Anna Arutunyan

This study demonstrates how the emergence of private property and a market economy after the Soviet Union's collapse enabled a degree of freedom while simultaneously supporting authoritarianism. Based on case studies, Vladimir Shlapentokh and Anna Arutunyan analyze how private property and free markets spawn feudal elements in society. These elements are so strong in post-Communist Russia that they prevent the formation of a true democratic society, while making it impossible to return to totalitarianism. The authors describe the resulting Russian society as having three types of social organization: authoritarian, feudal and liberal. The authors examine the adaptation of Soviet-era institutions like security forces, the police and the army to free market conditions and how they generated corruption; the belief that the KGB was relatively free from corruption; how large property holdings merge with power and necessitate repression; and how property relations affect government management and suppression.

In the early years of Vladmir Putin’s Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the President’s most trusted assets. By 2023, he had become a dangerous warlord – and also one of Putin’s chief rivals in Russia’s tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading an attempted coup, and shortly after killed in a mysterious plane crash.But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, his role in the war with Ukraine, and the chaos unleashed across Russia by his turn against Putin? And, in the aftermath of his death, what is next for Russia in the new stage of late Putinism that Prigozhin’s life forged?In a compelling tale that unravels a complex web of power, betrayal and recrimination, Downfall delves into the profound impact of Prigozhin on the heart and soul of a nation at a crossroads. Drawing on years of research, this book traces the rise of Russia's most prominent non-state actor and examines the political climate that propelled a convicted gangster with no government office to the formidable role he came to occupy. An essential story of Russia's recent history, Downfall is also a compelling insight into its likely future.

Navalny. Lenin. Pugachev. The Russian rebel – in his epic battle against the Leviathan of the Russian state – has enthralled readers and writers for decades. The rebel’s story is almost always a sad one that ends in exile, imprisonment, or martyrdom, leaving but a seed for the future reform of the Leviathan which he or she had taken on. Why do revolts – from the Decembrist uprising to the Snow Revolution that brought Alexei Navalny to the forefront of contemporary Russian politics – seem to end up failing or producing an even worse form of despotism? In reality, the brave words and deeds of dissidents have shaped the course of Russian history more often than we might think. Through the stories of prominent rebels from the time of Ivan the Terrible to the present day, as well as her own experiences reporting on her country’s decent into authoritarianism, Russian-American journalist Anna Arutunyan explores how the rebel and the Tsar defined each other through a centuries-long dance of dissent and repression. These characters and their lives not only reveal the true nature of the Russian state, they also offer hope for a future Russian democracy.

‘Absolutely gripping, deeply authoritative, hugely important and lethally lurid’Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Times bestselling author of The World: A Family HistoryYevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the most dangerous warlords in the world and as one of Vladimir Putin's chief rivals in Russia's tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading Wagner's attempted coup and killed in a mysterious plane crash. But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, his role in the war with Ukraine, and the chaos unleashed across Russia by his turn against Putin? And, in the aftermath of his death, what is next for Russia in the new stage of late Putinism that Prigozhin's life forged?Drawing on years of research, this book traces the rise of Russia's most prominent non-state actor and examines the political climate that propelled a convicted gangster with no government office to the formidable role he came to occupy. An essential story of Russia's recent history, Downfall is also a compelling insight into its likely future.

The Russian government’s deniable use of rogues, businessmen, enthusiasts, mercenaries and political technologists confounded policymakers as Moscow waged a covert invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Did Crimea and Donbas reveal the Kremlin’s new ‘hybrid war’ playbook? Or was Moscow itself manipulated by the very forces it had unleashed? Given the disinformation and skewing of the narrative, it is no wonder that the international community has dramatically misunderstood the very nature of this war and was unprepared for the Kremlin’s sudden and brutal escalation in 2022. As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine risks pitting the world’s great powers against each other, Hybrid Warriors traces the trajectory of the conflict from the bottom up. Starting from the first pivotal years in the 2010s, the book draws on unique interviews, reporting from the conflict zones, and wider on-the-ground research, to reconstruct the granular relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that co-opted them. In the process, it speaks not just to the history of this conflict, but also to our wider understanding of how Putin’s Kremlin works and how it has prosecuted its war on Ukraine.

The Russian government’s deniable use of rogues, businessmen, enthusiasts, mercenaries and political technologists confounded policymakers as Moscow waged a covert invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Did Crimea and Donbas reveal the Kremlin’s new ‘hybrid war’ playbook? Or was Moscow itself manipulated by the very forces it had unleashed? Given the disinformation and skewing of the narrative, it is no wonder that the international community has dramatically misunderstood the very nature of this war and was unprepared for the Kremlin’s sudden and brutal escalation in 2022. As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine risks pitting the world’s great powers against each other, Hybrid Warriors traces the trajectory of the conflict from the bottom up. Starting from the first pivotal years in the 2010s, the book draws on unique interviews, reporting from the conflict zones, and wider on-the-ground research, to reconstruct the granular relationships between civilians, non-state actors, and the Kremlin that co-opted them. In the process, it speaks not just to the history of this conflict, but also to our wider understanding of how Putin’s Kremlin works and how it has prosecuted its war on Ukraine.

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH RUSSIA'S 21ST CENTURY TSAR Vladimir V. Putin has confounded world leaders and defied their assumptions as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man's riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt. Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin's often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection. In her writing career, Anna Arutunyan has traveled throughout Russia to report on modern Russian politics. She has interviewed oligarchs and policemen, bishops and politicians, and many ordinary Russians. Her book is a vivid and revealing exploration of the way in which myth, power, and even religion interact to produce the love-hate relationship between the Russian people and Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin har varit den starka kraften i rysk politik i över tio år. Nu är han återigen president. Men vad är det som gör att Ryssland, oavsett statsskick, alltid leds av en person med enorm makt en tsar? Den rysk-amerikanska författaren Anna Arutunyan har i flera år rest runt i landet för att få svar på den frågan. Att förklara Putins makt med hans personlighet, det kommunistiska arvet eller hans förflutna i KGB, räcker inte menar hon. Snarare är det den outvecklade demokratin och feodalismen som gör att despot efter despot tillåts styra landet. Tsar Putin är en spännande berättelse om Ryssland, om varför landet ser ut som det gör och om den tusenåriga, fortfarande aktuella, Kremlkulten. Landets politiska elit kommer knappast att jubla över Arutunyans kritiska granskning, men för den som vill veta mer om vår jättelika granne i öst ger den en välbehövlig tankeställare. "Anna Arutunyans Tsar Putin är en utmärkt beskrivning av Putinland, där korruption och maktmissbruk växer och Ryssland dalar på den internationella korruptionslistan till latinamerikanska nivåer." Jan Hemebring, Gefle Dagblad