Putin's Kleptocracy

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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