to create schools for refugees in the united states in learning america and in never panic early apollo 13 astronaut fred hayes reflects on his life and aeronautical career. find these titles is coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors to appear in the near future on book tv. it gives me immense pleasure to introduce today's panel where we will be discussing tim fries latest book week strongman the limits of power in putin's america tim is a dear friend and colleague going back to the days when he was a graduate student at at columbia when i first started as an assistant professor, so it's it's really terrific and an honor for me to moderate this panel tim continues to be on the forefront of scholarship on on the post-soviet era and i'm sure this book will be an important

contribution to the literature about not just about russia, but also about how we have retrenchments in democracy and and the resurgence of authoritarian regimes throughout the world. we have a panel of three discussions today and i will introduce them in turn so keith gesson is a professor at the columbia school of journalism here at the morningside heights. steve kotkin is a professor of history and international affairs at princeton university and vicki. maria is a professor of political science at columbia and is also serving as director for the institute of latin american studies. so without further ado i will hand it over to tim who's going to talk a bit about his book before the other commentators chime. great. thanks a lot. it's really a pleasure to be here. and i want to thank the

organizers and the panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules particularly during a pandemic. so i really appreciate your efforts and i look forward to having hearing what you have to say about the book. so the simplest way to describe week strong man the limits of power and putin's rushes that it's an explainer book it translates what i think is the best academic research on russia over the last decade for a general audience on a host of interesting questions is putin really popular do elections matter is propaganda effective. why a relations with the west so fraud and similar kinds of questions, the book should have something for you whether you identify as a russia hand or whether you identify is just someone who's russia curious now, there's no shortage of books on russia. so why should you read this one? well this book departs from existing works on russia. i think in three ways the first

departure is that i critique to the most common narratives on russia and i'll call them the putinology explanation and the exceptional russia explanation and our caricature them here just in the interest of time a little bit, but there is, you know, quite a bit of truth in these in these two views. so, let me just illustrate these two views with an explanation of the arrest of mikhail haderkovsky in the expropriation of the largest oil company in russia in 2003. so some emphasize the personal role of putin. it's next kgb man with little interest in markets who sees as you coast in order to reward his concern his cronies and consolidate power and this putinology view says that we should view russian politics largely as a reflection of putin's kgb background in his seeming omnipotence. russia is the way it is because that's the way putin is others

attribute the takeover of you goes to russia's historic fusion of private and state property and russians supposed lack of interest and markets in democracy and this view suggests that we should see russian politics do the lens of russia's unique history and culture and it's strongest version it argues. there is a -- severaticus a uniquely post-soviet mentality that allows russians to favor a strong hand and that russia is the way it is because that's the way russians are now one problem with this view. is that similar expropriations of energy companies took place around the same time in countries as diverse as algeria bolivia chad ecuador dubai senegal and venezuela and if we look at autocracies from 1946 to 2010 what we see is when oil prices are high in autocracies nationalizations are much more

common. so like a lot of russian politics the takeover of you coast was driven less by putin's background or rushes unique history than to patterns common to autocratic rule. russian rather than treating putin's russia as led by unique leader overseeing a unique three i argue that we should view putin's russia as a personalists autocracy. this is a type of autocracy led by a single individual and in these countries the pattern of politics differs from autographies that are led by a military such as -- chile or contemporary myanmar or by parties is in the kitties of contemporary china or the soviet union now these leaders in personal saw autography. they rule based on a mixture of personal popularity and propaganda and good performance. they do have to deliver some goods in order to gain a popular

support and they also rely on coercion and repression like all autocrats do but they try to avoid it because it's quite costly now although these leaders and personal autographs have on formal power in their own hands. i argue that they faced a host of difficult trade-offs and it's really important to understand these trade-offs if understand politics in these countries and in such successive chapters on putin's popularity on elections on the economy on foreign policy. i identify these trade-offs. for example in looking at russian elections the autocrat faces a problem of if you cheat too little you risk losing but if you cheat too much you might signal weakness and then spark a backlash you need to use corruption to reward your inner circle, but at the same time you can't allow so much corruption that it slows growth and might foment popular protest autocrats

and these personal regimes manipulate the news but not so much that people stop watching the tv they use anti-westernism to rile the base, but not so much that it actually provokes a war and if we look at personal talkies, we also see patterns that differ from military regimes in one party that regimes growth tends to be slower policies tend to be more volatile repression seems to be higher and you know when we look at russia this, you know, sounds like a pretty familiar so rather than treating putin is all powerful. i highlight the difficult trade-offs that confront the kremlin. and it's important to note that these trade-offs are a problem, but it doesn't mean that putin is going to fall from power anytime soon. it just means that governing russia poses a host of challenge and having all formal power does not mean that you're able to do whatever you want in a sense. it's not really a putin book

really the book argues that we need to look beyond putin to understand russian politics to probe the diverse friends in russian society and to figure out which groups within russian society challenge putin's rule and also which groups buttress putin's rule because he has had fairly high levels of support at various times over the last 20 years. so that's one big departure a second departure is that i rely on academic research in writing about russia. there's lots of great writing on russia by journalist. there's lots of great. long form writing on russia and i think one could make the case that the quality of this writing is better than it is for lots of other countries, but my book doesn't do that. i couldn't compete with the journalists on that front instead. i try to highlight this academic research on russia, which has been really terrific. it's really not well understood, but russia has been a great place to study autocracy in the last 20 years the quality of

