Putin's Kleptocracy

Starred review from November 15, 2014

Among Dawisha's (Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science, Miami Univ.; coauthor, Russia and the New States of Eurasia) many contributions to our understanding of post-Soviet politics, this book may be the most significant, as the author combines an analysis of such politics and a biography of Russian president Vladimir Putin in unrivaled detail. Putin's story begins with his work in the KGB, and, in the early 1990s, as deputy to St. Petersburg's mayor. Soviet collapse occasioned Putin with remarkable opportunities for the accumulation of wealth and power independently of the "oligarchs," who dominated state privatization. The result depicts a corrupted and inchoate system under the domination of President Boris Yeltsin and the "family" in 1999 replaced by an administration vastly more skilled in "elite predation" through creating "overlapping networks" of loyal minions. Extensive supporting documentation, such as the leaked 2000 "Reform of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation" offers an excellent basis for the book's assertion that Putin's "Teflon ability" defeated encounters with political oversight at any level until he became able to eliminate all opposition. The notes in this volume represent one of the finest and most imaginative uses of published source materials that this reviewer has ever seen in a book on post-Soviet politics. VERDICT A rich and exhaustive account of Putin and his regime that supports a forecast of its "hard authoritarian" drift and dependence on "European public goods" for survival.--Zachary Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Erie

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Starred review from October 1, 2014
A damning account of Vladimir Putin's rise to power and of the vast dimensions of the corruption-political and economic-that both reigns and rots in Russia.Dawisha (Political Science/Miami Univ.; The Consolidation of Democracy in East Central Europe, 1997, etc.) begins with the recent crisis in Crimea, then swiftly moves to unsnarl "the tangled web of relationships" that enabled Putin to thrive, that keep him in power, and that direct enormous fortunes into the hands of Putin and his cronies-we're talking billions. Dawisha's research is extremely impressive. Drawing on leaked documents, interviews and old-fashioned excavation, she describes the intricate complications of the power relationships in Russia (naming many names) and eventually shows how they continue to damage the country. With so much wealth concentrated in so few hands, public services have faltered, infrastructure has aged and cracked, and technological research and progress stutter and stumble. Dawisha includes numerous detailed footnotes and some clear diagrams that chart the egregious greed in the country, but mostly this is a powerful story about the return to authoritarianism in a country that had begun to breathe a bit of free air. In his first 100 days, Putin clamped down on the media, surrounded himself with loyalists, shoved out opponents, changed the symbolism of the country (returning to prominence a version of the old Soviet national anthem), embraced international organized crime, enriched those who supported him, impoverished and even imprisoned those who didn't, avoided prosecutions on earlier corruption charges, and forced the media to portray him as "the undisputed Leader of his People." He continues to misinform and deceive the public about international events, and the author demonstrates how all this corruption greatly diminishes the profitability of Russia's sizable energy reserves. The light of Dawisha's research penetrates a deep moral darkness, revealing something ugly-and dangerous.

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