The Russian people, author Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, believe so fervently in an all-powerful czar that this ideal “is bound to influence the whole future course of our history.” And so it was that the heir to this tradition, President Vladimir Putin, went before the cameras last week to show that he had in fact broken with the old ways and was as progressive as any leader in the West.

The scene, though, left a different impression. Heads of four political parties (supposedly independent, but all creatures of the Kremlin) sat before Putin and revealed to him their choice for president. Putin accepted the decision (though he himself had clearly made it). He praised the candidate (his longtime lieutenant) and suggested that the nomination reflected the views of a broad variety of Russians (none of whom had been given any say in the process).

Artifice plays a role in politics everywhere, yet Russia seems to have adopted a kind of imitation of democracy. It is as if a veneer of legitimacy has been put on a variation of the strongman rule present here for centuries—whether under Peter the Great, Lenin or Putin himself.

A parliamentary election was held this month in which many parties took part, but only Putin’s United Russia received glowing television news coverage and other government favours; it won in a landslide. The Kremlin orchestrated the nomination for president of Putin’s aide, Dmitri A. Medvedev, who is all but assured of winning the March election.

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