Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin Author: Visit Amazon's Ben Judah Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0300205228 | Format: PDF
Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin Description
From Publishers Weekly
Judah's dynamic account of the rise (and fall-in-progress) of Russian President Vladimir Putin convincingly addresses just why and how Putin became so popular, and traces the decisions and realizations that seem to be leading to his undoing. The former Reuters Moscow reporter maps Putin's career and impact on modern Russia through wide-ranging research and has an eye for illuminating and devastating quotes, as when a reporter in dialogue with Putin says, "I lost the feeling that I lived in a free country. I have not started to feel fear." To which Putin responds, "Did you not think that this was what I was aiming for: that one feeling disappeared, but the other did not appear?" His style, however, feels hurried, an effect of which is occasional losses of narrative clarity. In some cases limited information is available, and his pace-maintaining reliance on euphemistic, metaphorical, and journalistic language can leave readers underserved and confused. Judah is at his best when being very specific, and perhaps the book's achievement is that it makes comprehensible how Putin got to where he is; those wondering how Putin became and remained so popular will benefit from this sober, well-researched case. (June)
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
"'Judah is an intrepid reporter and classy political scientist.' (Luke Harding, The Guardian) 'The best of a recent crop of books on the Russian president, it describes the essential corruption of the system Putin created (supposedly) to clean up the country. It spans the extent of this huge country as well as the decade and a half that Putin has been in power.' (Oliver Bullough, The Telegraph) 'A beautifully written and very lively study of Russia that argues that the political order created by Vladimir Putin is stagnating - undermined by corruption and a failure to modernise economically. Judah's reporting stretches from the Kremlin to Siberia and has a clear moral sense, without being preachy.' (Gideon Rachman, Financial Times) 'Ben Judah, a young freelance writer, paints a more journalistic - and more passionate - picture in Fragile Empire. He shuttles to and fro across Russia's vast terrain, finding criminals, liars, fascists and crooked politicians, as well as the occasional saintly figure.' (The Economist) 'this detailed and impressive account of Putin's years in office' (Ian Critchley, The Sunday Times)"
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- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (March 25, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0300205228
- ISBN-13: 978-0300205220
- Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I picked up this book based on positive reviews in Bloomberg and elsewhere and was very impressed. I have a reasonably good understanding of Russia based on military history and a decent understanding of the global energy business.
The first thing that comes to my mind is how brave the author must be to go around Russia asking questions about Putin. From my understanding and this book that is a very risky thing to do since the primary purpose of the security apparatus in Russia is to keep Putin in power.
The book follows Putin from the chaos in post-collapse St Petersburg where he worked for a local politician through his election to presidency, the Medvedev years (which were actually the Putin years), and then back into his current stint in charge.
The book is not all negative about Putin, which is what I find most interesting. The oligarchs that took control of the energy and media companies were extremely un popular and Putin brought them to heel. This was in fact popular among much of the population. He also took energy revenues and used them to pay some salaries and pensions and bring some modest amount of stability to the poor. And Moscow was substantially re built with sky scrapers and other elements. He also resolved (for the time being) the situation in Chechnya by allying with the current warlord and this momentarily resolved a horrible active war that was being fought in an embarrasing way for Russia.
It is very interesting to see how close associates of Putin, even those in his Judo club and KGB days, have become billionaires. They have taken control of the energy infrastructure and then a swiss trading function is another source of his supposed vast personal wealth (unproven).
The subtitle of this book, “How Russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin” is an apt summary. Judah chronicles the rise of Putin from virtual nobody (1991), to lionized tsar (2008), to a putative Tsar Nicholas II or Boris Gudonov (2012). It is a compelling account, based on thousands of interviews with ordinary Russians, and dozens with “influentials” past and present.
Judah shows Putin to be a man who has assumed the guise demanded of him by events and history: a Chekist in the last days of the USSR, a democrat under Sobchak, a loyal servant under Yeltsin, a militant war president riding a popular tide that wanted security and stability above freedom. But, in the process of that last bit, Judah argues, Putin and his coterie built centralizing institutions that eviscerated civil society and the democratic accomplishments of the Yeltsin era. The manipulative interim presidency of Medvedev, followed by the re-re-election of Putin showed that the Vertical of Power had no clothes, that “managed democracy” had only “the formal institutions of democracy... gutted of meaning,” that the Party of Power was in fact the “party of crooks and thieves.”
The vertical of power turned into a vertical of corruption, United Russia turned into a patronage network not a party, and the ‘dictatorship of law’ turned out to be a dictatorship of predatory officials. They left Russia a fragmented and feudalized country in which all corrupt policeman, inspectors and governors had been signed up into Putin’s party.
The mass demonstrations of 2011-12, Judah says, were signs of a discontent that he says is far from limited to the capital. The discontent “is vast,” he says, “but resistance is tiny.
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