Putin’s Russia by Lilia Shevtsova (review)

727 Ab Imperio, 4/2004 forts to incite a violent denouement in Dagestan and Chechnya in 199899 , particularly in 1999 as part of a strategy to promote a succession tailored to the Yeltsin’s regime’s preferences. The nationalist violence of the war against Chechnya, materially aided and stimulated by the fear incited by bombings in Moscow, were decisive in creating a mood and atmosphere that allowed Putin and his political bloc to win the elections of 1999. Kagarlistky calls for a left-wing radicalism and a recovery of social being to be based upon a mixed economy. But a Marxist critique of Russia, for all its power, inevitably falters when confronted with the fact that it has nothing to offer in the future. Whatever promise Marxism may have had was long ago negated by its materialization in reality. We may detest the Russia we see before us today but as other acute analysts understand, this is the only Russia we have and the society’s potential for violence, as seen in the repeated cases of internal strife since 1991, is too enormous to justify radical calls for revolution. Since this is the only Russia we have, a psuedo-democracy or psuedoconstitutionalism as Max Weber described the late Tsarist regime, any pressure for democratization must start from here. Moreover, if the economy’s growth can be shifted onto a more self-sustaining basis, as at least some in Putin’s government seem to want, then it may well be possible to create a genuine civil society and socio-economic basis for democracy. But unless we are ready to countenance the violence that is necessarily attendant upon radicalism, we do not in fact have many other alternatives that we can credibly offer or that can be credibly built in today’s Russia. Bruce BEAN Lilia Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003). 306pp.Index.ISBN:0-87003-202-X. There is an interesting anecdote from the early 1970’s when Henry Kissinger was National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon. On one of his ground-breaking trips to China Kissinger asked Zhou Enlai for his opinion of the French Revolution. Zhou replied: “It is too early to tell.” This view from the Middle Kingdom is extreme for most Westerners. In 1999, several months prior to the resignation of Boris Yeltsin, Lilia 728 Рецензии/Reviews Shevtsova published Yeltsin’s Russia . Notwithstanding the fact that Yeltsin’s formal term as President had more than a year to run, Yeltsin’s Russia was an excellent review of this period of current Russian history , perhaps because Yeltsin’s early years were much more important than his second term. Shevtsova thus successfully established that Zhou Enlai’s unique perspective was not essential for a useful work on current Russian history. In her latest book, Putin’s Russia, however, one might conclude that Shevtsova has pushed this historical perspective too far. After only three years of what she and the rest of the world believe will be at least an eight year reign for President Putin, Putin’s Russia has appeared.In fact, however, Putin’s Russia is not a parallel volume to Yeltsin’s Russia. Doubtless it was the publisher who believed the parallel title would enhance sales. This volume is neither history nor a comprehensive account of Putin’s first three years in office. What we have is a collection of journalistic notes, often interesting, sometimes inconsistent, and occasionally wrong on the facts, which Shevtsova herself first labels as a “political diary” and later characterizes as “ruminations.” Rather than a consideration of Putin ’s first years in office, Putin’s Russia is Shevtsova’s private diary, in which she tries out commentary, conclusions, and hypotheses, reaches for generalizations, and crafts labels, just to see how they will sound and how they might fit in the final version of the work. This book, then, is not an account of Russia under Vladimir Vladimirovich or even the first few chapters of that story. It is rather a unique opportunity to observe Shevtsova as she begins to assemble her account of Russia’s continuing transition from rule by the Communist Party of the Soviet...