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Even if effective as a means of control, such bullying makes the citizen an enemy. Ralph Peters "New York Post" WHILE Western leaders remain mired in 20th-century thinking, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia has reinvented dictatorship for a new century. The new czar's creation is tolerant totalitarianism . Putin's one brilliant insight - a revolution in political thought - is that the dictators of the past, whether ideologues or religious fanatics, didn't know where to stop. The Stalins and the Maos, the Calvins and Khomeinis, all insisted on prying into the private sphere. Czar Vladimir grasped that a post-modern dictatorship needs to make only a single compromise to prosper: It has to halt at the front door. We Americans inherited a unique tradition from England, the belief in the freedom of the public space. But most human beings - not least, Russians - are content with the right to do or say what they want behind closed doors, among family and friends. The obsession with controlling the private sphere weakened past dictatorships (just as it sabotaged al Qaeda in Iraq). The iconic novel of the last century, George Orwell's "1984," captured the corrosive effects of the state's intrusion into each last corner of private life: Even if effective as a means of control, such bullying makes the citizen an enemy.