Despite the simmering conflict next door, experts of all stripes note a distinctive shift in mood that remains firmly in place three months after Crimea’s annexation. Ukraine and its Western allies condemn the annexation as illegal, but there is no sign anyone is trying to get Crimea back.

“Today, there is a kind of renaissance, people are feeling that their country is strong again, but it is not about aggression,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who specializes in studying Russia’s political elite. “After the Soviet Union collapsed, we were losing territories — losing and losing and losing. Now, Crimea is a symbol that we have stopped losing, we are gaining.”

Even habitual critics of things Russian tend to root for the home team on this one.

For Artemy Lebedev, the founder of a cutting-edge design firm who has never been shy about criticizing what he laments as Russia’s lack of professionalism, Crimea was different — fast and bloodless.

“Maybe they used someone from Hollywood who told them what the army of the future should look like,” he said in an interview, echoing remarks on his blog about how sharp, fit, polite and just downright good looking those soldiers were.

Mr. Lebedev garnered some abuse online from Putin opponents, but he said his feelings were about pride and achievement, not endorsing the president. “I was born in the U.S.S.R., and I felt bitter when 14 different countries split off from my country,” he wrote. “It is just that it happened a long time ago, and everyone got used to it.”

Members of the young generation who oppose Mr. Putin said they had learned to shut up about it, at least in public, because of the prevailing bliss.

Even the sense that Crimea is going to cost Russians a fortune has not dampened the public mood. For example, cost estimates for the Kerch Strait bridge that will ultimately become the first land link to Russia have risen repeatedly to more than $8 billion. While noting recently that those funds would have to be siphoned off from other projects, Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister, said, “The price is something that I think the society is willing to pay.”