The new State Duma looks pitifully short of imagination and the potential for meaningful debate, writes Dan McLoughlin from Moscow
Russians woke to a new political landscape yesterday after parliamentary elections all but erased the last vestiges of Mr Boris Yeltsin's presidency, and removed lingering barriers to Mr Vladimir Putin's assumption of almost total political control.
United Russia, a party created by Mr Putin's Kremlin, dominated the vote, while another presidential invention, the Motherland bloc, ensured the Communists lost almost half their support.
The liberal protegés of Mr Yeltsin were squeezed out of the State Duma.
With Mr Putin's former KGB comrades flooding Moscow's halls of power, and Russian tycoons cowed by the legal attack on the Yukos oil giant, the pro-business, West-leaning, broadly liberal Kremlin of the 1990s is now a distant memory.
And with almost unbridled power comes the possibility of constitutional change.Some analysts are wondering if Mr Putin will accept a 2008 limit on his presidency, or rather use his massive control to alter the fundamentals of a system constructed by Mr Yeltsin, the man who ushered him into the Kremlin in 1999.
Mr Putin's team will brush aside international observers' complaints that media bias corrupted the poll, as it did criticism of elections in rebel Chechnya this year.
In Chechnya the Kremlin said results proved the shattered region was returning to normal after a decade of war.
The new parliament, where Communists and pro-Kremlin ultra-nationalists will sit with members of United Russia and Motherland, appears devoid of new ideas on Chechnya, favouring a solution based on force and a faux-peace process to talks with the republic's real separatist rebels.
They have the same attitude towards the "oligarchs", the tycoons whose support for Mr Yeltsin was rewarded with Russia's finest industrial assets, and whose flag-bearer, Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was jailed in October on suspicion of tax evasion and fraud.
The attack on Russia's richest man, and several associates at Yukos, chimed with an electorate that is mostly poor and angry at the country's stark inequalities.
It harks to the rhetoric of Mr Putin and allies who promise that Moscow will be a big player once more on the world stage, a decade after the Soviet Union's humiliating collapse.
Mr Dmitry Rogozin, a nationalist, Putin loyalist and co-chairman of the Motherland bloc, said the new Duma would squeeze Russia's billionaires.
"This doesn't mean there won't be any of them left physically, but that we will have no oligarchy, that is, the power of a few.
"What we will have is power of the many," he said, celebrating a crushing defeat for the perceived liberal parties of business, Yabloko and the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS).
Mr Rogozin immediately set his sights on Mr Anatoly Chubais, a bitter personal enemy who is seen as an architect of Russian capitalism and now leads SPS and the country's electricity monopoly, RAO UES.
"We intend to press both for his resignation from the post of the head of RAO UES and for his exit from politics," Mr Rogozin said.
The attack on Mr Khodorkovsky prompted the US and EU to question the rule of law in Russia, and rattled many investors who regarded Yukos as the country's most efficient and transparent firm.
When prosecutors seized 40 per cent of shares in the company, Moscow's stock market plunged.
Mr Putin's pledge to attract foreign capital and double Gross Domestic Product by 2010 suddenly seemed highly improbable: he can simplify as many tax laws and slash as much stifling bureaucracy as he likes, but few investors will take a risk on Russia if they fear the Kremlin could seize their assets.
Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest also threw into doubt a merger between Yukos and Sibneft, the oil firm controlled by Chelsea Football Club boss Mr Roman Abramovich.
Sibneft shareholders suspended the deal at the last minute, reportedly on orders from the Kremlin, and pushed for management control of the merged company, which would be the world's fourth largest oil firm.
If Sibneft ran the company it would act as a Kremlin proxy, analysts say, giving Mr Putin vast financial resources, of the type he feared in the hands of Mr Khodorkovsky, who funded SPS and Yabloko and hinted that he might run for election in 2008.
Mr Khodorkovsky is the highest-profile victim of a crackdown on corruption that has been United Russia's only real policy in the run-up to the election, other than a fierce determination to stick as closely as possible to Mr Putin and realise the party's rallying cry: "Together with the President!"
Analysts here said United Russia's only idea for the country's future concerned who should be its president, and the nationalists' gains from liberals meant much-needed structural reforms to the economy and bloated armed forces could be hampered.
A strong third-place showing from the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) stunned many, especially those who saw firebrand leader Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky grappling with an opponent after a recent televised debate.
His own ideology doesn't go far beyond insulting rivals, threatening to imprison oligarchs and berating foreigners, and his party will bring little but pro-Putin votes to a Duma that looks pitifully short of imagination and the potential for meaningful debate.
"Yesterday's election shows what the Russian people actually think: they are stridently nationalist, want wealth redistributed and have little interest in liberal or democratic values," said Moscow's Aton brokerage.
The defeated liberals yesterday painted LDPR's Mr Zhirinovsky and Motherland leaders Mr Rogozin and Mr Sergei Glazyev as nationalist demagogues.
But Mr Gleb Pavlovsky, a prominent political analyst and one-time Kremlin insider, said they would all toe Mr Putin's line.
"Here even fanatics call the presidential administration before making any challenge," he said.
That is music to the ears of many of Mr Putin's team as they now prepare for his almost inevitable win in March's presidential election.
He now dominates the legislature, the state controls all national television, and the Kremlin is close to winning control, via Sibneft, of massive oil wealth.
Politics, media and finance are the three "verticals of power" that Mr Putin's critics have long said he wants to control.
They would give him almost unfettered control, and make a constitutional change allowing him to serve a third term as president an achievable aim.
Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, warned yesterday that the new pro-Putin parliament could lead to familiar dangers for Russia.
"If it is one-sided, this could lead to big mistakes," he said. "A Soviet, Communist-type situation must be prevented."