To understand the nature and vector of the Putin rule, one only needs to get the point of Putin's two favorite jokes: "Tell me what jokes you like and I will know what person or piece of work you are"

Sigmund Freud grasped the revealing, unmasking function and "slippage" of the jokes very well. There, the uncanny (and cunning) suppressed secrets and knowledge find their strange ways of tale-telling, and the truth is seeping and leaking through into the world and even into the mouths of the biggest liars and into the ears of the masses thickly clogged and covered with wax of their masters, handlers and minders.

Humor and jokes are thus, for practically purposes, one of the already available "Nooscopes" dreamed and fantasized about by Putin's new Head of his Administration, Anton Vaino, the master of the ceremonies.

And, indeed, the "secret," character, function and essential purpose of the Putin rules is contained in two famous and Putin's favorite jokes which he could not keep from the public, which he had to tell.

Whoever (with a basic wit and a basic psychological intelligence) understands Putin's two cardinal jokes, will also get the (noo)scoop of the basic meaning and secret of the Putinist regime. In these two jokes the heart of the regime is laid bare.

1) "A funny take on marriage and love"

For Putin, ruling and managing Russia is undoubtedly like a sort of marriage and when it comes to marriage for Putin all its variants are reducible to one single concept. 

"No matter what or how it is done, the result is to be one; 'To be fucked.'" 

Putin's paradigm of the "sacred" and human-to-human relationship.

2) "Whatever you do, don't interfere and just do what the CIA told you to do, says the once-upon a time head of the KGB and the head of the Russian oligarchic, colonial regime. Everyone works (or is supposed to work) with this one  goal in mind."

This joke which Putin clearly enjoyed so much and was so much fond of is interestingly and strangely almost equally loved  BOTH by today's KGB/FSB officers and KGB/FSB defectors.