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WORK TITLE: The Empire Must Die
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1/31/1981
WEBSITE:
CITY:
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COUNTRY: Russian Federation
NATIONALITY: Russian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born January 31, 1981, in Moscow, Russia.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, and filmmaker. Kommersant, Russia, war correspondent; Newsweek, Russia, political editor, deputy editor-in-chief, 2009-10; Dozhd (television channel), Russia, editor-in-chief, 2010-15. Creator of the films, To Bury Stalin, Who’s the Power, and Past and Duma, all 2013.
AWARDS:International Press Freedom Award, 2014.
WRITINGS
Also, coauthor, with Valery Panyushkin, of Gazprom: New Russian Weapon, 2008.
SIDELIGHTS
Mikhail Zygar is a Russian writer, journalist, and filmmaker. He has worked as a correspondent for the Russian publication, Kommersant, and as the deputy editor-in-chief for the Russian version of Newsweek. From 2010 to 2015, Zygar served as the editor-in-chief of the television channel, Dozhd. In 2013, he released three films, To Bury Stalin, Who’s the Power, and Past and Duma.
All the Kremlin's Men
Zygar is the author of All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, which was originally released in Russian in 2016. In it, he profiles powerful people close to the Russian leader. He also comments on Putin’s goals as ruler of the country.
All the Kremlin’s Men received mixed reviews. Referring to Zygar, Kathrin Hille, contributor to the Financial Times Online, suggested: “His analysis of how the president grew disillusioned with western counterparts such as U.S. president George W Bush—or how U.S. policies of regime change in other countries convinced him Washington was out to topple him as well—lacks a link to the deeply reported main story. Still, the book is a milestone. No other Russian journalist has written a Putin book based on independent reporting and published in Russia.” Mark Rice-Oxley, critic on the London Guardian Online, remarked: “As a chronicler of the opposition movement that briefly unsettled Putin through the winter of 2011/12, Zygar cannot be considered an impartial observer (though who can in matters concerning Russia these days?). Yet he does manage, through dozens of interviews with members of Putin’s inner circle, to produce a three-dimensional, detached and readable account of the ‘man who accidentally became king’ and the courtiers who dance around him.” “The stream of court intrigue gives All the Kremlin’s Men the juicy allure of a Russian thriller. But structuring the book around members of Mr. Putin’s entourage leads to some confusing chronological leaps. Foreign readers may struggle; the English edition has a list of characters, but a timeline would also have come in handy. More troubling is Mr. Zygar’s reliance on hearsay and anonymous sources, a flaw he readily owns up to,” stated an Economist contributor. Writing in Russian Life, Paul E. Richardson commented: “His book illuminates what has been going on behind Kremlin walls in the Putin years and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding Kremlin intentions, if not predicting its actions. Because he bases his conclusions not on reading tea leaves or the content analysis of speeches, but on real interviews and inside contacts with real people.” Choice reviewer, Y. Pobky, noted that the book was “accessible to all levels of readership” and opined: “Overall, Zygar has made a substantial contribution in the study of Putin’s Russia.” “This excellent book contains a continuous account of Putin’s years in power seasoned with details that are poorly known,” asserted Zachary Irwin in Library Journal. Tony Wood, critic in Artforum International suggested: “Written in a rather flat but accessible style, the book is based on the testimony of an impressive selection of key figures in contemporary Russian politics. … The level of access he seems to have enjoyed is unusual, given that he is hardly a Kremlin insider.”
The Empire Must Die
In The Empire Must Die: Russia’s Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917, Zygar discusses the years leading up to the ouster of the Romanov dynasty. In an interview with Pavel Koshkin, contributor to the Johnson’s Russia List website, Zygar stated: “Many historical figures that took the lead in 1917 are not familiar to ordinary Russians today, but they played a very significant role in Russia’s politics. Remarkably, these people defended not their personal ambitions, but they defended the interests of society. Thus, the main lesson of the 1917 February revolution is the understanding that every member of society can contribute to the development of a country’s history, that every member of society is important for history, that everybody is a part of the historical and political processes.”
Howard Amos, reviewer on the Calvert Journal website, commented: “The book’s main strength—and its main weakness—is a focus on individuals. This makes for an undeniably gripping and vivid read as Zygar gives expert political analysis and narrates the intrigues of the leading men and women of Russian politics and culture.” Amos added: “But while this is all compelling, it is also limiting. Restricting the scope to Russia’s leading lights, who mostly live in Moscow and St. Petersburg, means ordinary Russians only appear as appendages of political leaders’ ambitions. Zygar offers no explanation for why workers protested, soldiers deserted or peasants burnt estates to the ground (or, indeed, how such people experienced the revolution). This makes The Empire Must Die a work of ‘great men’ history, where events are explained by the actions of a few individuals and dubious causality chains abound.” However, a Kirkus Reviews critic described the book as “a vivid, character-driven reconstruction of the period” and “an excellent complement to recent work by other Russian journalists who have turned to history, and to brilliant purpose.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Artforum International, December, 2016, Tony Wood, “You’re the Puppet: A Russian Journalist Challenges the Standard View of Vladimir Putin as a Supervillain,” review of All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, p. S34.
Choice, January, 2017, Y. Pobky, review of All the Kremlin’s Men, p. 784.
Economist, September 17, 2016, “Cluster Bomb: Russia Today,” review of All the Kremlin’s Men, p. 79.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017, review of The Empire Must Die: Russia’s Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917.
Library Journal, October 1, 2016, Zachary Irwin, review of All the Kremlin’s Men, p. 93.
Russian Life, November-December, 2016, Paul E. Richardson, review of All the Kremlin’s Men, p. 60.
ONLINE
Calvert Journal, https://www.calvertjournal.com/ (December 7, 2017), Howard Amos, review of Empire Must Die.
Financial Times Online, https://www.ft.com/ (October 24, 2016), Kathryn Hille, review of All the Kremlin’s Men.
Johnson’s Russia List, http://russialist.org/ (August 21, 2017), Pavel Koshkin, author interview.
London Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (January 5, 2017), Mark Rice-Oxley, review of All the Kremlin’s Men.
Mikhail Viktorovich Zygar
Mikhail Zygar 2013.jpg
Mikhail Zygar in 2013
Born 31 January 1981 (age 37)
Moscow, Russia
Known for Dozhd
Notable work All the Kremlin's Men
Mikhail Viktorovich Zygar (Russian: Михаил Викторович Зыгарь; born 31 January 1981) is a Russian journalist, writer and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of the only Russian independent news TV-channel, Dozhd (2010–2015). Under Zygar's leadership, Dozhd provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices. The channel's coverage of politically sensitive issues, like the Moscow street protests in 2011 and 2012 as well as the conflict in Ukraine, has been dramatically different from the official coverage by Russia's national television stations.[1] Zygar is also the author of the book All the Kremlin's Men, the history of Putin's Russia, based on interviews with Russian politicians from Putin's inner circle. The book has become an outstanding best-seller in Russia.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Awards
3 Books
4 Project "1917. Free history"
5 Films
6 References
7 External links
Biography
Zygar was born in Moscow, 31 January 1981. He became known as a war correspondent of Kommersant, the most influential Russian newspaper, covering wars in Iraq and Lebanon, genocide in Darfur, and revolution in Kyrgyzstan. In May 2005 Zygar was the only international journalist to report from Uzbekistan's Andijan (Andijan Massacre). After that he investigated Russian arms supplies to Uzbekistan. In August, 2005 he was brutally beaten by unknown men in Moscow, supposedly Uzbek security agents.
In 2009 and 2010 he worked as political editor and deputy editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek.[2]
In 2010 Zygar became the first (founding) editor in chief of Dozhd, the first independent TV-channel in Russia in 10 years.[3] Dozhd rose to prominence in 2011 with its coverage of the mass protests against Vladimir Putin.[4] Zygar organised live coverage of all the protest rallies, which were largely ignored by state-owned television. Vice News called Zygar and his team 'the last journalists in Russia'[5].
