Ted Grimsrud—August 28, 2023

I realized at the beginning of the current iteration of the Russia/Ukraine war that I knew very little about Vladimir Putin and present-day Russia. Since then, I have tried a bit to remedy my ignorance. However, I am uncomfortable with popular understandings of Putin in the US, characterized as they are by a tendency (in the words of historian Richard Hofstadter from the Cold War years) to view every enemy as “a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel who profits from the misery he has produced.” I found that tendency to be widespread in the treatments of Putin I have seen and heard.

When I recently read a review of several recent biographies of Putin, I noticed one was praised for its relative objectivity. So, I decided to read it. The author is Philip Short, a British journalist who has written biographies of other American “enemies” such as Mao and Pol Pot. The book has a simple title: Putin (no subtitle) and was published by Henry Holt. The manuscript was completed in April 2022, so it does include a discussion of the lead up to and early months of the Russia/Ukraine war.

I would like to share a few thoughts stimulated by my reading. I was glad I read the book. I found it to be pretty carefully researched and reasonably objective. I didn’t love reading it, and it is very long (864 pages total, including 140 pages of end notes)—though the writing is clear and generally irenic. The book helped satisfy my curiosity and provided some useful knowledge and analysis to put the present situation in context.

I appreciate that Short does not treat Putin as “a kind of amoral superman.” Perhaps his relative objectivity will lead those who are US/NATO apologists to criticize him as a Putin defender—but I think that is far from the truth. In fact, I think in the end this book does still give too much of the benefit of the doubt to the US/NATO agenda, but I have no hesitation in recommending it to others who are interested in trying to understand Putin and Russia. It makes a good contribution. Let me share a few observations that follow from my reading.

Continue reading “Trying to understand Putin and Russia better” →