Strongman, The

defence plans, the invasion of Iraq, the expansion of NATO, Russia’s positive gestures that went unanswered, the perceived threat to spread revolutions from Georgia and Ukraine to Russia. And there is each side’s failure of vision: Putin’s inability to see any connection between his own repressions at home and the hostile reaction abroad; George W. Bush’s inability to understand Russia’s age-old fear of encirclement or its fury at his high-handed foreign policy adventures.
    At the time of writing Putin remains the most popular politician in Russia, perhaps because of the measure of stability and self-esteem he restored to people’s lives, and because living standards improved during his rule, due largely to high oil prices which benefit Russia. And yet he has failed in many of his stated goals. Having come to power promising to annihilate terrorism, the number of attacks has grown; corruption has soared, and cripples the economy; the population has slumped under his leadership by 2.2 million people; foreign investment has been far lower, as a percentage of Russia’s economic output, than rival fast-growing emerging markets such as Brazil or China; and, despite the massive inflows of energy revenues in the past decade, Russia has failed to create a dynamic, modern economy. This book looks at the struggle for reform inside Russia, and asks whether Dmitry Medvedev as president was (as it often seemed) a frustrated liberal or mere window-dressing.
    Politicians are prone to oversimplify complicated issues, especially if it is in their interests to do so. This has been especially true of the discussion in recent years of what is perhaps the trickiest of all international political problems – the right of small nations to self-determination. Kosovo, Chechnya, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria ... gallons of ink and roomfuls of hot air have been expended in explaining, usually with categorical assurance, that one small country’s independence is or is not a precedent for others. Usually it is the big ‘mother country’ that insists all other cases are unique (Russia vis-à-vis Chechnya, Georgia vis-à-vis South Ossetia and Abkhazia), while the small nations demand to be treated the same way as those who gained their freedom. It is an issue of exceptional importance in Russia, a multinational state like no other, where dozens of nationalities coexist, some with greater or lesser autonomy, and where the Kremlin has a pathological fear of the state disintegrating if any one of those nations is allowed to set a precedent by gaining independence. The issue runs through the history of the last decade, from the war in Chechnya and the welter of terrorist incidents in Russia, to the short war between Russia and Georgia in 2008. Usually no side is ‘right’ in any of these conflicts, and it would be simplistic to pretend otherwise – just as it would be simplistic to pretend that the West’s decision to recognise Kosovo and NATO’s decision on future membership for Georgia and Ukraine had no bearing on relations between Russia and its neighbours. Perceptions and misperceptions of the other side’s intentions often play a greater – and usually more harmful – role than reality.
    This is my third book about Russia, and I am aware of the presumptuousness of any foreigner who claims to understand that baffling country. The Russian political scholar Sergei Karaganov wrote of the ‘feelings of resentment and rejection that we Russians have when reading unpleasant notes about our country written by foreigners’. There is much that is unpleasant in Russian politics today, and it deserves to be written about. Russia is sometimes its own worst enemy, seeing ill intentions abroad where there are none, and fearing the spread of democracy rather than welcoming it. But there is also a failure on the part of the West to understand the processes going on there or to treat Russia with respect as a country that wants to be part of the world, not shunned by it.
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    This book stems partly from my work as chief consultant on a four-part BBC television documentary titled ‘Putin, Russia & the West’, made by the Brook Lapping production company. For the series, we conducted hundreds of hours of top-level interviews not only in Russia but also in the US, Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine and Georgia. These original interviews cast fresh light on many of the events covered, and are at the heart of my narrative.
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