In 2012 - 2014 Zygar was among the group of 'leading Russian journalists' who had annual interviews with President of Russia (then Prime Minister) Dmitry Medvedev. According to AP reporter 'Mikhail Zygar's questions were sharper than those of the others[6]'.
In 2014 Dozhd became a target of politically motivated attacks.[7] Its troubles began when the channel was aggressively covering the daily anti-government protests in Ukraine, which state-owned television dismissed as a neo-Nazi coup. In that year nearly all cable networks dropped Dozhd[8] and since then the channel has been largely ignored. The channel cut its expenses in half, shed about 30 percent of its staff and reduced its monthly budget before being hit with an eviction notice. Simultaneously Dozhd raised about $1 million in a crowd-funding campaign in March, proving that the demand for independent media in Russia is still there. The TV-channel started broadcasting from an ordinary flat in Moscow.[9]
In December 2015 Zygar announced he would be leaving the post of chief editor.[10] He told «Kommersant» that he intends to engage in his own multimedia project «1917. Free History». «I’m five and a half years running the channel, every Executive needs to expire once a period, that’s right, I gotta do something,» added Zygar.[11] But according to other independent media Zygar's resignation could be caused by political pressure. Chief editor of «Echo of Moscow» radio Alexei Venediktov claimed that some high-ranking statesmen including Prime-Minister Dmitry Medvedev were infuriated by the book and they demanded Dozhd's owner Natalia Sindeeva to get rid of Zygar.[12]
Awards
In 2014 CPJ announced that Mikhail Zygar was to receive the International Press Freedom Award.[13] He was the seventh Russian to be honored (after Tatyana Mitkova in 1991, Evgeny Kiselyov in 1995,Yelena Masyuk in 1997, Musa Muradov in 2003, Dmitry Muratov in 2007 and Nadira Isayeva in 2010).[14]
Books
'War in Myth' (2007). Collection of Zygar's essays about his work in hotspots like Iraq, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.
Gazprom. New Russian Weapon (2008), together with Valery Panyushkin. Investigation of the most mighty Russian state-owned-corporation.
'All the Kremlin's Men[15]' (2015). The book became the most important Russian non-fiction about the metamorphoses of Putin and his inner circle. The book was the #1 bestseller in Russia for 4 months. In it Mikhail Zygar traces Vladimir Putin's ascent to become the most powerful Russian president in decades, and illustrates the grip that extreme paranoia has on Moscow's power elite.[16] It took Zygar seven years to write, interviewing current and former associates of the Russian president. In his book, Zygar battles against the idealization of Putin as a savvy and ingenious puppet-master; both the demonic version put forth by the West, and the idolizing version propagated by Russia's official state media. Zygar is far from adapting the insulted tone of the Russian establishment in his assessment. He is more interested in tracing Russian leadership's slide into the aggressive world view that has eventually led to the war in Eastern Ukraine and military intervention in Syria.[17]
The book became a huge event in Ukraine. It revealed that annexation of Crimea was planned by the Kremlin in December, 2013.[18]
Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich praised the book saying that "This is the first consistent description of everything that has happened over the last 20 years that I have read. It is a very serious study and an opportunity to learn from first hand reports".[19] John Kampfner of The Guardian called the book "one of the most compelling"[20] accounts written about Vladimir Putin. The Sydney Morning Herald reviewed the book as a "fascinating, in-depth and authoritative study of Russian politics".[21] The book was also published in Germany, Bulgaria, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary. 'All the Kremlin's Men' was published in English in 2016.[22]
Zygar's next book, 'The Empire Must Die', was released both in Russian and in English[23] on the centenary of the Russian revolution. It’s a captivating story about the Russian society a hundred years ago, in the years leading up to the revolution, and the intertwined fates of Tolstoy, Diaghilev, Rasputin, Stolypin and other protagonists of the era. The way the story is told allows readers to recognize today's realities in almost every character or event: the century-old country looks like a reflection of modern Russia. Emily Tamkin of "Foreign policy" described the book as "an immensely compelling work that transports the reader to the streets of St. Petersburg to see the early 20th century unfold for herself".[24]
Project "1917. Free history"
In November 2016 Mikhail Zygar launched a digital project “1917. Free history" that uses diary entries, memoirs, letters, pictures etc. of the contemporaries of the Russian Revolution to let Internet users follow their daily events live.[25] The project is supported by Yandex, Sberbank and the Russian social network VKontakte. It is scheduled to run until January 18, 2018, the day of the dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly. The project has inspired several collaborations scheduled for 2017: exhibitions in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and a theatre performance in the Gogol Center theatre in Moscow.
An English-language version of the website was launched in February 2017.[26]
Films
To Bury Stalin (2013)
Who's the Power (2013)
Past and Duma (2013). Dramatic mini-series about history of Russian Parliament
QUOTED: "Many historical figures that took the lead in 1917 are not familiar to ordinary Russians today, but they played a very significant role in Russia’s politics. Remarkably, these people defended not their personal ambitions, but they defended the interests of society. Thus, the main lesson of the 1917 February revolution is the understanding that every member of society can contribute to the development of a country’s history, that every member of society is important for history, that everybody is a part of the historical and political processes."
Interview with Mikhail Zygar — 1917-2017: An ominous anniversary for Russia; Here is why the Kremlin is not eager to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution and use it in its political goals.
August 21, 2017 JRL Russia List History, Soviet Union, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections
File Photo of Revolutionaries Marching in Moscow in 1917, adapted from image at state.gov
[Interview conducted, transcribed and adapted by Pavel Koshkin, Former Editor-in-Chief, Russia Direct]
Mikhail Zygar, the author of the project “1917.Free History”, talks to Johnson’s Russia List (JRL) about the reasons why the Russian authorities don’t use the 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution in their political goals. He also discuses the lessons the Kremlin should learn from these dramatic events that took place 100 years ago.
“1917. Free History” is an interactive project dedicated to the 1917 Russian revolution. It is presented in the form of the social network like Facebook, with historical characters, which lived 100 years ago, being the participants of the network. They share their thoughts and numerous articles from leading world newspapers about the events before and during the 1917 revolution. The project is based on the primary sources of that period, including documents, letters, memoirs, diaries and the like. The project is the result if the work of journalists, experts, historians, designers and illustrators.
What key lessons could today’s Russia learn from the 1917 February and October revolutions?
Mikhail Zygar: The lessons are in the ways of how we look at history in general. Since the times of Karamzin Russian history has been always focusing on the narratives about the Russian rulers [Nikolai Karamzin was a XIX-century Russian writer, poet, historian and critic, well-known for History of the Russian State, a 12-volume national history – editor’s note].
In fact, History of Russia was the history of the government and its leadership, and this is a very vicious tradition, because there are no ordinary people and their interests behind such history. In this regard, the 1917 February revolution is interesting because this is the period when an emerging civil society in Russia took the initiative. Many historical figures that took the lead in 1917 are not familiar to ordinary Russians today, but they played a very significant role in Russia’s politics. Remarkably, these people defended not their personal ambitions, but they defended the interests of society.
Thus, the main lesson of the 1917 February revolution is the understanding that every member of society can contribute to the development of a country’s history, that every member of society is important for history, that everybody is a part of the historical and political processes.
Traditionally, ordinary Russians are inclined to think that cannot have an impact on politics and history: “We can’t change”. And such apathy, in part, stems from their perception of history, which imposes such thinking.
Could Russia be seen as the first republic after the 1917 February revolution, when the first attempts of democratic reforms were initiated?