public opinion is much better than many other autocracies the quality of the administrative data on elections on growth and on social indicators is better than in other autocracies, and it really helps that rush is a very well educated country and it's important to note that many of the best scholars writing on russia today are russians in the last 15 years. i've had as many russian coauthors as us co-authors, and this has really been overlooked i think in the broader debate on russia, so in the book you'll see how my colleagues and i conduct surveys to figure out whether russians are lying when they answer questions about putin's approval how we track bots on twitter to identify propaganda campaigns how we track a political graffiti in russia to map protests and how we use big data to identify ties between political and economic

elites and unfortunately this research has had zero impact on our public debate on russia. so one goal in this book is really to bring this research to light. i mean, it's really high quality research and you know, greg said that i try to be on the forefront, but i'm really peddling as fast as i can just to keep up with my younger colleagues who are doing a lot of this terrific research the third way that the book i think the parts from a lot of writing on russia is that i mix in a lot of personal anecdotes of my adventures and miss adventures. show over the last 30 years. you'll learn about how i worked as an exhibit guide on a cultural exchange in six soviet cities in the late 1980s. and for many russians. i was the one of the first americans that they met and these encounters, you know, shutting off a lot of light down what it's like to live under an autocracy. i also described some of my experiences working in the

russian securities and exchange commission in the 1990s and what it's been like to head a research institute in moscow at the higher school of economics over the last a decade. i think these anecdotes make the book a better read. some of them are i think are kind of funny they all so provide insights that are hard to come by unless you've spent a lot of time in russia, and i think they give a tone to the book that's different from a lot of writing on russia and just to wrap up i think it's really hard to change people's mind. on russia. both sides are all sides of the debate on russia. people are really dug in hard. but i hope that this book will provide little nuance a little complexity and reduce some of the bile that seems de ragore in contemporary discussions about russia. so by putting russia in a comparative perspective by using social science evidence by paying more attention to russian

society. i hope i'm trying to get past a lot of the two easy arguments that are made about russia and to provide a clear and richer picture about russian politics today. thank you very much now really look forward to to hearing all of your comments. thank you tim. so we'll turn to our panelists now, so we decided on a batting order prior to the start of the panel and first up is keith gesson, who is the george t delacort assistant professor of magazine journalism at the columbia journalism school key. please take it away. hi everybody. thank you for having me and and tim. thank you for this really fun and very useful book which which really does cover a tremendous amount of ground and and summarizes in a succinct and and entertaining way a lot of political science research that i actually wasn't aware of. um, i learned two terms that i

can't believe i have lived this long on earth without knowing one was autocratic legalism a description of how the kremlin and other regimes just kind of buries people in in lawsuits and and the sort of a appearance of legality as a form of repression but a very kind of boring form of repression. i thought that was really interesting and also the concept of rational ignorance, you know for why people in a place like russia might choose to think certain things or to ignore certain things not because they don't know about them because it does not serve their interest to know about how the regime is behaving. because there's nothing they can do about it. in fact, nothing good could come of it for them. so rational ignorance, i thought was a very useful term in general. i just thought i really look forward to kind of waving this

book at people, you know on twitter in particular who don't know what they're talking about with regard to russia. i had to kind of for general thoughts or questions. really. i don't know that we'll have time to to answer all of them, but i thought i'd bring them up. so the first one was the question of of russian specificity. and and your point your points, you know, really? well taken. i mean one of the kind of alternate title for the book that i kept thinking of was an average autocracy, right this, you know, the the putin regime really resembles so many other contemporary autocratic regimes and it seems to have more in common with you know, victor or bonds regime or or to reap erwan's regime that more in common with those regimes than does with the stalinist regime, right? so that's seemed like a very

useful corrective to the way we we typically talk about putin and the kremlin and yet, you know when certain kind of more specific features of russia were mentioned my interest increased so, you know the fact that russia is well educated, you know more educated than most contemporary autocratic regimes. i thought that was interesting. it's geopolitical position is unique. it is more powerful than most autocratic regimes it is, you know using your taxonomy is the most powerful personalist autocracy right given the china is a is a party a democracy as you say, so it made me wonder, you know, ultimately whether the kind of russia's path out of autocracy, you know is going to depend on those factors and you talk a little bit about that in your conclusion, but i thought that was interesting and kind of became curious about that.

similarly the question of public opinion. i really enjoyed reading about all the ingenious ways you and other political scientists, you know structure these surveys to make sure that they're yielding valid data. i thought that was fascinating and and you make the really important point that is often lost in discussions of russia that the kremlin can't just gin up support for any old policy, right? so crimea, yes, you know. strong and durable support as you say but danboss not so much and syria, syria, not at all, right. and you know and and as you point out, you know, ultimately the economy is the just as in the united states, you know, you can tell whether a president is going to be a reelected depending on the performance of the economy. so putin's popularity is is very much dependent on the performance of the economy, but you do also say that elites can mobilize opinion right, and it

made me wonder you know, which of which kind of store of opinion is mobilizable? right? and so yes crimea is a kind of unique has a kind of unique you know valence in russian, you know history and culture, but but what about minsk you know, what about kiev, right? you know, i think that's an you know, it's a bit of alarmist statement, but you know, i could imagine kiev suddenly, you know people saying well kia, of course, right we had to have kids. i don't really think that's gonna happen. but you know, so and we did see it in ukraine right where these kind of fissures along, you know, ethnic or linguistic lines which, you know periodically with late dormant, you know in ukrainian politics did get mobileized, you know in during around my don right? so so i would like to know more about which opinions could be mobile.

