Critiquing the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin’s “cool calculation and prickly machismo,’ [Russia Without Putin] offers a more searching appraisal of the institutions that buttress his Presidency, the aspirations that galvanize his supporters, and the forces that drive his capitalist economy.”
—New Yorker
“In Russia Without Putin, Tony Wood dares to violate stock conventions by asking not just what Russia would look like if we looked beyond its figurehead, but if we saw Russia as it really was: an intermediate world power held together by an unsustainable economic and political model, and with several potential crises looming on the horizon … A crucial contribution.”
—Branko Marcetic, Jacobin
“The title of this excellent book … seems to echo the slogan that was chanted in Moscow in 2012 by crowds calling for regime change. In reality, it is a challenge to them and their western supporters for being so fixated on Putin and his personality that they fail to understand that he bestrides a system that is deeply entrenched and will easily survive him.”
—Jonathan Steele, The Guardian
“Tony Wood masterfully readjusts the lens through which we see contemporary Russia. This lucid, concise book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the economic, social, and political factors that have made Russia what it is today, and that will shape Russia's future.”
—Sophie Pinkham, author of Black Square: Adventures in the Post-Soviet World
“Tony Wood is the best and most eloquent writer on Russia that we have. A book from him on the deep dynamics of the entire post-Soviet era, free of obsession with the personality of Putin, is nothing less than a gift.”
—Keith Gessen, author of A Terrible Country
“Tony Wood brings a cool eye and analytical acuity to a systematically misrepresented subject. The result is a concise book that is continuously startling in its revelations, and sobering in its reminders of the vast tracts of Russian experience that paranoid commentary about the country has disregarded.”
—Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger
“There are few journalistic books about Russia that take its complexity seriously enough not to fall back on simplistic, essentialist, or Orientalist frameworks. Russia Without Putin is unquestionably one of them. The interpretation it develops should already have been the baseline for a larger discussion, instead of a desperate response to a debate about the Putin menace that has come entirely unmoored from reality. [Russia Without Putin] is not only praiseworthy but vital.”
—Greg Afinogenov, Bookforum
“Given the hysterical climate surrounding Vladimir Putin’s power in Russia and the wider world, the publication of a book entitled Russia without Putin brings fresh air to a debate spoiled by stereotypes and fashionable brands of Russia and Putin The Bloody Dictator. Russia without Putin should be recommended to anybody interested in understanding contemporary Russia—and, in particular, a more nuanced analysis of the country’s social reality.”
—OpenDemocracy
“A brilliantly written book. In a compact but analytically deep way, Tony Wood covers the major issues of post-Soviet Russia politics, economy, class structure, opposition protests, international conflicts, and future prospects. He debunks many myths popular in media and among pundits, and makes a compelling argument that the main Russian problems are not about Putin.”
—Volodymyr Ishchenko, sociologist (Kiev)
“Convincing and cool-headed account of the Putin phenomenon.”
—Herald
“Russia without Putin draws on contemporary Russian film and literature with such agility that it leaves most other accounts of the Putin years feeling impoverished and hidebound by comparison.”
—Thomas Meaney, American Affairs
“Seeks to debunk several common misconceptions about Russia and its relations with the rest of the world … [his] central message: don’t focus too much on Putin—the system over which he presides is more important, and it can outlast him.”
—Maria Lipman, Foreign Affairs
“Concise and powerfully written new book on contemporary Russia attempts to wean the reader from a diet of ‘Putinology’ … essential reading not just for Russophiles (and Russophobes) but for anyone interested in how the marketization of post-socialist Europe has continuing, and often negative, consequences.”
—Max Holleran, Public Books
Featured on Democracy Now!
2018-09-02
Books on the increasingly pugnacious Vladimir Putin, seemingly Russia's president for as long as he wants, are not in short supply, but this short, shrewd analysis stands out.
"Not since the days of Reagan," writes New Left Review editorial board member Wood, "has Russia seemed so central to US political life—and not since the depths of the Cold War has it been so unambiguously assumed across most of the political spectrum that Russia is the United States' principal enemy." There is less there than meets the eye, according to the author, who maintains that Putin is simply carrying on the policies of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Leaving the KGB in 1991, Putin made his reputation as a hardworking, absolutely loyal functionary. As designated successor in 2000, his first decree granted Yeltsin lifelong immunity from prosecution. Drunken and unpopular, Yeltsin was an easy act to follow, but Putin had a stroke of luck. Oil prices, the major source of government income, reversed their decline, allowing much of the population its first taste of prosperity. No more liberal than his predecessor but more efficient, Putin brought the media under government control, hobbled rival political parties without eliminating elections, and converted Russia into the "imitation democracy" that Western observers deplore. Few influential Russians, Putin included, pine for the old Soviet Union. The sole exception is its superpower status, whose loss rankles, and Wood believes that America's greatest mistake was rubbing their nose in it by expanding NATO into Eastern Europe and meddling in areas like Ukraine and Georgia, Russia's backyard. The amenable Yeltsin complained bitterly, and Putin's push back—e.g., the annexation of Crimea—was popular at home. Wood concludes that Putin has no great ambition except to stay in power and that successors will demonstrate the same patriotic fervor and deal with the same internal problems and dependence on oil prices that vex Putin.
Discouraging but insightful.