M.Z.: If one looks at today’s Russia, its only “predecessor” will be the government that existed between March and November of 1917. This government was in the establishing process: there were no democratic institutes and the Constituent Assembly, but in fact it was republican in its nature, it was the first republic indeed [the Constituent Assembly was a constitutional body convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, it was recognized as the first democratically elected legislative body in Russia, but was dissolved by the Bolsheviks in 1918 – editor’s note]. The same happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and in 1917 the emerging government was driven by democratic values – it prioritized human rights and introduced popular suffrage. It is a pretty interesting precedent.
Do you really mean that Russia between March and November in 1917 became democratic?
M.Z.: It failed to become fully democratic, because it didn’t elect the Constituent Assembly at that time, but it was on the way toward it.
What official position does the Kremlin take today toward the 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution?
M.Z.: The Russian authorities don’t have any official position on this event and this is good, because coming up with the state’s official position will mean an attempt to use history in one’s political goals and this will inevitably lead to the distortion of history and cherry-picking.
Yet why don’t the Kremlin use this anniversary to promote its agenda, if the Russian authorities and politicians in general are used to imposing their agenda through informational campaign?
M.Z.: First, 1917 is a very difficult period of the Russian history to use it for propagandistic goals. The problem is that today’s authorities see Russia as a great power: being a superpower, an empire is good for them. But 1917 is the year when the Russian empire collapsed and the civil society emerged as a result of the February revolution. To come up with an official position on the 1917 revolution, one should associate oneself with the key historical figures of that period.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot associate himself either with weak emperor Nicholas II, or revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Kerensky. They failed to turn Russia in a superpower and that’s why they cannot be seen as the good role models for Putin. As a consequence, only experts and historians discuss and analyze the 100th anniversary of the revolution, while ordinary people prefer to ignore it.
Although there is no official position on the 1917 revolution, there is a sort of tacit agreement that media should focus on the conspiracy narrative: according to it, all revolutions result from a foreign plot – Englishmen allegedly orchestrated the February revolution, while Germans sponsored the October revolution. And this conspiracy mania reveal a lot about the way of how the Russian authorities and society think today.
Well-known Russia writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn implied in his article about the February revolution that the key lesson from the 1917 events is the understanding of how dangerous a weak ruler could be: the weak authorities and government led to the disaster. In accordance with such logic, the nation needs a strongman. Isn’t such narrative popular among the Russian authorities that perennially fight with and fear “color revolutions”?
M.Z.: No, the February revolution is not about the consequences a weak ruler leads to. It is much more complicated. There is no cause-effect relation between a weak ruler and the disaster of 1917. It is not a matter of a strong leader being good and a weak leader leading to the catastrophe. In reality, the most tragic and horrendous events in Russian history took place because of the strong leaders – what happened after the 1917 October revolution was because of the strong power assumed by the Bolsheviks – Lenin and then Joseph Stalin.
The thesis about the weak and strong power is the example of oversimplification and cherry-picking. The society should have not strong rulers, but strong institutions to be viable and powerful. Society should respect the institutes and the rule of law, but not dictators. The February revolution and democracy failed not because of the weak emperor, but because the 1917 interim government had a very bad legacy from the Russian empire: the absence of effective political and public institutes. And this problem is relevant for today’s Russia and this is very dangerous. It is the biggest factor of instability.
What other reasons, except the absence of good institutes, led to the 1917 upheaval?
M.Z.: There was also the external factor: the World War I. This led to a greater instability and unpredictability. The reliance on patriotic euphoria, which war could nurture, is dangerous, because sooner or later this euphoria comes to an end. Initially, the war was very popular and people were ready to sacrifice their own lives, driven by patriotism. Yet it was very difficult to maintain for a long time. When the war became protracted in 1917, the euphoria disappeared.
Are there any reasons to draw parallels between 1917 and 2017, given a lot of debates about the international instability, the buzz about a new global war and the Kremlin’s attempts to use Crimea’s annexation, the Syrian campaign to spur patriotic swag in society?
M.Z.: I don’t think it is correct. There are no the same situation, every situation is unique, but there could be the same problems. And we should analyze the past to draw lessons, not parallels. Any attempts to describe the events that took place 100 years ago through the lens of modernity and look for mysterious coincidences are superficial.
QUOTED: "a vivid, character-driven reconstruction of the period."
"an excellent complement to recent work by other Russian journalists who have turned to history, and to brilliant purpose."
Zygar, Mikhail: THE EMPIRE MUST DIE
Kirkus Reviews. (Oct. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Zygar, Mikhail THE EMPIRE MUST DIE PublicAffairs (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 11, 7 ISBN: 978-1-61039-831-2
A vivid, character-driven reconstruction of the period leading up to the overthrow of the Romanovs and the birth of modern Russia.
One-time TV host Zygar (All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin, 2016) opens with a mild protest: he is a journalist and not a historian and so writes by the journalist's playbook, "as if the characters were alive and I had been able to interview them." Nonetheless, the author commands a powerful depth of historical knowledge and a novelist's knack for sorting through the details to determine what is important and what's ancillary. His book is long on meaningful storytelling in the service of finding out what went wrong in Russia's brief moment of liberalism, an era that snapped shut a century ago. He adds that his characters, who range from rebels to royals, intellectuals to clerics, had no idea how their deeds would play out in history or how small events would turn into big ones. In some senses, the October Revolution began more than two years earlier, with anti-German riots that embraced the Empress Alexandra, "an ethnic German by birth." The riots did not please Alexandra, still less the demands of the crowd that her confessor, Rasputin, be hanged, and still less the popularity of the general who restored order. In a narrative reminiscent of the best of Eduardo Galeano, Zygar raises all sorts of what-if questions in the reader's mind: what if Alexander Kerensky had prevailed over Lenin? What if the old intelligentsia, civil service, and minor nobility had been able to integrate into Soviet society instead of being massacred by Stalin? What if the czarist state had been able to read the tea leaves better and accommodated the demands of the people for better food, better jobs, better government? The possibilities are endless--and endlessly fascinating.
An excellent complement to recent work by other Russian journalists who have turned to history, and to brilliant purpose.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Zygar, Mikhail: THE EMPIRE MUST DIE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509244115/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c2949eac. Accessed 21 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509244115
QUOTED: "Written in a rather flat but accessible style, the book is based on the testimony of an impressive selection of key figures in contemporary Russian politics. ... The level of access he seems to have enjoyed is unusual, given that he is hardly a Kremlin insider."
You're the puppet: a Russian journalist challenges the standard view of Vladimir Putin as a supervillain
Tony Wood
Artforum International. 55.4 (Dec. 2016): pS34+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.
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ALL THE KREMLIN'S MEN: INSIDE THE COURT OF VLADIMIR PUTIN BY MIKHAIL ZYGAR NEW YORK: PUBLICAFFAIRS. 400 PAGES. $2
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In the last few years, even as Russia and the West have become bitterly opposed on one issue after another--Snowden, Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, the hacking allegations--there has been general agreement between them on at least one thing: the absolute centrality of Vladimir Putin. In Russia, he dominates the political stage and the airwaves, and a decade and a half after he first won the presidency, he still enjoys approval ratings that would be the envy of most elected leaders: After the annexation of Crimea, they spiked to over 80 percent, where they have remained ever since. In the West, he has increasingly been portrayed as the most implacable foe of the US and its allies, a malevolent puppet master pulling the strings in a succession of crises and conflicts across the world. (In February 2014, after Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych unleashed the security forces against protesters on the Maidan, The Economist dubbed the ensuing street battles "Putin's inferno"; this past August, Senator Harry Reid demanded an FBI inquiry into Putin's apparent plan to tamper with the US elections.) For both sides, this one man has become all but inseparable from the policies and practices of the country he leads, receiving credit or blame in quantities usually reserved for minor deities or superheroes. When one of his advisers asserted, in October 2014, that "Russia is Putin. Russia exists only if there is Putin," Western policymakers and mainstream media might have objected to his sycophancy, but not his reasoning. Where Russia is concerned, it seems, all roads lead to Putin.
Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar flies in the face of this consensus in All the Kremlin's Men. "It is widely assumed that decisions in Russia are made by one man and one man alone," he writes. But for Zygar, "Putin is not one person. He (or it) is a huge collective mind." In other words, Putin's decisions reflect not so much the plans or whims of an individual as the outcome of factional battles among an extensive cast of characters. Not only is the focus on Putin himself misguided but, according to Zygar, there is no coherent strategy behind the Kremlin's actions at all. "It is logic that Putin-era Russia lacks," he writes. "Everything that happens is a tactical step, a real-time response to external stimuli devoid of an ultimate objective." Those looking for cunningly woven conspiracies, then, are in for a disappointment: Putin is more puppet than puppet master, his moves dictated by events and people beyond his control.
These iconoclastic arguments aren't the only reason All the Kremlin's Men became a best seller when it appeared in Russia last year: Written in a rather flat but accessible style, the book is based on the testimony of an impressive selection of key figures in contemporary Russian politics. (Zygar mentions at the outset having interviewed dozens of people over several years, who "as a rule ... asked not to be quoted"; this, along with the book's sparse references, makes it hard to tell for sure where particular pieces of information have come from.) The level of access he seems to have enjoyed is unusual, given that he is hardly a Kremlin insider. A reporter for the business newspaper Kommersant in the 2000s--including spells as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Ukraine--Zygar became the founding editor in chief of the liberal TV channel Dozhd ("Rain") in 2010 and remained there until 2015. The station is best known for its sympathetic coverage of the 2011-12 protests, in which thousands took to the streets in cities across Russia to call for fair elections and for a "Russia without Putin." (Since then Dozhd has come under increasing pressure from the authorities, being shut out from the country's cable networks in early 2014 and evicted from its offices that December.) Zygar's own sympathies are clear: He speaks admiringly of Yeltsin's freemarket reforms, presenting Putin's rule as a sad reversal of much that had been achieved in the 1990s. But he differs from many of Putin's other liberal opponents in refusing to see this turn as the inevitable outcome of a dark KGB-led conspiracy. It was instead, he suggests, a highly contingent process, and one that Putin himself had not envisaged turning out this way.
Zygar provides a chronological narrative of the years from 2000 to 2015, structured around a series of individuals, with one personality dominating each chapter. We get pen portraits of notorious (and less wellknown) members of Putin's inner circle: the former chief of the presidential staff and close confidant of Putin, ex-spy Sergei Ivanov; the Kremlin strategist who orchestrated Putin's rise in the first place, Alexander Voloshin; the Machiavellian manipulator Vladislav Surkov, a reader of postmodern theory who has fabricated entire political parties on the Kremlin's behalf; Viktor Medvedchuk, once chief of staff to Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, and described here as "the last Ukrainian to enjoy Putin's trust"; and many others. (The book opens, in somewhat daunting Tolstoyan fashion, with a twelve-page "list of characters.") Zygar briefly retells the familiar story of Putin's ascent to the presidency, from his time as assistant to the mayor of St. Petersburg in the early 1990s to his astonishingly rapid rise through the ranks of government in the capital. By July 1998 he had been appointed head of the FSB, successor agency to the KGB. Over the course of the following year, Yeltsin's coterie became increasingly anxious that the incumbent might be prosecuted after leaving office and began to cast around for a dependable heir. Might Putin--then a gray functionary, almost entirely unknown to the public--fit the bill? Aside from competence, the qualities that marked him out for promotion were precisely his ordinariness and loyalty to his superiors, rather than any personal authority, vision, or charisma. In August 1999, Yeltsin surprised everyone by designating him prime minister. Putin's popularity skyrocketed after he invaded Chechnya, which instantly gave him an air of menace and gravitas. Still, it came as a shock when Y eltsin resigned on New Y ear's Eve, making Putin acting president.
The bulk of the book is devoted to capturing the changing character of his rule since then. Zygar divides it into four phases, each given a tongue-in-cheek regal title. "Putin I the Lionheart" covers his first term in office (2000-2004), in which he attempted to continue the neoliberal thrust of Yeltsin's administration. As Zygar reminds us, his efforts met with hearty approval from Western governments at the time, especially those of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair: The former applauded his bombardment of Grozny as a "liberation," while the latter rushed to visit Putin in Russia two weeks before he was actually elected, treating a campaigning candidate as if he were the established leader. Yet it was also in this period that Putin definitively subdued the parliament and began to push the media into line. "Putin II the Magnificent" describes his second term (2004-2008), which was marked by sustained economic growth, but also by what many critics saw as a turn away from his earlier commitment to neoliberal principles--signified above all by the gradual dismemberment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil company, Yukos. There was also growing mistrust of the West, stirred by NATO's eastward expansion and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
A third section is devoted to the four-year presidency of Dmitry Medvedev ("Prince Dmitry"), characterized on the one hand by a liberalization of the political climate, and on the other by spreading economic woes in the wake of the global financial crisis. The first stirrings of protest had appeared in the mid-2000s, but now small signs of social discontent began to multiply--with the corruption of the ruling United Russia party a focal point for popular anger. There was also a sharp worsening of relations with the West over the August 2008 war with Georgia--and those tensions only increased with Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. After a winter that brought the largest antigovernment demonstrations of the post-Soviet era, he nonetheless secured an easy victory. The fourth phase of Putin's rule (predictably labeled "Putin the Terrible") brought a more stridently nationalistic rhetoric, accompanied by affirmations of Russian Orthodox spirituality; that new official ideology, emphasizing a "civilizational" difference between East and West, has hovered in the background of the country's confrontations with the US and its allies in recent years. It played a crucial role, for instance, in the persecution of Pussy Riot, whom the Putin government portrayed not only as blaspheming against the Orthodox faith, but also (and by the same token) as betraying the motherland. Those criticizing the government increasingly risked being tagged as a "fifth column" amid a broader clampdown on dissent, especially from the radical Left. It was in this already polarized climate that the Ukraine crisis unfolded, giving another boost to the repressive elements of Putinism, and narrowing the space for meaningful opposition still further.
Zygar's is a conventional enough account of the past fifteen years of Russia's history, albeit one enlivened by some unusual details. (For example, many of the Kremlin's inner circle apparently refer to Putin as telo, "the body"--perhaps a reference to the president's obsession with his physique, though there's also the embalmed corpse of Lenin lying just the other side of the Kremlin wall; either way, the metaphor seems to illustrate Zygar's claim that Putin is not the all-powerful autocrat he may appear to be.) There are moments when the reader might wonder how much trust she is supposed to place in Zygar's sources: Are the various snippets of dialogue between Putin and his entourage included here being reproduced verbatim? But perhaps even more problematic than the way he presents his material is his emphasis on the contingent, improvised nature of developments under Putin, his insistence that they did not unfold according to any underlying logic or cause. One difficulty here is that the impression of contingency is to some extent a product of Zygar's own preoccupation with a collection of individuals at the top of Russia's political hierarchy. Keeping a close eye on the Byzantine intrigues of rival Kremlin factions makes it that much harder to bring the larger picture into focus.
