Leading Russia: Putin in perspective. Essays in honour of Archie Brown

Abstract:

This compilation of essays conveys appreciation by his colleagues and friends to Archie Brown on his retirement as Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College. Professor Brown has achieved international recognition for his scholarship on the politics of Communist and post-Communist states, particularly Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, in a career spanning four decades.

The work consists of essays on the main elements of Putin’s leadership and the changes in the Russian political system during his presidency. Perhaps not surprisingly the first contribution from the editor makes a fulsome tribute to Archie Brown and his scholarship. This is followed by an introduction to Putin and to the essays that follow. Chapter three examines Putin’s role as a ‘consolidator’ of centralist state power. Chapter four gives background context to the leadership element being such a strong and continuing force in the shaping of Soviet politics throughout the twentieth century. Corruption and state weakness are the themes explored in chapter five. The supremacy of, and at the same time dependency upon, the leadership and the state stifled any contribution of alternative thinking and any chance of democratic politics, and this is examined in chapter six. Rule by the majority allied to the Kremlin is a strong feature of Putin’s presidency as discussed in chapter seven. The question of Putin’s popularity and the implications following from that are explored in chapter eight, while chapter nine examines the growth of political patronage and its style under Putin. Re-establishment of the authority of the Russian state and Putin’s battles with the Oligarchs are the focus of chapter ten, featuring the assault on property rights of the country’s elite. Chapter eleven turns to the Russian Federation and examines the Putin reforms, finding little to encourage the view of a democratic tendency but rather confirmation of Putin’s will to manage from the centre. What led Putin to make the political choices that he has made is explored in chapter twelve - perhaps like many of his predecessors he was a captive of his past, inclined to strengthen the power of the state in the traditionalist pattern. The final chapter examines Putin’s relations with the West in an attempt to decipher his behaviour and response to particular issues as some kind of formal foreign policy. Perhaps there is still too much to do on the domestic front for Putin to formulate his foreign policy. The bear remains wary of outsiders.

The work will interest scholars and students engaged in Russia/Soviet studies and researchers, policy makers engaged in International Relations.

Alex Pravda is a Fellow of St Antony's College and Lecturer in Russian and East European Politics at Oxford University.

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