The Kremlin has navigated between these audiences for more than a century. Lenin dismissed Moscow’s intelligentsia as “not the brain of the nation,” but “the feces of the nation,” whereas others have argued that Russia cannot be ruled without the consent of Moscow’s elite. Mr. Putin chose one thesis over the other in displacing President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who had soothed Moscow’s liberals with the hope that their ideas would take hold.

With that hope snuffed out, many have leapt to the image of Mr. Putin as a repeat of the Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, whose 18 years in power became known as the Era of Stagnation. Mr. Peskov, who was clearly teed up for that question, said Tuesday that he saw the early part of the Brezhnev era as a positive model.

“People really are talking about the Brezhnevization of Putin, though this is being said by people who know absolutely nothing about Brezhnev,” Mr. Peskov said. “You know, Brezhnev is not some sort of minus for the history of our country; it is a huge plus. He laid the foundation of our economy, agriculture and so forth.”

His remarks rippled through Russian Web sites in the morning. By afternoon the editors of Gazeta.ru, an online newspaper frequently critical of the government, said they would be on the lookout for glowing television retrospectives on Brezhnev, whose leadership, they wrote, would be associated not with turgid ideology but with “stable, peaceful, gradual growth.”

“Putin returns to power as president of an essentially Soviet majority, living within commercial and political coordinates which differ little from the Brezhnev days,” they wrote in an unsigned editorial. “For this apolitical, paternalistically oriented post-Soviet crowd, the general secretary, president or leader of the nation (this must be underlined) — is the single hope and buttress.”