Given the challenge Zygar presents to the standard image of Putin as puppet master, it's ironic that he should then offer no credible sense of who or what might be pulling the strings instead. This crucial bigger picture is what's missing from Zygar's book: an understanding of the system over which Putin presides, one that could actually help us make sense of the Russian leadership's actions, both individual and collective. The figures Zygar interviews may plot and scheme in all manner of complicated ways, but they are not doing so for the fun of it, nor is it all that difficult to trace a logical pattern in their machinations: They are fighting to defend the material interests, assets, and privileges they have acquired over time. In that respect, their motivations are little different from those of elites in other countries, even if the specific methods they use may be cruder. (Among Russian biznesmeny, for instance, "hostile takeovers" have sometimes involved actual private armies facing off against each other.) What's particular to Russia is the closeness of the relationship between private wealth and the state. That relationship, often depicted as one of domination by the Kremlin over capital, is in reality closer to a symbiosis, in which political and economic power are intertwined--and mostly concentrated within the same small group of people. After the fall of Communism, the Yeltsin administration rushed to privatize large chunks of the economy, transferring factories, mines, oil fields, banking licenses, and so on to a select few individuals. The state played the decisive role in creating this new class, as the beneficiaries have readily acknowledged. Banker Pyotr Aven--currently ranked No. 317 on the Forbes list of billionaires--once observed that "to become a millionaire in our country it is not at all necessary to have a good head or specialized knowledge. Often it is enough to have active support in the government, the parliament, local power structures and law enforcement agencies.... In other words, you are appointed a millionaire. " For most of the 1990s, the oligarchs created by the state seemed to have the upper hand, with figures such as Boris Berezovsky all but dictating government policy. But the 1998 ruble collapse and ensuing economic crisis weakened the oligarchs' position, while the rise in global commodities prices from 1999 onward suddenly sent floods of tax revenues into state coffers, strengthening the hand of the government. The tide now turned the other way, and state officials began to exert more pressure on business. The 2003 attack on Khodorkovsky confirmed the shift, and sent a signal to the other oligarchs that new rules were going to apply. But in neither phase did the idea of private profit-making as the governing principle come into question--only the distribution of the rewards.
Though Zygar, like many others, depicts him as having undone the free-market reforms of the Yeltsin years, Putin has in fact worked to consolidate the system that was put in place, providing continuity and stability at its center so that the business of business can keep going. The state controls strategic sectors such as oil and gas, but a large proportion of the economy is left to the play of market forces, allowing the elite to keep piling up substantial fortunes. In 2000, Putin famously boasted that the oligarchs would "cease to exist as a class," and yet the actual effect of his rule has been to multiply them: When he took office there were no Russians on the Forbes list, but today--despite Western sanctions and a steep economic downturn--there are seventy-seven. Putin's role throughout has been to stand as guarantor of this system, and in that sense, Zygar is partly right to describe him as constrained by wider forces. But those forces are far from random: They are rooted in the specific form capitalism has taken in post-Soviet Russia, of which Putin is the domineering figurehead.
Tony Wood is a writer living in New York and a member of the editorial board of New Left Review.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wood, Tony. "You're the puppet: a Russian journalist challenges the standard view of Vladimir Putin as a supervillain." Artforum International, Dec. 2016, p. S34+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A473922855/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fc092e7a. Accessed 21 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473922855
QUOTED: "This excellent book contains a continuous account of Putin's years in power seasoned with details that are poorly known."
Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin
Zachary Irwin
Library Journal. 141.16 (Oct. 1, 2016): p93+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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* Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. PublicAffairs. Sept. 2016.384p. notes, index. ISBN 9781610397391. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9781610397407. POL SCI
Zygar is a highly experienced journalist associated with Russia's disappearing independent media, and his book provides a detailed chronicle of Vladimir Putin's rule. The author depicts an unusual authoritarian governing style reconciling Putin's absolute power with a varied cavalcade of chief advisors. At his best, Zygar interprets intersecting webs of legal and political power wielded by shifting loyalties, tactics, and agendas. For some, such as Nikolai Patrushev, the former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), ties to Putin may be redeemed in prosperous political longevity. The more common fate shared by many with the "tandem" president and "liberal" Dmitry Medvedev express sporadic conflict and political humiliation. Episodic events such as the annexation of Crimea, war in Chechnya, and the oppositional Bolotnaya mass protest are described in detail. Putin's unpredictability becomes mired in assumptions contrary to Western thinking. The content is well explained and consistently plausible, but in depending on extensive personal interviews, some accounts cannot be confirmed. Far less plausible are prospects for any "reset" in Russian-American relations. VERDICT This excellent book contains a continuous account of Putin's years in power seasoned with details that are poorly known to most readers, if known at all.--Zachary Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Erie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Irwin, Zachary. "Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin." Library Journal, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 93+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A464982300/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0a74338e. Accessed 21 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A464982300
QUOTED: "The stream of court intrigue gives "All the Kremlin's Men" the juicy allure of a Russian thriller. But structuring the book around members of Mr Putin's entourage leads to some confusing chronological leaps. Foreign readers may struggle; the English edition has a list of characters, but a timeline would also have come in handy. More troubling is Mr Zygar's reliance on hearsay and anonymous sources, a flaw he readily owns up to."
Cluster bomb; Russia today
The Economist. 420.9007 (Sept. 17, 2016): p79(US).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
http://store.eiu.com/
Full Text:
The godfather of them all
How Russia is ruled
All the Kremlins Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. By Mikhail Zygar. Public Affairs; 371 pages.
"WHO is Mr Putin?" a foreign-affairs columnist famously asked when the then unknown Vladimir Putin took office in 2000. Now, more than 16 years into his rule, the question has become: Which Mr Putin is the real Mr Putin? Is it the coolly pragmatic accidental president who once discussed joining NATO? The swaggering manager of a country drunk on petrodollars? Or the new tsar, out to restore Russian greatness, annexing Crimea and relentlessly challenging the Western order?
The answer, Mikhail Zygar argues in a compelling new book, "All the Kremlin's Men", is that all of these hold true. Mr Zygar, a leading Russian journalist, portrays a ruler who has transformed himself in response to outside events. This is especially so regarding the Western world. Mr Zygar argues that Mr Putin began his presidency convinced that he could build good relations with the West, particularly with America. By his third term, having accumulated a litany of grievances and grudges, he has become what Mr Zygar describes as a "world-weary…Slavophile philosopher" who reportedly told Joe Biden, America's vice-president: "We are not like you. We only look like you."
Refreshingly, Mr Zygar chooses to focus not on the president himself, but on the courtiers who have shaped and shepherded him. He tells an insider's tale, drawing on material collected over many years, latterly as editor-in-chief of TV Rain, Russia's last independent television network (Mr Zygar stepped down last December, not long after this book was published in Russia). He brings fresh insight to characters such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the ex-boss of Yukos who was convicted of underpaying taxes, and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's prime minister. And he pulls back the curtain on several key figures whom Western readers may not know, such as Viktor Medvedchuk, the chief-of-staff of the former Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, and Vyacheslav Volodin, a political strategist who engineered Mr Putin's conservative turn in his third term.
Mr Zygar portrays Mr Putin as a reactionary tactician rather than a nefarious grand strategist. Fate and opportunity play more of a role than calculated scheming. One example was the decision to clamp down on the independent media after its withering coverage of Mr Putin's clumsy handling of the Kursk submarine sinking in August 2000. But two important constants emerge. At home, Mr Putin is driven by the pursuit of power, and abroad, by the perception that the West does not respect Russia and its interests (including its primacy over former Soviet neighbours). From the start, Ukraine occupied a central place. "We must do something, or we'll lose it," Mr Putin often repeated to his staff (or so Mr Zygar reports).
What unfolds is a tale of Russian politics based on personalities, ego and ambition, rather than policy, convictions or ideology. Mr Zygar focuses on the fluid allegiances of the polittekhnologs, the uniquely Russian spin doctors who shaped the recent political landscape. Mr Volodin began his career running Yevgeny Primakov's campaign against Mr Putin's nascent Unity party; only in recent years did he become Mr Putin's chief political adviser. Vladislav Surkov, an architect of Unity, meanwhile, aligned himself with Mr Medvedev during Mr Putin's interregnum, only to return to the fold as his point man on the Ukraine crisis. If there is any question, Mr Zygar writes, that a given event is the result of "malicious intent or human error, rest assured that it is always the latter".
