Statist: Putin's rise to the Russian presidency in 1999-2000 was partially the result of an elite consensus about the importance of restoring order to the state after a decade of domestic crisis and international humiliation. Reflecting the national mood, Putin used one of his first major political statements -- his so-called "Millennium Message" of December 29, 1999 -- to present himself as a statist. In Russia, individuals exist to serve the state and their rights are therefore secondary. From his earliest days in the Kremlin, Putin has pursued the goal of restoring and strengthening the state -- by rediscovering and taking back Russia's fundamental values, re-energizing its historical traditions, and abandoning the practice of blindly copying abstract Western models. He has stressed communitarianism over Western individualism, promoted the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church, and drawn direct links between the modern Russian presidency and the pre-Revolutionary Russian tsars.
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