Putin's Deep Freeze

Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. By David Satter, Yale University Press, 2003. 314 pp.

Putin's Russia. By Lilia Shevtsova, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003. 298 pp.

Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000. By Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 304 pp.

The academic discipline of political science, at least as applied to developed democracies, consists largely in the study of public opinion and electoral behavior, and of how political institutions—parties, legislatures, interest groups, and the like—constrain and shape public and elite preferences into policy outcomes. Even a minute-by-minute history of a political crisis in an advanced democracy will take into account not only the personalities of the most important actors and the details of developing events, but also the larger institutional context that limits what actions leaders can take. Viewed in this light, studies of Soviet and Russian politics can seem strangely incomplete—often focusing narrowly on "inside baseball," the behavior of individuals and ad hoc coalitions competing for the favor of a single dominant personality who determines what the rules of the political game will be.

There is ample historical justification for this approach. Since the time of Peter the Great, if not earlier, Russian leaders have sought to build institutional arrangements that would enhance their authority, rather than to create a constitutionally limited government. Institutional stability in Russian politics has thus tended to hinge on leaders' longevity. Several times following the 1917 revolution, the Soviet ruling elite rewrote the USSR's constitution to suit its interests. Post-Soviet Russian rulers have likewise sought to shape institutional arrangements in such a way as to shore up their power. Boris Yeltsin went so far as to shell the Russian parliament in 1993 when he proved unable to bend it to his will, and rewrote the Russian constitution, guaranteeing himself a dominant role in the country's political system. Now, under Vladimir Putin, that system seems poised for yet another institutional transformation.

Russia's lack of institutionalization is a central concern of two recent books: David Satter's Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State tells the story of how the Soviet state's breakdown was followed by the emergence of a semi-criminal oligarchy subject to few outside constraints. Most of the events Satter examines took place in the 1990s. Lilia Shevtsova begins her Putin's Russia more or less where Satter leaves off, telling the story of the first three years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, which began in early 2000. Although Satter emphasizes the impact that Russia's transition away from communism has had on ordinary citizens and Shevtsova focuses almost exclusively on high-level Kremlin maneuvering, the two books are united in their concern with how personalized rule and a lack of accountability have devastated Russia's polity, economy, and society.

One of the paradoxes of Russian politics is that, in a system where personality determines so much, individuals count for little. David Satter begins Darkness at Dawn with a consideration of how weak institutional restraints allow Russian politicians to treat their population with utter indifference. This is chillingly illustrated by the August 2000 sinking of the Kursk, Russia's largest nuclear submarine and one of the few functioning remnants of the once-mighty Soviet navy. All available evidence indicates that the Kursk sank because the unstable liquid fuel of an experimental torpedo exploded inside the torpedo room while the submarine was on maneuvers in the Barents Sea. Official delays and obfuscation doomed at least 23 survivors when the Russian navy refused offers of assistance from the Norwegian navy, which could have easily deployed submersibles to save any survivors trapped in the wrecked sub.

An even more troubling example of disregard for human life was a series of bombings that occurred in the Russian cities of Buinaksk, Volgodonsk, and Moscow in August and September 1999—just as preparations were being made for a transfer of power from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin, the handpicked successor whom Yeltsin had recently named prime minister. In...