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.

The endorsement lets Putin say that he is abiding by term limits. Yet a day later, Medvedev announced that he wanted Putin to be his prime minister. While the rules are being followed, Putin seems, at least for now, to be retaining control.

Hovering over all these events is the question of why Putin and others in the Kremlin even bother with the democratic trappings. Given that Putin is highly popular, that the Russian public has long clung to a potent chieftain, why not just pack the Parliament, amend the Constitution and stay another term?

Putin appears in part motivated by a need to be seen on the world stage as a lawfully elected leader as genuine as his partners in the Group of Eight. There is an element of Russian pride in this sentiment. Having purportedly embraced democracy, the Kremlin cannot tolerate being told it does elections any less properly than the West. Nor does Putin care to be lumped with the presidents-for-life reigning in some other former Soviet republics.

Some analysts speculate that Putin and his associates fear making overtly autocratic moves, lest the West retaliate in ways that could hurt Russia’s economic revival. This view is not satisfying; American and European companies do plenty of business with Saudi Arabia, China and other authoritarian countries.

But there could be a more personal wrinkle: senior Kremlin officials may worry that they would be banned from traveling to the West and their personal finances might be imperiled.

For their part, the Russian people have shown no great hunger for Western-style democracy. Polls indicate that if Putin stayed on for another term, he would be greeted with little dissent and something akin to relief or applause. Still, it would be a mistake to say that Russians yearn for authoritarianism, or that the country is generally reverting to Soviet-style repression. While the Kremlin dominates television and has cracked down on the opposition, a diversity of voices flourishes in newspapers, where criticism of Putin is not uncommon, not to mention on the Internet.

The turmoil after the fall of Communism seems to have deepened Russia’s tendency to be drawn to a strong leader, leaving it with a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Russians these days crave stability, consumer goods and travel —the things they were denied before.

Vyacheslav A. Nikonov, president of the Politika Foundation, a Moscow research institute, said political structures are still developing, the rule of law is shaky and people in power do not have accountability. As a result, the government’s shape and character are moulded, to a large extent, by the leaders’ instincts about what the people expect and will bear. “Every country has a genetic code,” Nikonov said. “In many societies, the patterns of government last for centuries, or last for a millennium, and I think that Russia is the same. There is only one thing that Russians do not like in their leaders. That is weakness.”