and which you know really are are the krummen can't can't do that and then you know the third sort of similar thing that i i was thinking about as i read was, you know, what is the theory of change that? we can come out of this book with so i thought a lot about a russian political scientist. i really admire dmitry furman. i'm sure you know his work right, you know who looking at post-soviet regimes, you know, kind of said well if you look at the pseudo democracies that they've set up it kind of leaves them open vulnerable to the problem of elections right as you say these autocratic leaders want to be popular and they have decided to continue having elections and you know firm and argued that that it was at those points that you you had these crises right of legitimacy if you if you stole the election two, obviously, right? this is when you would have problems. i wonder if you think that that

is no longer valid in the russian case. certainly. it seems like the kremlin has figured out a way around that by eliminating the position the opposition earlier on, you know before it gets to the point of the election. kind of incredible to think that navalny one of his. before he was poisoned one of the things that he was doing was thinking of a way to do smart voting during elections, right? so so the elections still in play in russia in 2020 as a as a kind of factor of contention it kind of amazing. it's not how we think of putin's russia at all. so, you know, so i do wonder coming out of all this research. how does this end? right. how do we get out of this situation? and the final question which you touch on in the conclusion, i do wonder what you and maybe the most relevant for for this discussion is how do we why has our discourse on russia been so debased right and there are

these kind of objective historical factors that the trump situation the hacking right? you know being being a person who wants to have, you know, kind of constructive relations with russia means that you are pro-trump right up until a few months ago. we are now watching a kind of character assassination of matt rajonski right before our eyes, which i find, you know, really disturbing and you know, and yet we we also have a fair amount of academic work. we have you we have a lot of people who have done good research, which doesn't always make it out into the kind of mainstream discourse. so i wonder if you think something has changed in the last, you know, five 10 20 30 years that has made talking about russia in in a constructive and reasonable way more difficult in this country. so those are the those are the four things, but i really again think such a such a useful and

delightful book. i'm very grateful to have it. thanks keith for those interesting questions pretty expensive questions tim. do you want to respond whether it's still fresh or shall we wait? why don't we wait and i'll pick them up. hopefully people have forgotten about the really hard questions. so then i can pick and choose with a more discretion. so. but i will try to get to them. okay? great. well keith makes let's make sure tim doesn't get the job dodge. anything. next step is steven cotkin. who is the john p brooklyn 52 professor in history and international affairs at princeton university. thank you. thank you for the opportunity to be here today a professor fry. congratulations on the book. from my point of view as a obligated reader we have far too many books on russia. sadly but we have far too few good books on russia. and then a professor fry's book

falls into the latter category. which makes this a pleasurable experience? so a long time ago in the late 80s and early 90s russians were saying that they wanted to be a normal country. and this was true of the vast majority of people you would speak to even in the provinces. who are far away from foreigners like myself? well professor fries argument is that russia is a normal country? it has become a normal country. it is a normal personalist autocracy. but it is normal. it is not unique. now putin kills journalists personalist autocracies kill journalists now putin emasculates a parliament or the judiciary. that's what personalist autocracies do they emasculate any limits on. executive power putin's regime

is corrupt. yeah. well all person was photography is corrupt. so we're dealing with a just another normal country here. it's not a normal country in the way that those people i spoke to in the late 80s and 90s were hoping. they were hoping for a normal country in the west european social democratic welfare state. high standard of living rule of law sense but nonetheless were normal here. a professor frye is not happy that russia is a normal country in this personalist autocratic sense. it's clear that he would prefer. that it was more normal and the western european cents. but nonetheless in russia is normal, then it's amenable to social science research to being understood. through social science because any country can be understood through social science. the beauty of the book which differentiates it from the vast majority of books published on russia?

is that it's empirical? it's full of evidence. most russia books are evidence free. and they're full of argument. they're full of assertion. they're full of all sorts of stuff personal experience, but they don't have any evidence. for the most part or the evidence that they have is made up. so here we have a book, which is just completely laden with empiricism. some of your professor fry is summarizing from other scholars and some of it he carried out himself of in very clever sophisticated. but surveys political and sociological research so this is very refreshing and very judicious and this alone makes the book a necessary read for anybody interested in russia. however, the argument of the book kind of well how to put it. the book makes you think nobody's going to read it. because there seems to be a lot of demand.

for a simplified mythologized politicized understanding of russia in other words, he's fighting against that but the fact that that seems to be so professive and makes him so angry. it seems to be a problem. now i would argue that this is not of course specific to russia at all. if russia is a normal country simplified mythologized politicized understandings of a country. that's even more universal than russia as a personalistotocracy. we could have a long discussion about us views on china. we could have an even long discussion about us views on america. they are simplified mythologized and politicized. so we have a tension here between the desire. to mobilize the social science and normalize russia. and the fact that that doesn't

happen for any country russia included. there's no analysis in the book of why every country is simplified mythologized and politicized. and that would be a good question for another time. so that's the global commonality quote. unfortunately social science research has had little impact on public discourse about russia and its relationship to the rest of the world. scratch out russia and put in any country you'd like to put okay. another issue. i'd like to raise for professor frye to consider. is that he has set up the interpretations as mutually exclusive. in other words, there's this fantastic social science research. that he wants the spotlight and then the other ignoramesis who indulge in putinology and in history. or tradition and so he's juxtaposed them as if they're mutually exclusive.

