Those with money in Russia want Europe: a modernised apartment is called a euro-remont in contrast to a soviet-remont. Not since the 19th century has the Russian elite been more physically integrated into Europe. Polls show that 57 per cent of professionals want to emigrate and the Audit Chamber estimates that 1.5 million have already done so, almost all to the EU. The lives of the Soviet elite would have involved lonely party positions or postings to army bases in Central Asia or the Caucasus. Putin's elite live partly in London and Paris; their children and money stashed in the EU. They look more like an "offshore elite" than a vanguard, in a Russia that is increasingly Asian in ethnic composition and political orientation.

The misery of the marginalised intelligentsia is simple to understand. What happened in 1991, the end of the USSR and the re-emergence of Russia, was a bid for a "common European home". It eludes them still.

Putin's return as president next year is a defeat for the West. The EU and the US, which had partly predicated the "reset" in relations on working with Medvedev, have barely hidden their desire for him to remain as president. In Moscow, in the blue-glass cubicles of banks and the dreary interiors of ministries, there was a refrain: "Medvedev will stay because the West wants him — we need him as we need Western money and technology to modernise out of the recession." Putin felt confident enough to disregard that line. He knew full well of the crisis in the West and that the East had a different opinion: China prefers Putin. Little surprise that his first trip after announcing his return was to Beijing.