Putin’s Russia
August 21, 2012
From Maxwell Perspective...
Putin’s Russia
Brian Taylor’s award-winning new book details how a corrupt political system has left Russian citizens hungry for something better.
Brian Taylor’s recent, widely praised book examines the type of Russia in which Vladimir Putin has held power, and how that power may be slipping.
Vladimir Putin's victory in Russia's presidential elections in March carried little suspense, either in Russia or internationally. Since he was first elected president in 2000, Putin has benefitted from a strong economy and a strong personality. Even when serving as prime minister for the past four years, Putin dominated Russian politics. Hence the shock when tens of thousands turned out in Moscow in December to protest the earlier, parliamentary elections - likely fraudulent - that returned Putin's United Russia party to power. The criticism signified that Putin's resolute grasp on the Russian political system had weakened.
Brian Taylor, associate professor of political science and an expert in Russian politics, says the protests "reflected a Russian society that needs a state that treats them fairly and works for their interests." Taylor would know. He has studied Russian politics since the 1980s, and his latest, award-winning book provides a detailed look at how the state developed - and faltered - during Putin's presidential reign from 2000 to 2008. State Building in Putin's Russia: Policing and Coercion After Communism "illustrates as well as any study the distortions in Russia's half-remade political system - distortions that have energized a growing impatience within a wide swath of a growing urban middle class and that exploded on to the streets after last December's parliamentary election," says Columbia University's Robert Legvold. He reviewed the book for Foreign Affairs, which named the work one of the best international relations books of 2011. The book was also named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.
The accolades build on Taylor's already extensive resumé in a career of studying Russia and the rest of the post-Soviet region. His interest developed in the 1980s over arms control security, "when Russia was still the Soviet Union, at a time when U.S.-Soviet relations were at a low," Taylor says. While studying for a master's degree at the London School of Economics, Taylor shifted his focus to Soviet and then Russian domestic politics under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. He continued his studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, obtaining a doctorate in 1998 and publishing dozens of articles and book chapters along the way. In 2003, he wrote Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689-2000 (Cambridge University Press).
To research his latest book, Taylor connected with Russian bureaucrats, academics, journalists, state officials, and NGO representatives. He tracks Putin's rise to and consolidation of power, which came at the expense of parliament, civil society, and media. It happened also to be the time of Russia's return to international prominence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin retained Russia's position as one of the two main nuclear powers, and oversaw economic growth based on oil and gas exports. And yet, Taylor says, Putin pursued a flawed strategy for rebuilding Russia, resulting in high rates of crime and terrorism, weak protection of property rights, and high levels of government corruption.
“I’m still somewhat cautious about how likely it is that Russia will break through to a more democratic form of government.”
— Brian Taylor Although Putin enjoyed overwhelming popularity when he succeeded
Yeltsin, Taylor found in his research that public support is
waning. As a Fulbright Scholar studying in St. Petersburg early
last year, Taylor saw firsthand some of the growing discontent with
Putin. He says citizens recognize that, even as prime minister,
Putin called many of the shots. Now, reelected president, Putin
could serve two more terms, keeping him in power through 2024.
The possibility of living for nearly a quarter century under the same leader, Taylor says, "struck many people as kind of absurd." Many of Russia's urban middle class in particular, Taylor says, want to live in what they consider a conventional political system, where a president serves for a couple of terms instead of a couple of decades.
Taylor sees a growing gulf between a dynamic society in Russia's major cities and a stagnant political system. He says Putin's administration does have more liberal factions, but with Putin's history of surrounding himself with "hardline security views," Taylor believes a more liberal leadership style unlikely.
And although the December protests indicate diminishing support, Putin won 64 percent of the vote in March. "I'm still somewhat cautious about how likely it is that Russia will break through to a more democratic form of government with a higher quality of government performance," Taylor says. "The big question is if Putin will meet those calling for change halfway, or take a more hardline position and govern in the way he has governed for the past decade."
— Greg Duggan