Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia for the last fifteen years, has hand-crafted a completely
unique, hybrid system of government, a capitalist dictatorship built on rampant criminality
that’s designed to keep him in power for as long as possible.
In this nine-part video series, I will share with you what I’ve learned researching Putin,
mainly from the massively important book, Putin’s Kleptocracy, an impeccably researched
investigation into how Putin became so powerful, written by foreign affairs professor Karen
Dawisha.
Like a prosecutor laying out the evidence against a mafia kingpin, Dawisha essentially
makes the case that Putin is the world’s most successful criminal.
We’ll explore Putin’s rise to power; how he formed tight bonds with a few hundred men
who all had one thing in common: they were willing to do absolutely anything to become
filthy rich.
Like the martial artist that he is, Putin used their own greed and thirst for power
to his own advantage, making himself the single, vital power source driving this system of
tribute payment, a system, that without him, would quickly break apart, leaving these men
he helped make powerful and wealthy, powerless--and likely in prison.
Dawisha and other Russian scholars have now proven false the idea that democracy is failing
in Russia, because its actually the opposite that has happened: Putin has succeeded in
building an authoritarian regime.
He has no intention of making Russia great again, because he simply doesn’t know how
to.
He never was, and never will be a public servant.
All he really knows how to do well is steal from the people he’s supposed to represent.
Sadly, theft is now the dominant political narrative in Russia.
Every year, an estimated $300 billion (or 15 percent of Russia’s total economic output)
is paid as tribute, as bribes to the many layers of authority within the country.
Just to get a basic service done, something that we expect someone to do as part of their
job here in the west, you’ve got to pay somebody a little extra for in Russia.
And this money is mostly all flowing to the top: 110 billionaires own 35% of the wealth,
making Russia one of the most unequal countries when it comes to wealth distribution in the
entire world.
By this metric -- and many others -- the lives of the Russian people are significantly worse
now than when Putin came to power 15 years ago.
Putin has had to use every trick in the book -- many of them criminal -- to create the
sense that he is the one, indispensable Russian leader.
The latest, most highly publicized example is his invasion of Eastern Ukraine and the
Crimea using Russian weaponry and soldiers who are simply pretending to be Ukrainian
separatists.
The conflict is just one of a long list of events -- many of them manufactured by the
Kremlin itself -- that Putin has used to brandish his image as the indispensable leader of a
nation under constant attack; targeted by the Americans, or the Chechen “terrorists,”
or the spies within the Federation’s borders, or the gays determined to undermine traditional
Russian culture.
Threats that are exaggerated, or completely fabricated.
One of the most interesting things about this drama is how the West--led by U.S. President
Obama and German Chancellor Merkel--have responded.
Instead of playing into Putin’s hands with a display of military might, they’ve began
seizing the stolen wealth of Putin’s inner circle who invest their money everywhere,
but the Russian homeland itself.
This economic counterattack is beginning to have a significant impact on the Russian economy.
But will this be enough to weaken, and ultimately topple, Putin’s regime, or at least get
him to tone down his aggression?
Do the Russian people have the strength to do the hard, necessary thing, and rise up
against their dictator?
And is Putin, as he becomes increasingly cornered, willing to stay in power until he meets his
end, or will he try to lay the groundwork for a retirement ride into the sunset?
We’ll try to answer these questions as we go much deeper in the next 8-parts of our
TDC original mini-documentary series, Putin’s Russia, which you can begin by clicking the
link on the screen.
And if you feel like you learned something from these videos, that you enjoyed them,
you would really like the book that helped inspire me to create them.
We’ve arranged for you to get a free download of the audiobook version of Putin’s Kleptocracy.
All you have to do is sign up for a free one-month trial at Audible.com.
And if you sign up, audible will throw a little bit back our way.
That way, you get to feel good about contributing to us, and all it costs you is--well--less
than nothing, because you get a free audio book.
Thanks for watching.
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