The Rise of the Accidental Autocrat

A history of Russian politics from 1999, when a little-known Duma member and former intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin was selected to be prime minister and presumptive heir to the presidency, to 2015, when now-President Putin had solidified his power and become the West's most feared European bogeyman.

Russian investigative journalist and founder of independent Russian news service Rain TV Mikhail Zygar drew on years of reporting, exclusive interviews and firsthand observations to write this Shakespearean tale of political intrigue and backroom scheming. He begins with Putin as a pro-democracy liberal who seemed reluctant to accept the reins of power, let alone hold onto them. In those days, Putin admired Western leaders such as Tony Blair and George W. Bush and seemed desperate for their acceptance and approval. This inferiority complex is certainly nothing new in Russian history. It dates back at least as far as Peter the Great in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Also sadly familiar is the outcome: Driven to paranoia by rejections and betrayals, real and perceived, either from the West or within his innermost circle, he gradually became a despotic autocrat who considered democracy antithetical to the inherent Russian character and believed his country and himself to be one and the same, and who saw it as his divine calling to establish Russia as a supreme empire.

Almost any deep examination suggests what most separates History's Greatest Monsters from its Great Men and Women is not necessarily ambition. Anyone who considers himself or herself both worthy and capable of heading a nation or a movement must have quite a bit of ambition, even to the point of arrogance. Rather, the primary distinguishing factor seems to be the thin skins of tyrants. Not only do they often consider any form of dissension to be a sign of disloyalty, but they tend to nurse grudges. As described in this book, Putin certainly meets that criterion perfectly. Even the oligarchs who have plucked him from obscurity and elevated him to the international stage now fear his wrath and are in endless competition with each other to kowtow to him and curry his highly mutable favor the most. It is this very competition which constitutes the bulk of this book's plot. The key players are so numerous, a very helpful 12-page "Cast of Characters" at the front of the book is necessary.

For many critics, this is the book's main flaw. Zygar describes the oligarchs, current and former government officials and leading dissidents in vivid detail, while the man at their center remains inscrutable, but this is arguably as it should be. Of course, there is the logistical impossibility of interviewing a man who has been known to disappear without explanation or warning for weeks at a time, leaving his most trusted advisers to guess (often incorrectly) what his wishes would be. However, the answer may be there is nothing about him to understand. He is at times a blank slate open to the advisers's power of suggestion, and at other times a mirror reflecting the shifting tides of public attitudes and political expediency. Perhaps he remains unknowable because there is nothing to know. There is no there there beyond a small, petty, childish fraud at the helm of a nuclear power.

Near the conclusion of the book, Zygar predicts a future sequel. This came true in July 2023 when Zygar, now in exile, first had published War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine in English, but Zygar's predictions as to what would likely be in this sequel are wrong, as might well be expected. At the time of this book's first publication in Russian in October 2015, Donald Trump's candidacy was still considered laughable, his race a vanity campaign intended to sell books and nothing more. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's presidency was quite literally a joke - the premise for his latest comedy series Servant of the People - and Putin had turned his attention away from Ukraine and back toward Chechnya. In this book, Zygar declares it improbable Putin would ever publicize someone as insignificant as opposition leader Alexei Navalny by imprisoning him. By the time of the sequel's publication, Navalny had, in fact, been jailed indefinitely, where he would die months later in what is widely assumed to be an assassination.

Zygar fails to predict the future, but this is understandable when it is determined by a man so unpredictable to those who know him best. Ultimately, that may be the real secret to Putin's power and the threat he poses to liberal democracy throughout the world. ( )

I would have to read this multiple times to fully grasp it. The 'list of characters' at the beginning of the book should have served as a warning to me. I particularly enjoyed the sketches of the protagonists that opened each chapter. ( )

Requires an understanding of the Russian political system ( )

Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Subject)