that's very interesting rhetorical strategy. it doesn't really work for him. first of all, there are people i won't mention any names but who have taught at princeton for 35 years and have argued that russia is a authoritarian country like other authoritarian countries, but that leadership matters. and that traditions history and institutions map. what he set them up as mutually exclusive rather than complementary. so that forces him to sneak back. with through the back door phrases, like well putin's kgp background is quote not irrelevant and on it goes so the rhetorical strategy is is interesting, but i wonder if it advances the social science argument because it's not a social science rhetorical strategy. okay. what's the question we're actually trying to explain here? what is the question that puzzles us that we don't

understand? the professor fry is helping us understand. well you might think that the question is. how does this particular personalist autocracy fit in? to other personalists photographers but that's not actually what the book says. the book says it is one like that. but in fact it gives a lot of examples of russia's being different. in fact, the problem here is that russia is not just the personalist autocracy today. but it's a personalist autocracy yesterday and the day before yesterday and the 100 years before that and the 300 years before that and the 700 years before that. so russia is on a 700-year plus transition to something other than personal stotocracy which not a lot of countries are on that transition or on that trajectory.

and so in the end he must in fact talk about the things that he said are mutually exclusive. which are problems like explaining why russia is still. russia and not for example, germany. which has had also episodes of personalists withocracy. what is not like that today. moreover we then get some stuff. that's very sneaky. very sneaky. for example compared to other countries quote russia is too rich and too. well educated. to be non-democratic corrupt to be so non-democratic corrupt and illiberal. so it's a personal autocracy like other ones, but it shouldn't be. somebody made a mistake the places too. well educated to be so non-democratic corrupt and a liberal. russia's exceptional for but why? why is it on the wrong path?

why is it like other not unique like other modern personalist photographies? and why is it on this 700 year transition out of something that it can't get out of. i'll make two final points if that's okay. what is weak? we have a weak strongman. what's very interesting about a week strong man? is he can martyr people at well, he can away their property. he can do a lot of things. that for example professor fry can't do. and professor frye is a powerful academic with tenure at a major research institution, and we wouldn't call him a weak academic. i think we would call him a strong academic. based upon his amazing publication record. is teaching evaluations? what's amazing about the argument of a weak strong man? is that i don't know how you could be a strong strong man. because all the problems that

make him weak are things putin does himself. he continually weakens his own rule. there's a kind of structural limitation. if professor fries argument is correct. you can't have a strong strong man because they step on themselves all the time. they undermine themselves by being too corrupt or fill in the blank in his many arguments so i'd like to know how you can be a strong strong man. and why some strong strong men are strong and why some other strong men seem to be condemned structurally to being weak because of all these trade-offs that they face. the final point and this is a point that's now becoming very popular. i saw it in foreign affairs under someone else's name recently. now the absence of an alternative or colors everything. i've been making this argument ever since i understood bolshevism.

some people might argue. i still don't understand bullshitism. but keith you already had your chance today, and this is not about me. this is about professor frye. but while shevism was not good at anything. it couldn't feed the people. it couldn't organize transport i could go on and i could go on it was a mess, but there was one thing it just excelled that. and that was destroying any hint of an alternative. it would crush immediately. with all its force the hint of an alternative. and so the absence of an alternative is what colors everything in today's russia including those extremely clever and subtle surveys that professor fry himself engineered with his colleagues. so that point i would argue is not deeply enough appreciated in the many interesting arguments in the book.

and that is to say that the absence of an alternative which also keith gesson alluded to in talking about eliminating candidates before you even get to the problem of needing to manipulate the election. it does make it a lot easier. i have to say we can't do that unfortunately in our faculty meetings. as well as these person was photography seem able to do. so in conclusion, let me reiterate that this is a very good book. on russia that there are a lot of good books on russia that you should never read. let alone buy. but this is one of them that you should now. open up your phone and go on amazon. and order immediately because it's empirically rich full of evidence. very clever in its use of social science and deployment of social science. and does make a lot of important

arguments about how to contextualize russia not solely or predominantly in personalistic. in the in the the personality of the individual ruler or in the history and tradition but in the way these kinds of regimes behave and that's a very valuable lesson for anybody who's trying to understand russia today. so heartfelt congratulations and thank you once again for the invitation today. thank you for those very challenging comments and looking forward to hearing tim's response. but first we're going to hear comments from vicki mario who is a professor of department of clinical science and the school of international and public affairs at columbia and is currently director of the institute for latin american studies biggie gre. g philippine daytona now, i understand keith comment about coming after stephen and i got myself.

um, so i am not smart enough, especially because of all to them my prior the prior to panelists. i know very little about russia, so program are multiple facebook and a comparative. is that worked on latin america? i think this is a pretty extraordinary book is very well written is strong. it's have a very, you know, it does a lot in weaving many different empirical information of russia in a way that it turns all together and allows those of us that are interested in russia that study other parts of the world to understand russia, but to understanding a comparative perspective our programming makes four comments on in with a question. and so the most is i think we have comparative is learn a lot about contemporary worker. there was interesting. is that these authoritarian competitive authoritarianism is the way we call it? it's quite different from the

soviet military and fast, although none of them are democratic the the hustles today is different from the russia of the past. i'm part of these difference. it will allows the book to be written because now although this is an authoritarian government basis enough freedom to get the information that allows researchers to produce the studies that really build these work. i'm using this studies is the pinpoints of the articles the constraints on computing on these work which are similar to other personality i am redeem, but you know, i think the one that i find strongers is that he does needs a repressive brokency because the other hand the repressive growth he could not be strong enough for us to over soaking right. so detention of the need of repression, whatever impressive system that is not enough to

