Like those central defenders of the old school, the publishing industry does not always have enough waist to react to today’s dribbles, but when the play has continuity and can be anticipated, forcefulness is guaranteed.
Thus, the eternalization of Vladimir Putin (Saint Petersburg 1952) at the head of Russia, either as prime minister (1999 and 2008-2012) or as president (1999-2008 and 2012-present), and his conversion, even before the invasion of Ukraine, in the number one enemy of the Western bloc announce a cascade of news about his figure and career.
Since the second presidential term
In fact, already in 2004, coinciding with his second presidential term and the realization that it was not a simple parenthesis, some pioneering approaches came to the market to try to explain how that gray former KGB agent had first become the man of confidence of President Boris Yeltsin and finally in the new czar of the Eurasian giant.
Among those initiatory titles we found everything from Putin: Russia’s Choice, by the Russophile British political scientist Richard Sakwa, to the denunciation of the late journalist Anna Politkóvskaya, Putin’s Russia (in Debate the following year), passing through Putin’s Progress by the corrupt Labor Lord Peter Trusscott, among others.
Of the later works, the negative portrait of 2012 signed by Masha Gessen (urgently recovered by Debate this February), the biography of the German Hubert Seipel of 2015, translated two years later by Almuzara; or Putin v. People by Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson, 2019.
Out of date for the present
However, a good part of this bibliography has been outdated by the passage of time and is insufficient to interpret the current events of these days. To respond to this urgency, many Spanish and Catalan labels have gone looking for local references with previous works on the Russian-Soviet world.
This is the case of Putin thirty years after the end of the USSR signed by Llibert Ferri, dean of the Catalan correspondents behind the old iron curtain, where the historical roots of the rise of the Russian president are sought and its dangerousness is warned, without obviously foreseeing the current war escalation.
Now that the military campaign is underway, two other veterans have offered their particular view of the current situation: Rafael Poch-de-Feliu in a compilation of his most recent articles under the title The invasion of Ukraine; and Carlos Taibo in an update and extension of his previous Russia against Ukraine.
At the international level, the flourishing has been even more enormous, justified by the evolution and relevance of Putin and his conversion into an icon of authoritarianism. Among the diversity of works recently announced or published and without the intention of exhaustiveness, some titles can be chosen for their relevance and/or contributions.
In the first place, hardly anyone can beat the detailed biography signed by the British journalist Philip Short. This experienced biographer –he has previous works dedicated to Pol Pot, François Mitterrand or Mao, the latter the only one translated into Spanish– has taken advantage of the knowledge accumulated throughout his years as an international correspondent, including Moscow for the BBC between 1974 and 1976, as well as a documentation work that has lasted for six years.
The two obsessions of the regime
But biography of characters still alive and active has its tolls and Short will hardly be able to include the outcome of the current conflict and, above all, the final years of the autocrat.
These logical shortcomings do not detract from an approach that locates a good part of the interpretive keys of the individual Putin in the idealization of his years and experiences as a KGB agent and in the nostalgia of «homo sovieticus». Surely, few images are more revealing than the one of the flight from Dresden in the family car, with a second-hand washing machine on the roof rack.
Instead, to decode President Putin, Short emphasizes the connections between the former members of the secret services and the new oligarchs with international projection, where it is often difficult to distinguish where one begins and the other ends. That yes, all of them are aligned to achieve the two obsessions of the regime: to compensate for external grievances –real or invented– and remake the glories –tuned or imagined– imperial.
Precisely, Putin’s Men, by correspondent Catherine Belton, focuses on these opaque circles of power and wealth to explain the last thirty years of Russian politics.
Considered the book of the year in 2021 by the big Anglo-Saxon newspapers, the analysis of how (dirty) Russian money has flooded London and Washington is especially interesting and worrying. While the ties to Trump have perhaps deserved more coverage, the ties to the London capital, beyond the botched and cruel removal of prominent refugees, are striking because of the depth of economic and political influence. But also because of the list of invited artists, such as the case of Román Abramóvich, described as the straw man for Putin’s interests in the City.
In case there was any doubt about the false independence of the Russian tycoons, the former head of the Yukos oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is in charge of dispelling them in his autobiographical The Russian Conundrum, announced for June and written in four hands with the polyglot correspondent Martin Sixsmith, with the desire to join in the discrediting of Putin and, incidentally, vindicate himself in the face of possible better times.
Also written by four hands but much more interesting is Spin Dictators, scheduled for spring, by the renowned Russian economist – and victim of Putin’s persecution – Sergei Guriev and the American political scientist Daniel Treisman.
Vladimir Putin at Kommunarka, in March 2020. /
In it, its authors remind us how the autocrats of the 21st century no longer need to act as monsters of terror and violence, but rather control and concentration of the levers of power and the media are enough.
Following the path begun years ago by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Putin stands out as an outstanding student in putting into practice strategies that combine the potential of modernization for their own benefit (they no longer practice autarchy), of sophisticated manipulation (they not rude) and the exploitation of democratic weaknesses (no longer direct combat).
In this same line of original comparative study, another title also announced for the coming weeks stands out and will have a Spanish version in Crítica: The Age of The Strongman. This analysis of “how the cult of the leader threatens democracy around the world” is endorsed by the signature of Gideon Rachman who, to his cosmopolitan origins and his training as a historian at Cambridge, adds an enviable professional career as a journalist in the world service of the BBC, a reporter in Washington, a member of the staff of The Economist for 15 years (with positions in America, Asia and Europe) and a reference in recent times in the Financial Times.
Autocrats and counter models
With this accumulated capital, he builds a brilliant book that travels the world to dissect the concept of the strong man. After reproaching the international community for its repeated miscalculations (“This initial tendency of Western commentators to confuse strong leaders with liberal reformers is something of a pattern”), Rachman unfolds some first ten chapters where he traces brief biographies of different autocrats –Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Bin Salman, Xi Jinping, Orban, Modi…–, as ruthless as they are well-informed thanks to previous interviews and even direct knowledge.
Characterized the profile, Rachman still has time to comment on the possible countermodels represented by Macron, Trudeau or Ardern; to denounce the ideological battle personified by good (George Soros) and evil (Steve Bannon); and to open the door to a possible –and willful– correction of course from the presidency of Joe Biden.
Unfortunately, one of those strong men, Vladimir Putin –precisely the one who opens the book– may end up conditioning both the risky forecast of the future, and the hopeful outlook it sustains.
This article has been published in ‘The Conversation’.
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