BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall in her 2007 article and after describing the "scarred decade" of the 1990s with "rampant hyperinflation" harsh Yeltsin's policies, population decrease rate like that for a nation in a war, the country turning "from superpower into beggar", wonders: "So who can blame Russians for welcoming the relative stability Putin has presided over during the past seven years, even if other aspects of his rule have cast an authoritarian shadow? In the back-to-front world of Russian politics, it is not too little democracy that many people fear, but too much of it. This, I discovered, is why some are calling for Putin to stay on for a third term. Not because they admire him—privately, many say that he and his cronies are just as corrupt and disdainful of others as their communist predecessors were—but because they mistrust the idea of democracy, resent the West for pushing it, and fear what might happen as a result of next year's elections. Recent experience has taught them that change is usually for the worse and best avoided".