Putin's Russia is proving a disappointment even to its greatest beneficiaries: the emerging middle class and the Muscovite oligarchy. They once believed that Putin would be "the Russian Pinochet", a strong man who would suspend democracy to provide stable economic reform. Today they see more continuity with the Yeltsin era than change. They feel frustrated with swollen, venal officialdom. Nor do they expect Putin to deliver the missing social goods necessary to secure what they won in the boom years: property rights, independent courts, high-tech careers for their children and long-term political certainty. By personalising power and undermining political institutions Putin has traded long-term stability for a stable reign. 

Putin's announcement of his return as president catapulted talk of stagnation into the mainstream. His birthday was marked by Russia's first international trending Twitter hashtag: #thanksforthatputin, an ironic reference to a Soviet joke thanking the party for everything. Among the most popular was #thanksforthatputin Brezhnev rises from the dead. Putin's spokesman shot back on TV — "Brezhnev was good for Russia." 

The pessimism among the elites seems overdone in a country with 4 per cent GDP growth, the third largest global currency reserves, no serious opposition, strong consumer spending and a low debt-to-GDP ratio. Russia is not in steep decline but this only underlines it as a political perception: dissatisfaction with the direction not the pace of travel. Putin's failure is not just kleptocratic, but intellectual: he has failed to come up with a sequel to his post-Soviet narrative for Russia.