Acknowledgements
THE SEEDS OF THIS BOOK were sown by many years of discussions with colleagues and comrades at New Left Review. Thank you to the editor, Susan Watkins, for her consistent engagement with and support for the project, and for allowing me time off from my editorial duties there to explore the ideas that have gone into it. Thank you also to Kheya Bag, Rob Lucas, Johanna Zhang and Daniel Finn, and to Dylan Riley for his incisive comments on the NLR article that eventually became Chapter 3 of this book. I’m also tremendously grateful to Perry Anderson for his close critical reading of the final manuscript, and for suggestions which improved it significantly.
A preliminary version of Chapter 3 was presented at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies at Södertörn University in October 2011, and I thank the participants in the seminar for their comments, in particular Zhanna Kravchenko for her thoughtful response; thanks also to Irina Sandomirskaia for offering encouragement, and to Sven Hort for making my stay at CBEES possible. Others of the book’s arguments were first sketched out in essays for the London Review of Books, and I’m grateful to Mary-Kay Wilmers for the chance to write regularly on Russian themes there, and to Daniel Soar and the rest of the editorial staff. Likewise to Keith Gessen and n+1, for organizing a symposium on Ukraine in the autumn of 2015 which helped focus my thinking on the Maidan and its aftermath.
Thanks must also go to Sean Guillory and Kyle Shybunko for their perceptive and helpful comments on the final manuscript; to Ilya Budraitskis, Aleksei Penzin and Maria Chekhonadskikh for many insights and conversations about contemporary Russia; to Leo Hollis, my editor at Verso, and to Jacob Stevens, Mark Martin, Anne Rumberger and everyone else at Verso for helping this book into the world. The list of family, friends and colleagues who have at various times been subjected to my ramblings on Russia is lengthy, and I apologize in advance for leaving anyone out – but for now, thank you to my parents, Michael Wood and Elena Uribe; to Gaby Wood, Ava Turner and Beatrice Turner; to Patrick Wood and Holly Chatham; to Richard Reeve, Surmaya Talyarkhan, Andrew Greenall, James Tindal, Susan Jones, Rob Leech, James Leech, Michael Frantzis, David Klassen, Chase Madar, Rachel Nolan, Brian Kuan Wood and Alexander Zevin.
Finally, but most importantly, thank you to Lidija Haas. With incredible patience, intelligence and editorial skill, she helped me rethink this book several times over, and offered unflagging encouragement throughout. Much more than making this book possible, she makes my life immeasurably better.
Index
Abkhazia (Georgia), 131, 133, 167
Abramovich, Roman, 45, 50
Afghanistan, 127, 145
A Just Russia (party), 22
Akunin, Boris (Grigorii Chkhartishvili), 99
Albright, Madeleine, 125
Aleppo, 140
Alexievich, Svetlana, 58
Alfa-Bank, 40, 50
Algeria, 139
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, 127
Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), 54, 102
Arab Spring, 96, 138, 139
Åslund, Anders, 31
al-Assad, Bashar, 138–41
Aven, Pyotr, 15, 37, 40
Babitsky, Andrei, 23
Baburova, Anastasia, 149n
Baker, James, 121n
Bank Rossiia, 30
Basaev, Shamil, 18, 105
Baturina, Elena, 38
Belarus, 26, 119, 129, 134, 135, 154
Belovezha agreement (1991), 119
Benjamin, Walter, 68
Berezovsky, Boris, 33, 35, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45
Berger, Sandy, 125
Beslan, 169
Blue Buckets (organization), 99
Bodganov, Vladimir, 30
Bolshevik Revolution, 123
Boos, Georgi, 95
Borodin, Pavel, 16
Borogan, Irina, 49
Bortnikov, Aleksandr, 53
Braguinsky, Serguey, 38–39
Brecht, Bertolt, 64
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 122, 125
Budanov, Yuri, 149n
Bykov, Dmitrii, 99
Camdessus, Michel, 86
Chaika, Yuri, 103
Chechnya
bid for independence of, 166–67
nationalism in, 168
Russia’s wars in, 18–19, 22–23, 73, 81, 104, 116, 127
Cherkesov, Viktor, 51
Chile, 80n
China, 47, 82, 116, 118, 143, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162
Christopher, Warren, 123
Chubais, Anatoly, 73, 124, 155
on capitalism in Russia, 27
on privatization, 35
during rouble crash, 45
class
Soviet understandings of, 60–61, 63
post-Soviet hierarchies of, 5–6, 66–67
Clément, Karine, 69
Clinton, Bill, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126
Clinton, Hillary, 130, 131, 141, 142
Collective Security Treaty Organization, 134
Colour Revolutions, 12, 128, 139
Committee to Investigate Russia, 142
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 119, 134
Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), 22, 173
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), 34, 62–63, 97
cooperatives, 34
corruption
protests against, 96, 103
in Russia, 52–55
crime, 25, 64, 67, 77
Crimea, 8, 29–30, 101, 113, 132, 133, 136–37, 152, 165, 167, 171
culture workers, 72–74, 81
Cyprus, 77n
Czech Republic, 122, 123, 124
dal’noboishchiki (truck drivers), 110
Day of the Oprichnik (Sorokin), 160
Dead Again (Gessen), 74
Dead Souls (Gogol), 148
de Benoist, Alain, 151
Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs), 135, 136, 137
demographic trends, 162–64
migrants and, 164–65
Deripaska, Oleg, 30, 45, 95
Djilas, Milovan, 63
domestic violence, 71
Donbass (Ukraine), 132, 136, 167, 169–70
Dubin, Boris, 72, 74
Dugin, Aleksander, 151–55, 168
Duma (parliament)
business influences in, 40
demonstrations against, 89–90
opposition parties in, 92
parties in, 21, 22
women in, 70–71
Yeltsin’s attack on, 27
Easter, Gerald, 25
Eastern Europe
during collapse of Soviet Union, 12
European Union and, 135
expansion of NATO into, 121–24, 132
Egypt, 123, 139, 163, 176
Erofeev, Viktor, 73–74
ethnic groups in Russia, 165, 168–69
Etmanov, Aleksei, 94, 110
Eurasian Customs Union, 154
Eurasian Economic
Community, 134
Eurasian Economic Space, 154
Eurasian Economic Union, 134, 154
Eurasianism, 150–51
European Neighbourhood Project, 135
European Union (EU), 125
Eastern Europe and, 135–36
Russian trade with, 134
sanctions against Russia by, 29
Ukraine and, 138
federalism, 165–70
Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), 76, 93
First Person (Putin), 11, 126
Flynn, Michael, 142
Ford (firm), 93
‘For Honest Elections’ (organization), 99
Foundations of Geopolitics (Dugin), 152