Putin has ruled Russia for 25 years. How did he last so long?

No one expected Vladimir Putin to last more than a few weeks when he was appointed prime minister a quarter century ago by then-President Boris Yeltsin. At the time, the relatively unknown, seemingly unremarkable ex-KGB agent was simply next in line after a series of failed prime ministers selected by the fading president amid spiraling crises in Russia.

But last Mr. Putin did. An entire generation has grown up knowing no other leader. Today, having been reelected to another six-year Kremlin term earlier this year, he has never looked so firmly in control.

Still, the reasons for Mr. Putin’s extraordinary ability to ride the Russian tiger so effectively for so long remain obscure.

His supporters seldom mention any unusual qualities such as charisma, infallibility, or wisdom. They tend to point to the way Russia has transformed over 2 1/2 decades: from a dysfunctional, crime-ridden post-Soviet wreck to an orderly, relatively prosperous society where people can say they feel proud to be Russian. Most of the reforms that have remade Russia were not begun by Mr. Putin, but have reached fruition under his watch.

A good example is private ownership of land, which is now a universal right. Over the past 15 years or so, the right to sell and repurpose land has produced suburban sprawl around most Russian cities that’s reminiscent of North America in the 1950s and also, along with other factors, has led to a boom in agriculture. It may not seem impressive to Westerners, but millions of contemporary homeowners are the first Russians in a thousand years – other than a czar – who can point to a piece of land and say, “I own this” with full legal control and freedom.

“We don’t ask why Putin is popular. It just doesn’t seem like the right question,” says Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow. “We concentrate on the life around us. It seems to me that when the state and society have their own separate spheres, and don’t interfere too much with each other, life is OK. Putin seems to have found a formula that, at least so far, works.”

Better than the 1990s?

Mr. Putin has survived a string of harsh challenges, any of which might have wrecked the careers of many politicians. They include a tragic disaster with the sunken submarine Kursk in his first year as president, financial crisis, the seemingly irreparable rupture of relations with the West, and the most intense blizzard of sanctions ever leveled against a country. He has also faced a military mutiny that featured a march on Moscow, and a costly, still-ongoing war in Ukraine that he appears to have started without consulting even many of his closest advisers.

Throughout all this, Mr. Putin’s public approval rating has seldom dipped below 60% and is currently running around 80%.

“In Russian society, there is a solid base of support for the country’s leader, where about two-thirds of people express loyalty regardless of the current policy,” says Alexei Levinson, an expert with the Levada Center, an independent polling agency. “The lowest points occurred at times of economic hardship, when the population expressed its discontent,” while imperial successes, such as the 2008 war in Georgia and the 2014 annexation of Crimea, tended to boost support by up to 20%.

And while political freedoms have contracted, especially since the war in Ukraine began, the private lives of the conforming majority have remained largely untouched. For Russians over 40 years old, the cataclysmic 1990s appear to be the main reference point.

“Perhaps Putin had a good team, but they were able to overcome the difficult crises of the 1990s, with all that disorder, chaos, and banditry,” says Marina, a working Moscow pensioner. “We’ve had a lot of experience with things going wrong, so obviously we cherish stability and calm. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Putin at the top of this country.”

“Putin was the one”

Even Russian opposition figures, many of whom are in exile these days, don’t seem to agree on the sources of Mr. Putin’s political resilience.

Some point to the aura of state propaganda, in which most independent and opposition voices are banished from the official airwaves. Others say deepening repressions, especially since the Ukraine war began, have created an atmosphere of fear that makes any discussion of genuine popularity impossible. Still others stress traditional Russian political culture, and say Mr. Putin has ensconced himself as a czar who is seen by the population as above any sort of democratic accountability.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter-turned-opponent who is now living in exile, says Mr. Putin answered society’s need for a strong hand following the devastating decade of the ’90s, when society collapsed, the economy imploded, and all efforts to build democracy appeared to fail. “Putin was the one who could satisfy this demand,” he says.

At first, Mr. Putin recognized the need to integrate Russia into the wider world led by the West, he says. But since then, he’s discovered that stoking nationalism and blaming the external enemy for Russia’s troubles is a better formula.

“When the external agenda dominates, the authorities look like strong patriots, and the opposition appears to be a bunch of traitors,” Mr. Gallyamov says. “When the focus is on internal affairs, people see the authorities as corrupt, looking out only for their own interests. ... The principle that ‘Russia is surrounded by enemies’ has always worked well in the past.”

A comfortable mystery

Everyone agrees that Mr. Putin has changed over the years, reinventing his public image even as the country and its society evolved.

Recently the Minchenko Consulting group in Moscow issued an analysis that attempts to define Mr. Putin’s changing role in Russian society. Using a framing largely in line with Russian mainstream thinking, it presents him first as a “warrior” who restored order to a badly fractured country, defeating Chechen separatists and exiling delinquent oligarchs, in the early 2000s.

Then, it says, he morphed into a “caring ruler,” presiding over a surge of market-driven growth and the creation of Russia’s first-ever working consumer economy. In his latest incarnation, Mr. Putin is presented more as a global “creator,” or a leader who drives the establishment of a new world order with an entirely new role for Russia.

And the state-funded RT global TV network recently released a tool that divides Mr. Putin’s 25 years into three distinct periods, and uses artificial intelligence to convert key speeches from each into clear, spoken English.

“It just remains a mystery, but one that most Russians seem comfortable with,” says Mr. Mukhin. “When Putin came to power, things started to work. People are afraid of him, yes, but it’s hard to imagine an alternative. He exercises a kind of alchemy, maybe, but very many people see him as a genuine leader.”