in Communist Poland as a child.
Her grandfather was sent to Stalin's gulag in the 1930's. And her father went to University in provincial Russia during the Khrushchev years. She has seen the spectrum of Soviet history within her own family.We present first a short excerpt from her report earlier this week on the Putin victory and then hear her thoughts on what's ahead for Russia.

Vladimir Putin is among the last generation of Russian leaders raised under the Soviet regime.He experienced, first hand, the communist system. And his world view was shaped, partly, by having lived in a country closed off from the rest of the world and which saw the West as an enemy. As a leader who often cites history, he has looked at Russia's recent past --at the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin--and has decided they made mistakes. We know he's an advocate of a strong, nationalist Russia and wants to revive
its international influence.Every leader brings his own stamp to his era and can shape history by the force of his personality. That's what historian William Taubman believes. He won a Pulitzer prize a couple of years ago for his insightful portrait of Nikita Khrushchev, who ran the Soviet Union in the 1960's, when Putin was a young.

Khrushchev is interesting because he represents a reformist strain in Russia. His greatest achievement was denouncing Russia's authoritarian past and trying to put a human face on Communism. He's credited with having paved the way for Gorbachev and the reforms of the late 1980's.Brian met with Taubman recently and we talked about the lessons of Khrushchev and what mark Vladimir Putin
may leave on his own era."
CBC, source

***

RELATED:

former head of KGB says Putin ordered journalist Litvinenko's assassination