ИСТИНА

The interest in the personality component of the Russian presidency has moved on and up over the past few decades, however the body of research is insufficient and the theoretical and methodological basis is yet to be molded. No matter how much credit American and European scholars give to personal traits of a political leader, they still prioritize a concrete political situation in which a leader has to act. Even personality-centered researchers like Margaret Hermann, David Winter, Dean Simonton, and Fred Greenstein have tended to interpret their findings in the framework of “situational theories”. This might be suitable to top officials of the USA and most European countries whose personality traits are subject to considerable institutional influences, but not to Russia, where President constantly solves a plethora of current domestic and international issues, as he is the one to create the pathways of success for the country as well as its citizens. Yet, this is traditionally disregarded by international political psychologists and they misinterpret strategies and tactics of the Russian leaders and give wrong forecasts about their new decisions and actions. The paper elaborates the personality-centered theory of the presidency further and proposes to take into account the dynamic unity of the three aspects of the presidency – personality, context, and role, as this enables a researcher to better understand the current political arrangement in a country in terms of the interplay between political elites and interstate interaction alike.