Alleged Personality Cult
In June 2001, the BBC noted that a year after Putin took office, the Russian media had been reflecting on what some saw as a growing personality cult around him: Russia's TV-6 television had shown a vast choice of portraits of Putin on sale at a shopping mall in an underground passage near Moscow's Park of Culture.
Simultaneously, human rights groups voiced concerns about what they saw as a revival of the personality cult of Stalin, who became the subject of an exhibition that opened at a Moscow museum in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his death.
On 22 August 2007, The International Herald Tribune, in connection with the host of gossip and speculation that ensued after Putin stripped off his shirt for the cameras while on holiday with Prince Albert II of Monaco in the Altai Mountains, quoted Sergey Markov, Kremlin-connected head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Research/ as saying: "He's cool. That's been the image throughout the presidency, cool."
In October 2007, the Russian weekly Obshchaya Gazeta reported that according to the polls there were an increasing number of people in Russia who either believed there existed Putin's personality cult, or saw the conditions for same; only 38% denied the existence of the personality cult in October, compared to 49% in April that year.
In October 2007, some scenes at the United Russia congress caused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who was allied to Russia within the "Union State", to recall the Soviet times, complete with the official adoration towards the Communist Party leader; talking to Russia's regional press representatives he said that in Russia Putin's personality cult was being created.
About the same time, AFP reported that ahead of the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, in which Putin, despite being required by the constitution to leave office, was widely expected to find some way to retain power, his personality cult was gathering pace.
After Medvedev was elected President in March 2008, Radio Liberty reported that during his eight-year presidency, Putin had managed to build a personality cult around himself similar to those created by Soviet leaders; although there had not been giant statues of Putin put up across the country (like those of Joseph Stalin before), he had the honour of being the only Russian leader to have had a pop song written about him: "I want a man like Putin", which hit the charts in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Putinism, Definition, Criticism
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