The stream of court intrigue gives "All the Kremlin's Men" the juicy allure of a Russian thriller. But structuring the book around members of Mr Putin's entourage leads to some confusing chronological leaps. Foreign readers may struggle; the English edition has a list of characters, but a timeline would also have come in handy.
More troubling is Mr Zygar's reliance on hearsay and anonymous sources, a flaw he readily owns up to and tries to parlay into insight. Thus, readers should take his verbatim report of some of Mr Putin's private remarks, for example, with a grain of salt. Even so, the conflicting accounts and confused recollections of his subjects lead him to identify one of the Putin era's defining features: the absence of plans or strategy. As Mr Zygar concludes, "It is logic that Putin-era Russia lacks." That, more than the master plots often ascribed to Mr Putin, is reason for the West to fear him.
All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin.
By Mikhail Zygar.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Cluster bomb; Russia today." The Economist, 17 Sept. 2016, p. 79(US). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A463558043/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=099680d2. Accessed 21 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463558043
QUOTED: "accessible to all levels of readership."
"Overall, Zygar has made a substantial contribution in the study of Putin's Russia."
Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin's men: inside the court of Vladimir Putin
Y. Pobky
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 54.5 (Jan. 2017): p784+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
(cc) 54-2474
DK510
2016-18443 CIP
Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin's men: inside the court of Vladimir Putin. PublicAffairs, 2016. 371 p index ISBN 9781610397391 cloth, $27.99; ISBN 9781610397407 ebook, $17.99
Zygar worked as the editor-in-chief of the famous TV station Rain (Dozhd). In this book, he offers a unique assessment of Putin's role in Russian politics from 2000 to 2015. Zygar's evaluations are based on various documents, a good selection of valuable open sources, and personal interviews with notable representatives of Putin's team and members of the opposition. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, Sergei Ivanov, Vladislav Surkov, Igor Shuvalov, and Alexei Kudrin are among the leading characters in this book. In the beginning of the volume, there is a list of its characters with a brief description. Zygar covers the key decisions made by Putin in domestic politics and foreign policy, and finds that against expectations it is not only Putin who always makes the most important decisions for his country single-headedly. In fact, Putin is the mind who incorporates the opinions of dozens of people on a daily basis when he makes decisions concerning the fate of Russia. The book is translated well and is accessible to all levels of readership. Overall, Zygar has made a substantial contribution in the study of Putin's Russia. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals.-Y. Pobky, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pobky, Y. "Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin's men: inside the court of Vladimir Putin." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Jan. 2017, p. 784+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A485989130/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a9cd133b. Accessed 21 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485989130
QUOTED: "His book illuminates what has been going on behind Kremlin walls in the Putin years and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding Kremlin intentions, if not predicting its actions. Because he bases his conclusions not on reading tea leaves or the content analysis of speeches, but on real interviews and inside contacts with real people."
All the Kremlin's Men
Paul E. Richardson
Russian Life. 59.6 (November-December 2016): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Russian Information Services, Inc.
http://www.russianlife.net/
Full Text:
ALL THE KREMLIN'S MEN
Mikhail Zygar (Public Affairs $27.99)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Back during the First Cold War, academics invented kremlinology. The Kremlin was a black box, and so, to smoke out Soviet intentions, analysts would parse leaders' seating arrangements, speaking order, speech content, press articles and more, to find out what sorts of things the red elite were sparring about behind closed doors. There were often some interesting conclusions, but it was sometimes more tea leaf reading than science, and rarely of predictive value.
Today, the Kremlin is no less opaque, and the speculations of modern kremlinologists are still rarely helpful in predicting Russian actions.
Along comes Mikhail Zygar, one of the few Russian journalists with a measure of independence, and clearly a vast network of leadership connections. His book illuminates what has been going on behind Kremlin walls in the Putin years and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding Kremlin intentions, if not predicting its actions. Because he bases his conclusions not on reading tea leaves or the content analysis of speeches, but on real interviews and inside contacts with real people. People, being people, will always want to tell their side of the story to someone, even to a journalist ...
Zygar writes in a conversational style, lightly tinted with wry humor and cynicism. He starts each chapter with a concise portrait of a Kremlin player that is revealing and human. If one takes nothing else from this book, it is that the Kremlin is a viscous solyanka soup of strange, conniving, egotistical and power-hungry personalities. Clans wrestle beneath the rug like rabid bulldogs, cementing grudges, undermining rivals, all seeking to shape and mold the tsar into their vision of what he should be (and usually with personal gain in mind).
It is also clear that there is no Grand Plan guiding the Kremlin's actions. Zygar shows that the Kremlin leadership is largely reactive and tactical, mainly interested in keeping Russia's adversaries off balance through conflicting messages, inconsistent and unpredictable behavior, and info/cyber disruption. Apropos of the present tsar's martial arts predilections, Russian foreign policy is guided by principles of judo: if your opponent shows strength, step aside, parry, and use their strength against them; if they show weakness, advance in ways that do not put yourself at risk.
Yet Zygar also shows that, if someone were paying close enough attention, they would not have been surprised by recent events, say in Crimea or Ukraine. Putin and others telegraphed these moves in early 2008. And they were a natural con sequence of the main turning point in US-Russian relations, which was in 2004 and 2005. Until then, Zygar asserts, the Kremlin truly thought that Russia and the West could reforge a new relationship. But when George W. Bush became a lame duck, and when the "anti-Russian" course of events (dropping the ABM treaty; expanding NATO eastward; supporting Georgian and Ukrainian independence) proved unstoppable, the hardline anti-Western elements in the Kremlin strengthened, and there was no turning back.
Zygar's fine book (which can hardly be fully summarized here; get a copy and read this book not once, but twice) ends on a troubling analysis of the cynical self-deception that is now lodged in Kremlin player's minds. They thrive on anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories targeting Russia, Zygar writes, and wantonly feed these theories to a willing Russian public, knowing "that if they do not offer television viewers a simple and plausible answer to pressing geopolitical issues, the people will draw their own (far worse) conclusions. But such analysis is in itself a conspiracy theory. There is no evidence that Russian officials are so crafty. Most likely they really do believe in their fictions."
And that is the most disturbing part: never knowing whether the Kremlin minions are just cynically manufacturing lies for personal gain, or if they truly believe their own lies.
Perhaps it's time to consult some tea leaves.
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Richardson, Paul E.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Richardson, Paul E. "All the Kremlin's Men." Russian Life, Nov.-Dec. 2016, p. 60. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A470999012/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f7534aab. Accessed 21 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A470999012
QUOTED: "As a chronicler of the opposition movement that briefly unsettled Putin through the winter of 2011/12, Zygar cannot be considered an impartial observer (though who can in matters concerning Russia these days?). Yet he does manage, through dozens of interviews with members of Putin’s inner circle, to produce a three-dimensional, detached and readable account of the 'man who accidentally became king' and the courtiers who dance around him."
All the Kremlin’s Men by Mikhail Zygar review – inside the Putinocracy
This study of the endless jockeying for position around Putin explains the inconsistencies of his rule
Mark Rice-Oxley
Mark Rice-Oxley @markriceoxley69
Thu 5 Jan 2017 04.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 04.59 EST
The man who accidentally became king … Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Boxing Day.
The man who accidentally became king … Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Boxing Day. Photograph: TASS/Barcroft Images
In a frigid Siberian oilfield in March 2000, a small man with a big future stood in front of us and mumbled a few words. No, said Vladimir Putin, he did not have any image-makers. No, he had no idea what his election campaign team were up to. He wasn’t bothered with electioneering, he said. He’d rather crack on with practical work than deploy the slippery arts of the spin doctor. “People in power should show their potential to the people with practical work, not by deception or brainwashing.”
Sixteen years later, I wonder if Putin was just making fun of us with that deadpan sarcasm of his, subtle and deadly as polonium. For he has become much more than just a man, just a president. Putin is an entire system of government. And deception, if not brainwashing, is the principal tool of his trade.