kill yourself don't go over a lot of other aspects of the state and the balancing act of these authoritarian regime as us any other the second thing. but i think makes him more than the rest of the world is that he popularity. i think this is not again unique of personality authoritarian regimes even of party alfredi origins. i think china mexico other countries have seen these but through facilities his popularity for the you know, first. he's very dependent on the economy like everyone else but this is an economy. that's very natural resources and prices that he doesn't control so it's very much out of his control and even things that we think he's controls the knowledge swords like the nationalistic foreign policy of

course works like everywhere else. the invasion of premiere but it has cost in the relationships with our lives and unknown allies. so many things that he does to become popular of making a weekend. again. this is a problem. that's not unique to put things not unique to russia, but i think that team emphasized how it is important and i think in this case that your politics of it are quite unique to russia in that russia if i walk later, but not a stronger player and in fact that something that i think emphasize in his passion of cyber security, right? it's weapons of the week. they really do not have response to invade another country. so they need to do cyber terrorism. but it's very important in this book is how much has political science has changed in the study of russia since the fall of the

soviet union. i'm i came to grad school a little bit after theme so i do remember, you know, the people who are the older people were studying the soviet union and then the young generation was a studying, you know, what came afterwards and he relies on a work of political science world. that's probably why he students i have to say by a lot of russian colleagues and you see through our life and i think the reliance on surveys that it's less free ski because people have less, you know, let's say there's whatever ways of measuring as we played the old so your energy is unhappy this is not considered by policymakers and so the book in a fancy love okay here is you know the sources of information that should be considered but whole scholars to move beyond

their academic journals and to try to engage in the policy discussion, especially to these younger generation that so focus on on polishing of journals, which it was record us in the profession, but the word stand to make it other forms of production that are digestible for the public and that can you know be part of the conversation. maybe not of the promisation in tv, but yes of the conversations among policymakers and activities that comes take in the game. offer pretty i think that this is a book that i really want to emphasize the personal affecting teams here and these are going to russia because when he was still the soviet union and he keeps talking about his own view because it becomes russia. he's what it makes it.

so clear. i mean beyond the history and i want to come back to the history the idea that it is a different animal. he's true. none of them are democratic, but this is not the soviet union. i don't know if the category is probably italian isn't still around in political science, but it seems that they are very very different regime to say in the concluding chapter. i've seen this house are transitioned part to being and a personalistic regime. it's always hard to move in a transition because you have to do something with the guy right in it's that it's important to do with autocrats in so it's much farther than in a party out in a party regime. um, and also latin american is a little talk about your comparison with latin america. it's true. russia is richer is more educated levels of inequality are lower.

i look for many countries in latin america had much longer experience with competitive elections. even you know under only for males are from most of the 20th century, ban, russia did so even if basis of authoritarianism like mexico you and that was considered by the us political science of democracy in the 1960s, although no by mexicans. you have a competitive elections or semi competitive elections and many countries don't have long experience or relatively longer experience with democracy and the one thing that is really interesting about the stephen lewis experience really with democracy. so it seems are to think of a transition to something that the sun known in the country, right and you never in the conclusion when you discuss this transition a deal you don't of the history.

that's how much that history states what we can instantly that. i think it's different from the soviet union and this will begin to have an alternative to democracy. i think the narrative of the soviet union of the bolsheviks was an alternative to democracy that doesn't it's not there anymore. that's why we have a competitive authoritarian regime like a faith democracy, but it's not clear. we're once and that's history of no experience to democracy is going to shape the future and you talk very little about the history in the book you talk a little bit about soviet repression and impact on terminals, but i really stiffened that was absent for me thinking about the book was the role of history in in the finding contemporary theory, but this is again a fantastic book and particular fantastic book for someone like me who's the comparative east and who wanted

to learn about russia in a company. thanks a lot for invitation. thank you, vicky for those insights and and comments and questions. so tim according to our schedule you have five minutes to respond to all these. questions or to ask that you respond to the most difficult questions first. thanks a lot person really terrific set of comments. this is the first book panel that i've done and it's really terrific to get these comments some of which i you know, kind of been anticipated in the writing and some you know, some that are new. let me start with keith's comment about why his discourse been so debased on russia and you know, there is a lot of that debate lurking in the background in the book and i don't really take it on head on and that was a conscious decision because i was afraid that that would then just get the hackles up and

reinforce the kind of polarization and compel me into one camper or another and one thing about the book is there's a lot of stuff for each side of the russia hawk russia dove divide to not like i mean, the russia hawks won't like it to learn that when we did these surveys. in 2015. yes people weren't lying when they answered the question about putin's approval and the you know, rachel maddows the kind of russia hysterics in the trump bureau won't like to hear that when you look at russian efforts in 2016 the chances that they, you know turned the election in trump's favor are really, you know, really pretty low. so that was a conscious choice not to take that debate head on part of the reason why the russia discourse is so the base is it's hard to study russia. it's far away. it's opaque and that gives

people lots of room to make all kinds of claims that are hard to hard to disprove russia doesn't help things in this sense and that they often politicize the debate themselves in ways that are not helpful at all, but one question i kept going back to it's kind of what evidence could give somebody that would a fair-minded reader consider a person, you know persuasive. and there's some part of the readership that you're never going to persuade. so what i tried here was really roll load the dice and favor and just keep you know coming at the reader with more and more evidence and then at the end, you know, people are going to think what they're gonna think so but really interesting points and then your second point about russian specificity in that kind of rolls into just to steve's points as well. and this was a real tension in

