Putin's Kleptocracy

“[A] copiously researched account . . . the most persuasive account we have of corruption in contemporary Russia. Dawisha won’t be getting a Russian visa anytime soon. Her indictment—event if it wouldn’t stand up in a court of law—hits Putin where it really hurts.”

“[An] unblinking scholarly exposé.”

“An important and valuable work”

“[Dawisha] makes extensive use of the work of others, both fellow political scientists as well as journalists working across the US and Europe. . . . the resulting work has a certain admirable relentlessness. For by tying all of these disparate investigations together so thoroughly, so pedantically, and with so many extended footnotes—and by tracking down Western copies of documents that vanished from Russia long ago—the extent of what has always been a murky story suddenly becomes more clear. . . . [Dawisha] turns a relentless focus on the financial story of Putin’s rise to power: page after page contains the gritty details of criminal operation after criminal operation, including names, dates, and figures. Many of these details had never been put together before.”

“A who’s who of the people on the sanctions lists drawn up by America and the EU. It is also a guide to the crony capitalism that grew out of the nexus of Mr. Putin’s plutocratic interests, his shady past and authoritarian rule.”

“Putin’s Kleptocracy should be on the reading list of anyone who wishes to understand the true nature of Putin’s regime, which, as Dawisha correctly states, is ‘committed to a life of looting without parallel.’”

“A rich and exhaustive account of Putin and his regime . . . Among Dawisha’s many contributions to our understanding of post-Soviet politics, this book may be the most significant, as the author combines an analysis of such politics and a biography of Russian president Vladimir Putin in unrivaled detail. . . . The notes in this volume represent one of the finest and most imaginative uses of published source materials that this reviewer has ever seen in a book on post-Soviet politics.”

“A damning account of Vladimir Putin's rise to power and of the vast dimensions of the corruption—political and economic—that both reigns and rots in Russia. . . . Dawisha's research is extremely impressive. . . . The light of Dawisha's research penetrates a deep moral darkness, revealing something ugly—and dangerous.”

“A devastating dossier on what history may recognize as a state system that served mainly as a cover for the criminal looting and victimization of the people whose self-sacrificing patriotism it so cynically and shamelessly manipulated.”

“[An] important new book . . . [Dawisha] has compiled an extraordinary dossier of malfeasance and political corruption on an epic scale. . . . Dawisha is the first Western author to have pieced together all the relevant material . . . Above all, she charts the extraordinary accumulation of wealth and power by Putin’s associates and friends over a period of two decades. . . . Dawisha has done us all a service in her meticulous account . . . Putin’s Kleptocracy is a courageous and scrupulously judicious investigation into the sinews of wealth and power in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

“A long-time Russia scholar . . . Dawisha spent almost eight years researching her book. . . . In studying high-level corruption under the Putin regime, Dawisha does a thorough job of analysing the relevant material in the historical archives and court records, and collating reports in the Russian and western press. The power of her argument is amplified by the coolness of her prose.”