Is David Brooks right?

The G-8 Summit will start in Sankt Petersburg, and many warn about the support that Putin will get this way for his authoritarian approach.
David Brooks thinks the conservative restoration in post-Soviet Russia was unavoidable. He compares the situation with the post-1848 period in Europe - the Revolutions were crushed, the authoritarian regimes were re-established, but they did gradually the reforms claimed by revolutionaries (constitutions, suffrage, welfare). And that because, they knew they had to keep up with the times.

We’re coming into a period of, at best, a gradualist conservative reform. It’s time to come up with a strategy for helping today’s unimaginative autocrats to become new and improved Bismarcks.

Is David Brooks right? Or by the contrary (and to rephrase him), did post-Soviet years prove to be the turning point when Russia failed to turn?