There's only one system that works in Russia and that is authoritarian, otherwise it's Yeltsin all over again and nothing gets done. Like him or not under Putin Russia has pulled itself out of the wreck it was in the 1990s and once again become a major power...although the ludicrously high rise in oil prices probably also helped.
Yes, there is a lot of corruption, and yes the Mafia owns most of Russia, but how is that different from the past two hundred years? Even in the years of the Czars the government was authoritarian, so the people rose up and replaced them with another authoritarian government and so on and so forth.
Same old government, different faces, that's Russia.
A word you might hear used a lot in Russia about now is the Siloviki...I had a friend of mine who did a lot of research into present day Russia send me this link and to my shame I still haven't got around to reading it in its full:
http://www.twq.com/07winter/docs/07winter_bremmer.pdf
I imagine that term will be coming to the forefront over the next half-decade.