John Batchelor Podcast May 2, 2016

Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? by Karen Dawisha
[Dawisha] makes extensive use of the work of others, both fellow political scientists as well as journalists working across the US and Europe. . . . the resulting work has a certain admirable relentlessness. For by tying all of these disparate investigations together so thoroughly, so pedantically, and with so many extended footnotes—and by tracking down Western copies of documents that vanished from Russia long ago—the extent of what has always been a murky story suddenly becomes more clear. . . . [Dawisha] turns a relentless focus on the financial story of Putin’s rise to power: page after page contains the gritty details of criminal operation after criminal operation, including names, dates, and figures. Many of these details had never been put together before.” (Anne Applebaum New York Review of Books)

“A who’s who of the people on the sanctions lists drawn up by America and the EU. It is also a guide to the crony capitalism that grew out of the nexus of Mr. Putin’s plutocratic interests, his shady past and authoritarian rule.” (The Economist)

“Putin’s Kleptocracy should be on the reading list of anyone who wishes to understand the true nature of Putin’s regime, which, as Dawisha correctly states, is ‘committed to a life of looting without parallel.’” (Washington Free Beacon)

“A rich and exhaustive account of Putin and his regime . . . Among Dawisha’s many contributions to our understanding of post-Soviet politics, this book may be the most significant, as the author combines an analysis of such politics and a biography of Russian president Vladimir Putin in unrivaled detail. . . . The notes in this volume represent one of the finest and most imaginative uses of published source materials that this reviewer has ever seen in a book on post-Soviet politics.” (Library Journal (starred review))  https://www youtube. com/watch?v=PUwVrklT6tQ


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