CASINO MOSCOW.

• Author: Kounalakis, Markos T.
• Position: Review

CASINO MOSCOW by Matthew Brzezinski Free Press, $25.00

MUTUALLY ASSURED HEADLINES was the operational doctrine of newspapers during the height of the outwardly cool, yet constantly simmering, conflict between Moscow and Washington that ended nearly a decade ago. Since that time, Russian news has slowly, yet steadily, migrated from Page 1 to the business sections of American dailies.

Chandra replaced Chechnya in the news hole as the Soviet superpower broke down from a threatening nuclear adversary to a diminished (though nuclear-armed) Russian state. The prevailing news trend gives the popular impression that Russia is on the irreversible--if somewhat rocky--road to a functioning market economy and electoral democracy.

Two new books chart that progress and fill in the missing context and color of the often ignored, but dramatic story born in revolution 10 summers ago. Russia's Unfinished Revolution by Michael McFaul and Casino Moscow by Matthew Brzezinski are unintentionally complementary volumes. McFaul gives an erudite and well-documented history of the last 15 years, from Gorbachev to Putin. Brzezinski's personal anecdotes and journalistic observations flesh out McFaul's solid outline. Most of us lack the power of President George W. Bush to divine instantly a Russian leader's soul and intentions, so a historical review of how Russia got to Putin is helpful in guessing its future moves. McFaul starts his story with Gorbachev, the once all-powerful, all-controlling Soviet leader who introduced perestroika and glasnost into a system where "simultaneous political and economic change had a logic of their own that eventually could not be controlled." The details of these developments do not get lost in McFaul's telling of the story, and his step-by-step analysis of political and electoral events reinforces their significance.

McFaul deftly takes us through the failed first republic that culminated in the shelling of the Russian White House and the establishment of a new political order in 1993--what he refers to as the second Russian republic. The result is a country where, despite the many imperfections of its electoral democracy, leaders are voted in and the law has a basis in the constitution.

The author, a political science professor at Stanford and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, came to study the Russian revolution somewhat by accident; he was focusing on revolutionary change in Africa and while...