Putin is an entire system of government. And deception, if not brainwashing, are the principal tools of his trade
That much emerges from the new book by Mikhail Zygar, the former editor of TV Rain, one of the last holdouts of inquisitorial journalism in Putin’s Russia before it finally fell foul of the political establishment in 2014. As a chronicler of the opposition movement that briefly unsettled Putin through the winter of 2011/12, Zygar cannot be considered an impartial observer (though who can in matters concerning Russia these days?). Yet he does manage, through dozens of interviews with members of Putin’s inner circle, to produce a three-dimensional, detached and readable account of the “man who accidentally became king” and the courtiers who dance around him.
For Zygar, Putin’s years subdivide into distinct periods: the early reformer, who stood up to the oligarchs; the suspicious supremo, who amassed control and turned against the west; and the vain and superannuated sovereign, who has pushed his pawns around, sacrificing them occasionally and ensuring that none come close to queening. Advisers apparently simply call him “the body”.
There is no shortage of instructive titbits about Putin the man: that he advised an aide to watch House of Cards as a “useful” primer on US politics; that an Amur tiger he supposedly “saved” actually died from the tranquilliser dart he fired at it; that he was apoplectic with rage at being called “Lilliputin” by former Georgian politician Mikheil Saakashvili; that he often responds to advisers with terrifying ambiguity (“Do as you think best”) so as to keep his options open.
Perhaps most compellingly of all, we learn that Putin is a reluctant tsar who at times has really wanted out, but has been unable to leave office because he knows the system would collapse around him before he could make good his getaway. Part of the antagonism between Putin and Saakashvili, Zygar speculates, is “that Saakashvili was able to fulfil Putin’s dream of living the good life without having to fight for power. That will probably remain forever beyond Putin’s grasp.”
Zygar’s book, translated by Thomas Hodson, is not strictly speaking about Putin but the Putinocracy – the mesh of oligarchs, securocrats, managers and officials, schemers and chancers who forever plot against each other to second-guess what the president really wants and how they can steal some advantage. It is this swirl of rivalry, this endless, exhausting jockeying for position that explains the inconsistencies and incongruities of Putin’s rule: why he embraces capitalism one day and state appropriation the next; why he went after some oligarchs and not others; why he consorts with both “reformers” and reactionaries (though in truth both are prone to change their spots to suit the hour); why he first ignores Syria then ends up playing a pivotal role in the war.
Putin with former president Boris Yeltsin in May 2000.
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Putin with former president Boris Yeltsin in May 2000. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
“How did all these alterations take place in one man? Largely due to his entourage, the diverse retinue that played the role of kingmaker,” Zygar argues. “The inner circle picked him up and carried him forward, manipulating his fears and desires along the way.”
The net effect of this system is that the Kremlin always tends towards short-term tactics, not long-term strategy. Russia’s decisive Syria intervention is no exception to the rule that decisions are opportunistic responses to the dynamics of the day (in this case, the need to project power and needle the American bogeyman). The people around Putin are basing decisions on expediency and self-preservation. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, every day.
There is no ideology, no Putinism, other than a mangled nativism using bits of history that appear valid in the moment
There is no ideology, no Putinism, other than a mangled nativism that appropriates bits of history that appear valid in the moment. Sometimes acolytes misjudge and are ostracised, either temporarily or permanently. Sometimes they get close to him and see their stock rise. But if it rises too far, as it did with both Dmitry Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov, they are liable to a spell in the wilderness. The king has to be the biggest man in the room (even if he is only 5ft 7in).
A paramount leader, a clique of courtiers, a system where short-term tactics win out over long-term strategy: so far, so corporate. In many senses the Kremlin is just another big 21st-century behemoth, like a FTSE 100 company, a UN agency or political party, which comes unstuck because of the ambitions and insecurities of the individuals that work there. Here are people who often take all the wrong decisions for all the wrong reasons, a failing that will be familiar to many who have worked in an organisation of more than a couple of hundred employees.
But there are two key differences. The CEO, chairman or party leader will usually be particularly concerned about his or her succession, so that the organisation in which they have a huge personal – and often financial – stake continues to thrive. Putin, in contrast, is quite uninterested in his successor, because he believes he can never stand down. He will have to stay in power until he dies, or is too old to matter any more. Second, the game of thrones in the corporate world may be a dangerous business, but it is unlikely to lead to a body count quite as large as the one that leads up to the Spassky Gate.
QUOTED: "The book’s main strength — and its main weakness — is a focus on individuals. This makes for an undeniably gripping and vivid read as Zygar gives expert political analysis and narrates the intrigues of the leading men and women of Russian politics and culture."
"But while this is all compelling, it is also limiting. Restricting the scope to Russia's leading lights, who mostly live in Moscow and St Petersburg, means ordinary Russians only appear as appendages of political leaders' ambitions. Zygar offers no explanation for why workers protested, soldiers deserted or peasants burnt estates to the ground (or, indeed, how such people experienced the revolution). This makes The Empire Must Die a work of “great men” history, where events are explained by the actions of a few individuals and dubious causality chains abound."
The Empire Must Die review: Mikhail Zygar’s drama-filled new book takes aim at the revolution
7 December 2017 · Russia
In a vivid new history of the events leading up to the Russian Revolution in 1917, former journalist Mikhail Zygar breathes life into the last years of Imperial Russia and teases out parallels between the politics of late tsarism and politics today
Text Howard Amos
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The Empire Must Die review: Mikhail Zygar’s drama-filled new book takes aim at the revolution
Protesters being fired upon on St Peterburg’s Nevsky Prospect, 1917
Mikhail Zygar is fascinated by individuals. The former journalist’s new history book, The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917, explores the lives of a cast of characters from monks, painters and terrorists to ballet dancers, tsars and generals. It is the story of how these cultural and political luminaries shaped events at the turn of the century, and how the rise to power of Lenin’s Bolsheviks spelled the end of a blossoming civil society. For Zygar, the Russian Revolution was a “manmade catastrophe” that “plunged a vast, highly developed civilisation into the depths of Hades”.
Zygar brings a reporter’s eye to history and The Empire Must Die is packed with the sort of fantastic detail for which any newspaper editor would kill. In one characteristic passage, he recounts a fight between influential, self-proclaimed holy man Rasputin and two other monks: “Iliodor and Rasputin roll head over heels down a flight of stairs, while the roughed-up Germogen screams blue murder.” In another, he describes how Grand Duchess Ella goes to visit the mortally wounded coachman of her dead husband Grand Duke Sergei, blown up by a revolutionary’s bomb earlier in the day, still wearing a bright blue dress and her “fingernails stained with blood”. At their last meal before the Bolshevik storm of the Winter Palace, Zygar tells us that the ministers of the Provisional Government holed up inside dined on “soup, fish and artichokes”.
Tsar Nicholas II with his children and nephews in 1915
One of a flood of books published in the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, The Empire Must Die stands out because Zygar is Russian (unlike the authors of most new works in English), and because of his unusual, newsy style. He says he spent no time doing research in the archives and offers no apologies for such an approach: “I am not a historian, but a journalist,” he writes in the Introduction, “this book was written according to the rules of journalism.”
Zygar made his name as a reporter for Kommersant newspaper and then as chief editor of Russian liberal television station Dozhd. But he quit in 2015 to work on 1917.ru, a social media project publishing the writings of key figures of the Russian Revolution in real time. Zygar’s career arc — from reporting to history — is not unique amid Russia's difficult climate for independent media and the politicisation of history, in which the past is understood as a proxy for contemporary debates. Filipp Dzyadko, former chief editor of Bolshoi Gorod, left journalism a few years before Zygar and in 2015 set up the history education site Arzamas.