the book and maybe i go overboard on trying to paint russia too much as a normal autocracy that too was something of a choice in that so much of writing about russia is in the vein that putin is unlike other leaders that russia is so unique that i was, you know pushing against that and you know, you might think i go too far, but also i that was really kind of a corrective based on where i think much of the writing on russia is today because you have to make a choice right either, you know, there's a lot of implicit non comparison of russia to other countries where people only look at russia and then their explanations are rooted only in factors that occur in russia and then by definition you can't know whether you know, the processes that are going on within russia are the same is in other

countries, so in trying to balance off, you know, what makes russia special and what makes it comparative, you know, you really do have to take a comparative approach to find out what's different about russia, you know. that russia's better educated, you know that you know that there's not much evidence that russians are less interested in politics than or less interested in participating in politics than in other countries the way you the way you establish that is by looking outside. so only by looking outside, can we then figure out what is unique and what's not unique about russia on the comments about that. i set these arguments up is mutually exclusive and yeah, that's that's a good criticism. i'm an area studies guy originally. i was russian language and literature. so, you know as a major is an undergraduate. so what i think is really

exciting about the new research on russia is that you know, my students and the kind of younger generation. they're not only really well trained in social science. they've spent a lot of time on the ground in russia, you know, they've traveled the country and they you know and you know a lot of the young russians who come to the us and study and come back and really marry the best of a social science approach and a deep understanding of the country. so, you know that i think distinguishes a lot of this work. yeah on the the week strong man, i struggled with this no one's gonna buy a book that's titled the constrained strong man, or the the moderately weak strong man, and the text is is more measured the than the title and

you know, steve says that i'm strong man. i'm appreciate my students don't always seem to hold that that point of view the the point i'm trying to make here is i think in a lot of discussions about russia in the west there is assumption that because putin bible politically that he can just do whatever he wants the bureaucracy just snaps to his orders because you know, he is all powerful and he is such a persuasive character, you know in the west putin is probably reading your emails right now because he has this incredible, you know, credibly powerful kgb that has these ways to fsb that's able to you know manipulate the internet in ways that that lead to russia's advantage and i want to push back against those views and really, you know, look at what you know aspects what can putin do really well crush the the political opposition and to make

alternatives less appealing if you look for example at the approval ratings, it's not just that putin's approval ratings have been high no one else is ratings have been high everyone else. there's a big gap between putin and everybody else in the approval rating. so i take steve a point quite well and on again segwaying into you know, vicki's point about short-changing history here and that's that that's a serious charge and i think you know, we're we're often forced to to make trade-offs in, you know, particularly in writing a book for a general audience. you really got to keep people turning the pages. and it forced me to you know, cut out a lot of topics that i would have liked to spend more time talking about one of this

is that that kind of history of personalism in russia. russia has had personalism. lots of countries have had personalist experiences for long a periods of time and even if we think though about russia, you know the crew shop in brezhnev era had a lot of collective decision-making at the highest levels in the the yeltsin era you had put yeltsin who was very much a kind of personalistic ruler, but he had to struggle every year to get the budget passed through the through the duma and that was an epic battle each year. and the point i want to make is that putin's russia is very different very different from that in that in. collecting so much power in his own hands. it allows them to do certain things, but not others in a lot of those other things are important for building power within russia, you know, if you

have the power to expropriate people it's very difficult to get people to invest. it's very difficult to get businesses to innovate and that's kind of this paradox and in steve's talked about in some of his writing as well about this kind of impotence of omnipotence, you know, if you have all power, you know, you just don't have the time and energy to resolve all problems and it creates lots of unintended consequences that i try to try to point out in the book. so simply we have a few questions from the audience right those we can talk we can devote another hour to just having some back and forth on the questions the panelists that proposed but we want to get the audience chance. so here's the first question one topic. not that has not been mentioned in the discussion and i looked through the table of contents and index it's not mentioned in the book is the role played by putin's organized crime connections in his policy choices. these have been very well documented extend back at least

since he worked in charge of contract approval in the saint peter petersburg mayor's office in the early 1990s and became involved in infamous court and oil for food scandal and are clearly connected to major international groups. well many authoritarian leaders like maduro find themselves cooperating with organized crime groups it that few of them had those ties so early in their careers before they made it to a high power position. does this set putin apart? so i do mention. putin's experience in the leningrad city government and the charges that they're he was in charge of kind of a pie a food import program in which money went money came money went out of the country and food never really came into the country and there's lots of allegations that you know, putin

was deeply involved in this catherine belton's book covers those topics in so much better detail than i can and you know, that's really not what this book is about and it's also, you know, not unique for, you know leaders to rely on all kinds of agents that there there disposal now whether or not that colors his economic policy or as foreign policies. that's the kind of analysis that i don't want to do in a book like this because it would require an awful lot of speculation and an awful lot of relying on sources that i think would would likely be a pretty dubious. second question and by the way, if anybody wants to jump in on these points, i mean we have a tremendous amount of expertise here. so i'd be i'd be you know more

