Russia's presidential election on Sunday lacked "vibrant political discourse and meaningful pluralism", according to a joint report by the OSCE and the Council of Europe. Its "state-controlled media showed clear bias in favour of the incumbent".
President Vladimir Putin, re-elected with 70 per cent of the votes cast, shrugged off these criticisms yesterday. He pledged to defend democracy and freedom of speech, strengthen civil society and improve the lives of ordinary Russians.
The key to his victory in this most uneventful election lies in his success with the last of these objectives. Russians are being paid their wages and pensions, which have increased in real terms. As Mr Putin put it, this is not prosperity, but the dawn of it. Stability, order and predictability are the values promoted by an increasingly authoritarian government, which does not hesitate to refer back to precedents in the tsarist and Soviet periods.
Before reaching for ahistorical generalisations about the hopeless listlessness of the Russian population it is as well to remember the immediate background of Mr Putin's rise to power. He succeeded Mr Boris Yeltsin, who presided over a tempestuous decade of change which saw Russia make the transition from a communist dictatorship to a parliamentary system, from a centrally planned to a market economy and from an imperial power to a smaller but still very large federation. Economists argue over how much incomes fell and inequality increased and whether Russia has made a sustainable transition to a middle income capitalist society.
These changes were massively disruptive for millions of Russian citizens even if they have transformed the country's future potential. Mr Putin's promises and programme have widespread appeal in these circumstances, just as his record in office is seen to have restored stability and order. The other side of that record - repression in Chechnya, consolidation of securocratic control over the levers of power, severe constraints on the media and a hankering for the return of imperial hegemony over Russia's near neighbours - have not tipped the balance against Mr Putin.
To understand these factors underlying his victory is not to condone them. To the extent that he succeeds in his objective of modernising Russia from above he is likely to strengthen social forces which will be more critical of his authoritarianism.
How Mr Putin responds to such criticism should be carefully monitored by his international partners. Keeping Russia's new borders and the lines of communication open will help in that task.