Traditionally, despotic rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great and Stalin enacted laws for their own benefit and forced Russians to develop their country at horrific cost in human lives. Yet under totalitarian rule this century Russians built the only country that could rival the United States militarily and scientifically -- no small achievement. Always, the regnant principle has been that a strong ruler is necessary to force progress on recalcitrant and lazy masses. Thus, Russia's former superpower status derived from autocracy, based on notions of absolutism deriving from Orthodox Christianity. That absolutism found its most virulent expression in Marxist-Leninism.

Seven decades of Bolshevism proved the most destructive and disruptive of all. The Bolsheviks atomized a thousand-year-old society, blasted apart rural communities, re-enslaved peasants on collective farms and exterminated or drove abroad Russia's Westward-looking aristocracy. Stalin killed more people than Hitler.

Yet there have been no Nuremberg trials since the fall of the Soviet Union. The murderers are free or have died in peace. Their descendants run most of the country today. There has been no repentance for the crimes of the past, for the millions exiled into Siberia or executed. In a land where neighbors were taught to inform on neighbors, where one class was sicced upon another, notions of common good hold little currency.

The understandable result of all this is a widespread and ingrained cynicism among Russians: Many believe that only a ruthless KGB master can lash the masses back into line, eradicate oligarchs and clean up the government. In Putin they believe they have found such a man.

A consensus has evolved in the past couple of years between Russia's political elite and its citizens, a consensus that the past is past and what counts now is Russia's status in the world as a great power.

Russia's messianic mission has largely survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. A separate and unique civilization, Russia answers to itself -- not to the international community or the United Nations, not to the European Union and not to the United States or NATO. This is inevitable, for Russia's civilization and separate identity are buttressed by a vast and isolating territory, abundant natural resources and superb scientific capabilities -- plus, of course, nuclear weapons.

Russia, thus, is not a country that has strayed from the Western path, a country that can be "won" or "lost" by foreign aid, "engagement" or ostracism. These are words of Western debate that have had little to do with events in Russia.

Despite the theft and corruption of the past decade, Russia can suffer capital flight of $1.5 billion a month and still remain basically solvent thanks to its oil and natural gas reserves. It has not needed the financial aid the West has given it since 1991 -- and this is dawning on Western leaders now, as they watch Russia reassert itself in violent and unpredictable ways.

Putin's election and the confirmation of Communist Party leader Zyuganov as Russia's second most popular politician should cause a fair degree of unease among Western politicians, for both Putin and Zyuganov have exploited to their benefit the anti-Western sentiment that has been increasing among their supporters. There are many reasons for this shift against the West, including the perception that the West supported Yeltsin to weaken Russia. NATO's intervention in the Kosovo conflict combined with its expansion into Eastern Europe convinced a majority of Russians that, as Putin has said, Russia still has enemies.

So, what does the future hold for cooperation between the West and Russia? Russia will not be a docile partner. Nor will its national interests coincide with those of the West, especially if the United States aims to expand its military alliance onto former Soviet soil and intervene in the internal conflicts of other participants in Eastern Orthodox civilization. (The Serbs are Eastern Orthodox, too.)

If Russia's economy improves over the next couple of years -- and it should, given the stability Putin will foster -- the newfound revenues may go into arms, as Putin has pledged. NATO will be forced to rethink its strategy of expansion, and to abandon the ill-founded doctrine of humanitarian intervention that led it to intervene in Kosovo. That doctrine was born of what will probably pass as an ephemeral moment in history, when Russia was mainly democratic, in disorder, and relatively well disposed to the West.

The West, in sum, must prepare to work for a cautious and realistic entente with Russia, for a new balance of power between two civilizations that briefly drew close, but, as Putin's election shows, are now parting ways.

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