Zygar’s career arc — from reporting to history — is not unique amid Russia's difficult climate for independent media and the politicisation of history, in which the past is understood as a proxy for contemporary debates
An interest in contemporary Russian politics is a hallmark of The Empire Must Die, and Zygar draws direct parallels between events in the late tsarist period and Russia’s recent history. These are referenced in the footnotes: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s occasionally clumsy liberal waffling resembles that of pre-revolution Prime Minister Prince Pyotr Svyatopolk-Mirsky; revolutionary priest Father Gapon’s confrontational protest tactics make him similar to opposition leader Alexei Navalny; outspoken writer and radical Maxim Gorky is like chess champion and Kremlin critic Gary Kasparov; and the failed counter-revolutionary coup organised by general Lavr Kornilov in September 1917 played the same role in destroying the Provisional Government as the 1991 coup attempt by Communist hardliner did for the Soviet Union.
Perhaps less interesting and more irritating is Zygar’s use of contemporary terms to explain political and social phenomena from before the revolution. He uses the word siloviki, which refers to the hawkish military and security service officials around President Vladimir Putin, to describe factions jostling for power under Nicolas II, and anachronistically writes about “young hipsters” at the turn of the century and the “war on terror” unleashed after the 1905 revolution.
Famous 20th Russian figures. Image: Zygar's social media project 1917.ru
Famous 20th Russian figures. Image: Zygar's social media project 1917.ru
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The Empire Must Die brings out the unpredictability of the events of 1917. Zygar makes clear that chaos in revolutionary Russia, as strikes cut communications, made effective decision making all but impossible. And he delights in highlighting how things could have turned out very differently: for example, contemporaries believed Lenin was so out of touch that his career was finished just days after he returned to Petrograd in 1917. “History is one long blunder,” Zygar writes, juxtaposing his history with decades of dogmatic Soviet historiography.
The book’s main strength — and its main weakness — is a focus on individuals. This makes for an undeniably gripping and vivid read as Zygar gives expert political analysis and narrates the intrigues of the leading men and women of Russian politics and culture. He describes the wonderful intersections of famous names: Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy socialising together in Crimea, or revolutionary politician Alexander Kerensky, toppled by the Bolsheviks, asking Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev if he could return from exile to visit the Soviet Union half a century after he fled.
Zygar’s historical approach (and it’s limitations) is more understandable when you realise he is writing as much about modern Russia as he is about the dying days of tsarism.
And The Empire Must Die takes a particular delight in the tangled sexual relations of Russia’s elite: impresario Sergei Diaghilev was involved in a “love quadrangle” including his homosexual cousin Dima Filosofov; famous ballet dancer Mathilde Kshesinskaya not only had an affair with Tsar Nicholas II but cohabited with two grand dukes, one the cousin of the tsar, the other his uncle; and liberal politician Pavel Milyukov took money from his mistress to fund the activities of his Kadet Party where his wife was an active member. Things were no less complicated among the revolutionaries: Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, apparently enjoyed playing with the children of the woman she knew to be her husband’s lover, Inessa Armand.
Leo Tolstoy riding at his Yasnaya Polyana estate in 1908. Image: project1917 / Facebook
But while this is all compelling, it is also limiting. Restricting the scope to Russia's leading lights, who mostly live in Moscow and St Petersburg, means ordinary Russians only appear as appendages of political leaders' ambitions. Zygar offers no explanation for why workers protested, soldiers deserted or peasants burnt estates to the ground (or, indeed, how such people experienced the revolution). This makes The Empire Must Die a work of “great men” history, where events are explained by the actions of a few individuals and dubious causality chains abound. In one example of many, readers are told how a 1910 falling-out between Nicholas II and his uncle Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich “directly affects the outcome of the First World War”.
Zygar’s historical approach (and its limitations) is more understandable when you realise he is writing as much about modern Russia as he is about the dying days of tsarism. The allegory, sometimes explicit, more often obtuse, is a call for self-reflection — and a warning against stumbling into catastrophe.
The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917 by Mikhail Zygar is published by PublicAffairs and can be ordered here.
QUOTED: "His analysis of how the president grew disillusioned with western counterparts such as U.S. president George W Bush—or how US policies of regime change in other countries convinced him Washington was out to topple him as well—lacks a link to the deeply reported main story. Still, the book is a milestone. No other Russian journalist has written a Putin book based on independent reporting and published in Russia."
‘All the Kremlin’s Men’, by Mikhail Zygar
A glimpse into the entourage behind Putin is a milestone for Russian journalism
The Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower seen from Red Square in Moscow © AFP
Review by Kathrin Hille October 24, 2016
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As Russian military aircraft pound Syria, and barely a day passes without recriminations between Moscow and the west, people in Europe and the US once again ask in exasperation: what is Vladimir Putin’s game?
Mikhail Zygar, former editor of Russia’s only independent television channel TV Rain, has explored that question for the better part of Mr Putin’s 17 years in power. The result is his book All the Kremlin’s Men, available in English a year after the Russian original came out.
Perplexingly for western readers, the author claims that most of what we ascribe to the Russian president is not really his game at all. “Putin, as we imagine him, does not actually exist,” he concludes after more than 300 pages of inside tales about how power struggles and policy decisions have played out.
Instead of the president himself, we are shown the machinations of the men around him — a cast of more than 100 characters. This approach sheds more light on the inner workings of the Kremlin than many other Putin books. The entourage is unique: corrupt tycoons, former spies, Orthodox Christian conservatives, cynical spin-doctors and nationalist hardliners fight for backing from the boss for their often diametrically opposed values and agendas. Just as often they battle over power or money.
Dmitry Medvedev, the self-conscious, gadget-loving prime minister, wants to modernise the economy and pursue a more amicable relationship with the west. Igor Sechin, Mr Putin’s former adviser who now heads state oil company Rosneft, believes in a state-controlled economy, and does his best to thwart Mr Medvedev’s every move. He scored a victory this month when the government announced Rosneft would acquire a majority stake in fellow state oil company Bashneft — a deal Mr Medvedev had tried to block in order to allow the group’s privatisation.
Zygar has made the most of his thrilling subject. His profile of Mr Sechin — described as a “cyborg” who loves orange juice, always travels by minibus and barely needs any sleep — makes for the some of the most fascinating reading, partly because his spy history, bull-like physiognomy and notorious scheming makes him seem like the perfect villain character.
“He arouses fear and knows it,” writes Zygar. “He can hold a meeting and smash everyone to smithereens, leaving his subordinates loosening their ties and reaching for the brandy when he departs. Then he’ll suddenly come back into the room, pretending to have forgotten something, and finish them off.”
Zygar is at his best where he describes courtiers’ infighting. The chapter on former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for example, goes far beyond the well-known tale of the smashing of his business empire and his incarceration. It describes who developed the idea of reining him in, why and how it was done.
Yet All the Kremlin’s Men fails to crack the question of what — or who — shapes the big direction of Mr Putin’s policies. Why did a cautious reformer morph into an authoritarian ruler increasingly belligerent towards the west?
The main plot of the scheming courtiers leads Zygar to present Mr Putin as a product of his entourage’s manipulations. That is a view some insiders share. Gleb Pavlovsky, a former spin-doctor featured in the book, agrees. Now a political analyst critical of the Kremlin, he says the inner circle uses “collective Putin” as a label for the Kremlin’s decisions.
But that does not explain Mr Putin’s ideological journey. Zygar attempts to chronicle it with excursions into the realm of Mr Putin’s thinking. But his analysis of how the president grew disillusioned with western counterparts such as US president George W Bush — or how US policies of regime change in other countries convinced him Washington was out to topple him as well — lacks a link to the deeply reported main story.
Still, the book is a milestone. No other Russian journalist has written a Putin book based on independent reporting and published in Russia. Zygar has felt the consequences: he resigned from his job at TV Rain at the end of last year, reportedly because of the displeasure the book caused with some of its prominent protagonists.
The writer is the FT’s Moscow bureau chief