To comment on what Kaiser said and SK’s following comments, what went on in Russia in the 90s is greatly misunderstood by most Americans. This is chiefly because we want to believe that democracy and capitalism triumphed - they didn’t.
What SK says is largely right. Russia under Yeltsin never really established a free market. Rather, whereas before the fall of the USSR all capital belonged to the government, afterwards it all belonged to a group of Russian corporations popularly called “the Oligarchs”. And unlike the Soviets, the Oligarchs did not feel the need to provide Russians’ with basic services such as education, health care, and transportation. This is why Russian life expectancy has been plummeting since 1991. Also, the Oligarchs felt no responsibility to Westernize the country or improve its infrastructure.
Putin has tried to reverse this process, by wresting control of the nation’s money and resources from the Oligarchs in order to improve people’s lives and try to truly Westernize Russia. To do this, he has indeed had to create autocratic rule and center power in the country’s intelligence services(spy services). However, Russian life has improved under him(hence his high popularity). And unlike the Oligarchs, Putin wants to really establish some kind of free market and embrace Western technology.
By the standards of Russian leaders, Putin has been relatively compassionate and restrained. Unfortunately, his restraint has actually curtailed a lot of his efforts… and the leader who follows Putin will like eskew such restraint and be much more dictatorial and Stalinesque(albeit still pursue the goals of Putin, which is getting Russia economically back on its feet, modernizing Russia, and improving the life of the people, none of the things the big Russian oil corporations were interested in).
Now, as to the contention about the Cold War being started again… it actually never really ended. The only thing that happened with the fall of the USSR was that Russia became too economically weak to keep up with the arms race; hostility between the U.S. and Russia did not end. This is the fault of all presidents since George Bush Senior, not just his son(that includes Clinton). U.S. policy since the collapse of the USSR has been to isolate and weaken Russia whenever possible - to lead to a dissolution of Russia itself into smaller ethnicities(this is why we’ve encouraged the Chechens to separate from Russia), for example. Remember: Russia is the only country with a nuclear arsenal to rival America’s; a fact not lightly taken by U.S. policy-makers.