than happy to hear from as well. that in the meantime, let's move to the second question. you mentioned that performance does matter even in personal dictatorships. which policy areas. do you find to be strong on quote good performance in russia and doesn't matter for outcomes given the foreign foreign policy cripples many efforts on the economic front. so it putin has been extremely good on the macro economy his great pitch to russians is that i brought you stability after the chaos of the 1990s and he did manage the inflow of the petro dollars into the russian economy, you know in a way that you know was not detrimental to the economy as it's happened in lots of other countries. so he's also hired a very good central banker who's kept macroeconomics stability a really high priority. also if you look at things like

lng production god's prom was tasked with developing this oil field the stockman the an oil field well in the north of russia, they bungled the job putin said, no, we're gonna give this to another another company to develop and you know, a brought it to market, you know two years ahead of schedule the sochi olympics, you know building the bridge to crimea if you look at these targeted the sputnik vaccine as well spooning 5 vaccine if you look at these targeted efforts the russian state can marshal resources to resolve specific problems what it's not good at is generating the kinds of economic dynamism that comes from innovation and new inventions and creating a

level economic playing field so that people with good ideas are rewarded rather than people with good connect good connections to the state in foreign policy too, you know, the annexation of crimea was wildly popular and it really bought putin four years of peace even as the economy started to slow down so that from his point of view, you know was a really wise move, you know, you know in other areas, you know, it's you know road building there's lots of things that we could look detail and see where the kremlin is not so good at doing those kinds of activities. i cite one. there's a great study of the world bank, which looks at the cost of building a road in finland and in northern russia on the other side of the border and the cost of building it in russia are three times higher than in finland, even though the climactic conditions are exactly

the same. so that's the kind of thing that russia is not so great at next question what consequences flow from your book for concrete policies with regard to russia the team around biden. are they more amenable to a more reality-based approach then you argue for that you argue for in your book. well, i hope they read the book. hope they buy the book what i think the main policy point i think to take away from the book. is to have a really clear-eyed view of russia and what it is in where it's going to recognize that russia is not on the brink of an economic collapse in just a few more sanctions is going to push them over the edge. that there's not this mass groundswell of support that only

if you know putin stumbles, there will be a you know, a mass a revolt to try to to bring down the regime at the same time. i that the book speaks to making policy towards russia not based on putin not to personalize relationships. that's what putin is really good at. he did that with schroeder in germany. he did that with bear lasconi in italy. i think a rush of policy needs to look beyond putin and recognize that there are many voices within the kremlin that might want to hear a different message than the one that putin wants to hear that there are many voiced groups within russian society that would like to see a better relations and a more predictable relationship and those kinds of messages, you know should be part of the package of how we approach russia so there's not kind of concrete policy proposals about what to do once you know new

start or how to handle, you know, russian trade policy, but the book does generate i think an approach towards viewing russia that could inform policy makers. thank you. so i i was wondering you could say more about to go back to keith's question about what your what your theory of changes including for, russia and what could change and and why would it change? well view is that? putin's 20 plus years in power are par for the course for the region. if you look at uzbekist.com azerbai was in power for 2029 years lukashenka has been in power for six years longer than putin the personalists autocracies in the former soviet space are very long live and even if we look outside of the

former soviet space autocratically regimes tend to last on average of about 15 years and the way that change has tended to not come about is the rep is when a leader dies, which is been you know what we've seen in azerbaijan who's pakistan and some other places in kazakhstan nazar bayad his step down but that's been a very, you know difficult transition. so one way is simply that putin will stay in power for a long period of time that russia will be in this nasty equilibrium of slow growth a sort of popular leader, but with no, alternatives to rally a version of russia that is you know, better able to satisfy the needs of the majority of its citizens another way. that change might come about is

through you know changes in the in the economy as russia's economy faces the changes in the global energy market. this makes it more difficult for an autocratic leader in that putin's first, you know, 10 years in power. he was able to satisfy the inner circle with tremendous rents beyond their belief, but also is able to satisfy the average russian because living standards doubled in the first decade in office, you know in the last four years putin has really started to have to make hard choices about you know, where does the next rule go does it go? to the inner circle who are you know important for his rule, or do they go to trying to build broader based economic growth? so economic change might be you know, one source of political change. on elections, you know, the

nature of elections has changed a lot as keith has keith pointed out if earlier putin was able to win kind of honest majorities, you know, we call them where you know, they're in the first decade in office putin, you know was able i think to claim that you know, yes there was fraud, but you know, most people believe that that fraud didn't have an impact on the elections. the next round of elections. i don't think the parliamentary elections but the presidential elections, you know, that's going to be a much much tougher challenge a verb putin to claim that he is able to win and on a super majority if current could if current trends continue so elections are another potential source where leaders can make mistakes where they as we see in belarus lukashenka stole too much in the elections and that got people on the streets in a

country where there had been very little protests, you know for for two decades. um, i'm skeptical to change comes from without. i think there's a lot of wishful thinking about foreign act foreign countries ability to to manipulate domestic politics in russia issues really hard and you know, i'm skeptical that that's the way that that political change will come about. we have another question from the audience. i wonder whether the term personalist is a good one to describe russia and other similar countries. the book seems to be making an argument. that is it is not is really not about putin, but the term personalist points exactly in the opposite direction. are there other terms that we might use to describe this political system. yeah personalist is not a great term. it's the one that's commonly used in this in this literature. they're really regimes in which

