Russia's looming crisis.

• Author: Kiehl, William P.
• Position: E-book review

Title: Russia's Looming Crisis

Author: William P. Kiehl

Text:

RUSSIA'S LOOMING CRISIS

By David Satter, FPRI Senior Fellow

http://www.fpri.org/pubs/2012/201203.satter.russiasloomingcrisis.pdf

Reviewed by William P. Kiehl, Ed.D.

Posted to the web just a few days before the March 4 election in Russia, David Satter's 48-page FPRI e-book is uncanny in its prediction of the election results, the reasons for, and the reaction to Putin's "victory." More importantly still it is depressingly accurate in its depiction of Putin's Russia in 2012.

Satter, the Financial Times' Moscow correspondent in the waning days of the Cold War, who later focused on post-Soviet Russia at the Wall Street Journal, in academia, and at think tanks, is one of those rare journalists who transcends mere reporting of facts and regurgitation of others' thinking about policy.

Since the eclipse of the Soviet Union as a "superpower" rival of the United States and its being shoved aside by the war on terror, the rise of a competitive China, and the threat from Iran, Russia has become something of a mystery to most Americans. This slim e-book does a great deal to re-introduce indifferent Westerners to a nation that is undergoing deep and profound changes, some of which should trouble us greatly.

Few Americans who do not deal with today's Russia have any realization of how pervasive is the country's kleptocracy. From the precinct level to the Kremlin, the organs of state security and the police are almost wholly corrupt. It would not be an understatement to say that Putin and his cohorts have in essence supplanted the Russian mafia. Indeed they have refined and made their brand of criminality more efficient. This combination of authoritarianism and criminality fuels the resilient...