Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. For most Russians, life is freer now than it was in the old days. Criticism of the Kremlin is tolerated, as long as it is not done in an organised way, and access to the Internet is unfettered.

Still, as was revealed in dozens of interviews with political leaders, officials and residents of Nizhny Novgorod over several weeks, a new autocracy now governs Russia.

The government has closed newspapers in St. Petersburg and raided political party offices in Siberia. In this region on the Volga River, Putin’s allies control nearly all the offices, and elections have become a formality. And that is just as it should be, they said.

A refrain often heard across Russia is that the distressing years right after communism’s collapse left people craving stability and a sturdy economy far more than Western-style democracy. These days, they care little if elections are basically uncontested as long as a strong leader is in charge. “There is some hope for us now,” said Nina Aksyonova, 68, a Nizhny Novgorod resident, explaining Putin’s popularity.

In Nizhny Novgorod, an industrial centre with 1.3 million residents, authority flows from the Kremlin to a regional governor appointed by Putin, who abolished the election of governors in Russia in 2004. The governor, Valery P. Shantsev, was brought in from Moscow and is charged with ensuring that Putin’s party, United Russia, wins elections.

Boris Y. Nemtsov became a political star in Russia and the West as governor of Nizhny Novgorod and deputy prime minister in the 1990s, but in recent months he and his opposition party have taken a battering here. Regional and national television stations, controlled by the Kremlin and its surrogates, have repeatedly attacked him—calling him everything from a corrupt bureaucrat to a traitor.

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