major policy and personnel decisions are made by a single individual particularly the decision of when it's time to step down right? so if in you know mexico, you know every six years under the pri the party said, okay your time is up that we need to move on to somebody else or even in china until recently where they were able to manage a norm of you know, two terms for the the general secretary in personal. it's regimes the the leader decides when it's time to go and usually they decide too late because there's all kinds of informational incentives of people at lower levels in the back bureaucracy to hide a lot of the bad news so we can't always assume that leaders who are politically unchallenged. are getting the best information

about what's going on in the country. tim were there any questions other other questions or comments from the panelists that you wanted to spend more time to interested in, you know in in steve and keith and vicky's view about how do we handle this? trade-off this difficult this this of accounting for the specificity. that's clearly there in the russian case. the foreign policy chapter in the book is the one that i struggled with the most because in lots of ways russia is an atypical autocracy in foreign policy and there is a whole literature in social science about the foreign policies of autocracies and it, you know looks as large and cross national decision-making about foreign policy and i didn't cite that literature precisely because i think you know, russia is very different from other

kinds of autocracies at the same time, you know, i want to avoid trying to you know, fetish fetishize fetishize the you know, what is unique about russia and you know, putting too much explanatory power on you know, things that are you know, if not, you know unique at least they typical among our talkies, so professor kotkind you have any kind of rules of thumb your work? does this, you know better than most historians where you you know, look at you know, russia as a, you know, former colonial country like britain and france and the difficulty of dealing with that. give yourself a little more credit professor fry. you actually do this. rhetorically, you hide some of your achievements.

by going after the simplified ignoramesis who need a certain view of russia. or who are wedded to it. you actually have the sophisticated even handed judicious. russia is normal country, but it has specificities too. your rhetorical package doesn't do full justice. to your achievements in my view, but i've already stated that. but let's not imagine that you ignore a russian history russian traditions russian institutions that you ignore putin's personality. in fact, you have all of that in the book. and it's rightfully there. so let's not be beat ourselves up here with a stick as if we're in the banya and we're trying to get the most out of steam here keith, ricky.

keith or becky did you did to respond? i agree. i think the material is there and i it's the most clear as you said in the chapter on foreign affairs, right? because that's where the geopolitical role of russia becomes evident. so you keep comparing russia with venezuela or turkey or hungary, but when you get to that chapter that comparison doesn't hold right and you bring china into the conversation so certainly i think you are you are doing in the book. it's it's there. i i thought what i thought it missing was in the conclusion in the way you you finalize and and i'm thinking about the future i have like, you know, it's very because you make these comparison which is at least for me a bit harder than american countries that the history was

so different. yes, they're poor and so it's india, but they have a different history and and watch and that's a long history of being an empire but also being on democratic or not even an electron empire so i have a question if i could for professor kotkin that, you know relates to this discussion. have you you know, you're you're talk of a 700 year transition. you know to to democracy suggests that it's never going to happen. um have you a term that's come up in your work is path dependence. kind of a depressing term. have you have you given up hope? this this is a question that professor fry has already answered and i would prefer to let his answer stand here and i would want the audience to focus

on his book. russia has had state collapse and autocracy comes back. it's had mass participatory revolution more than once and autocracy comes back. so we have a problem that needs to be explained. we don't necessarily have a cage that we live in. but what it's been a long time the kingdom of novguru. a very long time but anyway professor fright. back to you, i think. i quote actually steve at one point in the book about historical legacies and they're much harder to make persuasive than people commonly realize you know, so, you know, there's this really neat article by roya taliba in yurizuka for they show that in districts within russia where the purges were especially

severe voting patterns in contemporary russia are different than in regions where the purges were less severe turn out is lower support for the regime is higher. now that's really interesting what we met and that is much better. i think than a lot of work would just says look, you know russia's always had centralized power and putin centralizing power. so therefore that's an explanation. no, that's a description and you know, what we need is, you know an explanation for why it's happening now why decentralization is happening or why centralization is happening rather than decentralization because we've also seen that in the soviet period and in the russia period so i think there's this real a lot of interesting work being done right now that

looks at how the past affects the present and it's a really difficult thing to do without just hand waving about precisely what's the mechanism by which we had these purges back here. villages in 1938 and then we see voting patterns in the early 1990s and they're different. well, you know, what is the mechanism that you know makes that happen rather than just being, you know two discrete events. and it's really smart people doing interesting work on that and i just, you know, try to highlight a little bit a little bit of that. in the book we have another question from the audience that could end the panel on a dramatic note. do you believe putin has a path to get out of the top spot alive? they all do they all have a plan but it is, you know as i make the point in the book. it's difficult and vicky made this point too is that it's

difficult for these personalists rulers who have a masculated so many political institutions, that would really be helpful to facilitate a transfer of power but having a masculated them. they don't provide a soft landing pad for these kinds of personalists. rulers. so i mean one strategy would be to kind of revert to a post in the security services. that would make him hard to dislodge at the same time. it would also make the new president of russia. whoever that might be in a post-putineera very nervous. and it would be difficult for that person to really exercise powerfully were putin to still be around in the in the political scene. so the challenge for putin, is

that even if he would like to step down it's difficult to find a way to tie the hands of your successor so that they'll leave you alone. so we are just about out of time. i want to thank the panelists this was a terrific discussion. i wish i could go on for another hour. maybe we'll have everybody back when we can all be in person in the same room together at some point. um, but here's the book week strong man the limits of power and putin's russia published by princeton university. press please go out and buy it and again to everybody. thanks everybody. i really appreciate the comments. i thought they were terrific. so thank you and thanks to i serve for organizing. book tv continues now television for serious readers welcome. my name is cea