Progress and Worry in Russia

President Vladimir V. Putin Monday signed into law a radical overhaul intended to simplify Russia’s complicated and contradictory tax laws and restructure an ineffective collection system. Investors were jubilant, and the stock market soared. Confidence in Putin, however, may well be premature. With the same political skill that led to the enactment of the tax law, Putin is usurping regional political powers and moving against privately owned media companies. It’s too soon to tell where he is headed, but the signs are ominous.

Putin’s accomplishments during his first three months in office are staggering and worrisome. He has weakened opposition in the Duma, the lower house of parliament; restructured the potentially troublesome upper house; emasculated the powers of regional leaders; taken on the despised “oligarchs” and begun a purge in the powerful military. The Russians love it--seven out of 10 approve of his performance--and Putin’s political rivals stand divided.

The Kremlin insists that Putin needs all the power he can get in order to implement the tax overhaul and market reforms, that he needs to curtail the authority of corrupt regional bosses and rein in the economic might of the oligarchs. Nearly every step Putin has taken has led to the weakening of political opposition and removal of constitutional checks on his already enormous powers, and in the fall he is expected to propose giving the Kremlin even greater control of the Duma by scrapping elections based on party lists.

The Russian leader’s erratic campaign against the oligarchs clearly seems a determined effort to get rid of his political opposition. An example: Vladimir A. Gusinsky, the owner of the independent NTV network that opposed the war in Chechnya, was arrested as an embezzler, then exonerated and released, apparently after he agreed to give up ownership of NTV. Another oligarch, Vladimir Berezovsky, owner of the popular TV channel ORT and once Putin’s political ally, has been under pressure to sell since his station opposed Putin’s bid to sack regional governors and remove their membership in the Federation Council, the parliament’s upper house.

Putin has accomplished more in months than his predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, did in years. He may even turn Russia’s economy around and cleanse the government of corruption. But, in the process, he is dismembering Russia’s pluralistic system, and that is a reason to worry.