Putin 2012: Tsar or Reformer?

Russian society has known heartache forever: first there were the Tsars: mighty kings who made the common folk toil on the land for peanuts. Then, Lenin and Trotsky brought about the age of the Communist Revolution and a movement that was supposed to give the power back to the everyman. Instead, we got 75 years of horrible communist rule. Now, Putin seems to be taking Russia into a new nightmare…

Vladimir Putin won the 2012 bid for the Presidency of Russia: a position he is all too familiar with. As of 2012, Putin has been the man in charge of Russia for 12 years – some as President and some as Prime Minister – all as the man in charge. Many people look at Putin as Russia slipping back into an age of dictatorship: trading in the communist charade of a Stalin for something closer to a Mussolini.

Others, look at Putin as the man responsible for Russia’s re-emergence as a superpower. They see Putin as the man the country needs to make capitalism flourish.
Either way, everyone in Russia agrees that there is major voter corruption. In this brand new special, Al Jazeera’s reporting team tries to get inside the head of one of the world’s most mysterious and powerful men.