MOSCOW: The hardest thing about power is knowing when to let go. The next hardest, particularly in a country like Russia which has experienced nothing but dictatorship for a millennium, is knowing whom to hand over power to. In announcing his resignation on December 31 Boris Yeltsin may have succeeded on both counts, assuring not only his personal safety, but his place in history and Russia's infant democracy.

Yeltsin was more than the man who saved Russia in 1991 when a coup by communist hard-liners threatened to turn back the clock by nullifying Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost. In nine muddy years since then Yeltsin also created a new Russia, very much in his own image: one unpredictable, wayward, but full of promise. By stepping down now, Yeltsin has given his handpicked successor, acting president Vladimir Putin, the best chance to win elections that will take place this coming March.

Shades of Kremlin tsars and commissars of old? As a deft manoeuvrer of the old school of communist politics, the gibe is tempting to apply to Yeltsin. It is also unfair. With mandatory presidential elections next year, Moscow was awash in rumours: “feeding time at the zoo” as one British prime minister called it. By ending the whispering campaign that he intended to cling to power no matter what, President Yeltsin deserves more cheers than jeers. Through this orderly and constitutionally correct device to attempt to assure his succession, Yeltsin may have put paid to any possibility of a chaotic power struggle in the Kremlin without sacrificing democratic principles. Russia may now go on to complete its transition from communism to capitalism.

But what do we know of the heir apparent, Vladimir Putin? In keeping with his shadowy KGB background, very little. Putin is a married 46 year old, and a graduate of Saint Petersburg University's Law Faculty. Stationed for a decade as a KGB agent in the former East Germany, he saw Western democratic and business practices at close hand, and is believed to be committed to them. After communism's collapse, he worked with people like Anotoly Chubais in the liberal St. Petersburg government of the early 1990s. Transferred to Moscow, he headed the FSB (the transformed KGB) until Yeltsin suddenly appointed him prime minister last August.

Despite his murky profile, Putin's most potent claim to fame – and to power – is a dour toughness. In the bloody mountains and ruined cities of Chechnya, Putin established his credentials as the hard man Russia needs to restore order and stop the country's internal disintegration by revitalizing state power.

That the West seems nervous about Putin only enhances his prestige at home. With Western economic policy prescriptions widely seen as having failed in Russia; with NATO expanding near to the country's borders and old allies like Serbia bombed; with America seen as wanting to weaken Russia even more, breaking it up into pieces and controlling the oil-rich Caspian basin, anti-western sentiments are on the rise. President Putin's keen political antenna has caught this trend. So the fact that the West eyes Russia's acting president with suspicion makes him even more desirable to the traditional Russian heart.

Vladimir Putin, however, prefers to promote the impression of his being a more enlightened and modern leader. His prime ministerial new year's address – "Russia at the Turn of the Millennium" -- was posted on a Russian Government website for all the world to see before being published in Russian newspapers. In it he outlined his presidential program: playing to the crowds, he declared that Russia is no plaything for the West to kick around. But demagoguery stopped there. Russia, he also declared, must mend itself. It will remain cooperative and friendly with the world, provided that the world is cooperative and friendly too. But the hard work of rebuilding Russia must be done by Russians, and with no time to waste.

In Russia cultural instincts, in which communal ideas remain more valued than individualist principles, help determine the success or failure of policies. The national strategies Putin will likely follow will take into account these social impulses. Thus he is unlikely to publicly trumpet the unforgiving capitalist policies of Gaidar and Chubais, even if he quietly pursues them. Undoubtedly a strong patriot, Putin also knows that Russia's national idea of itself must be cleansed of haughtiness and imperial ambitions. Time and again he has said that Russia's national idea must blend traditional Russian concepts with a new, modern content. The Russia he envisions will be a great power once more, but great in the ways that a truly modern society must be: in its democratic commitments, its economy, and its domestic tranquillity.

The consensus in Russia today is that Putin is a man of neither great talents nor great vices. To ordinary Russians he appears as modest, principled, and honest – a vast contrast with the tainted politicians of the Yeltsin years. He is a perfect fit for a Russia grown tired of the heroes, revolutionaries, criminals – even saviours – who make life exciting but rarely stable. A recent poll showed that what Russia most wants is a new Brezhnev, whose 20 years (1964-1982) of leadership first were disdained as an "era of stagnation," but are now nostalgically recalled as the "golden era of stagnation." Putin fits the desired mould for a firmness and stolidity that ensures stability, a strong state, and a "golden middle" between radical reforms and strong-arm rule.

In the back of their minds, however, Russians also hold a secret fear about Putin. It concerns a man, a pleasant quiet individual who walks soundlessly through the Kremlin's corridors, someone who uncomplainingly takes on (and completes) many hard and unpleasant tasks neglected by others who fight noisily for high position. Russians know that, one day, these unassuming political beasts of burden suddenly come out on top, as Stalin did in the early 1920s. So of President Putin Russia, like history, must still reserve its judgement.