Russia has a long history of having criminal gangster leaders. Joseph Stalin for instance... former bankrobber, kidnapper, gangster who went on to mass murder... So Putin is really just taking over where Stalin left off.
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin[f] (born
Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili;
[d] 18 December [
O.S. 6 December] 1878
[1] – 5 March 1953) was a
Georgian revolutionary and
Soviet political leader who governed the
Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953. He held power as
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a
collective leadership, he consolidated power to become
dictator by the 1930s. A
communist ideologically committed to the
Leninist interpretation of
Marxism, Stalin formalised these ideas as
Marxism–Leninism while his own policies are known as
Stalinism.
Born to a poor family in
Gori in the
Russian Empire (now
Georgia), Stalin attended the
Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before eventually joining the Marxist
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He went on to edit the party's newspaper,
Pravda, and
raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets
To eradicate accused "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the Great Purge, in which over a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 executed between 1934 and 1939. By 1937, he had absolute control over the party and government. 
