Ben Judah - Fragile empire: how Russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin

Copyright 2013 Ben Judah

The right of Ben Judah to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Judah, Ben.

Fragile empire: how Russia fell in and out of love with Vladimir Putin / Ben Judah.

pages; cm

ISBN 978-0-300-18121-0 (cloth: alkaline paper)

1. Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1952- 2. PresidentsRussia (Federation)

3. Russia (Federation)Politics and government1991- I. Title.

DK510.766.P87J83 2013

947.086'2dc23

2012048007

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2017 2016 2015 2014 2013

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of Russia

Troops loyal to Boris Yeltsin storm the rebellious Russian parliament in October 1993. (Eddie Opp, Kommersant)

Murder site in stairwell. St Petersburg, November 1998. (Sergey Semyenov, Kommersant)

Yeltsin weeps at Putin's May 2000 inauguration. (Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant)

Boris Berezovsky on his birthday and Vladimir Gusinsky. Moscow, March 1996. (Alexander Potapov, Kommersant)

Putin with Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of St Petersburg from 1991 to 1996. St Petersburg, late 1993. (Mikhail Razuvaev, Kommersant)

Mikhail Khodorkovsky behind bars. Moscow, September 2004. (Tatyana Makeyeva, AFP)

Putin visits the ethnic republic of Mordovia. Saransk, August 2012. (Alexander Astafyev, ITAR-TASS)

Vyacheslav Volodin, Gleb Pavlovsky and Vladislav Surkov. Moscow, February 2006. (Dmitry Lebedev, Kommersant)

Putin playing ice hockey. Moscow, April 2011. (Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant)

Dmitry Medvedev, president 200812, with Putin in the background. Moscow, December 2007. (Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant)

Russian Patriarch Kirill I with Dmitry Medvedev and fellow Orthodox clergy. Moscow, February 2011. (Alexander Miridonov, Kommersant)

Alexey Navalny, leader of the 201112 protest movement. Moscow, December 2011. (Vasily Shaposhnikov, Kommersant)

Evgeny Roizman, Ekaterinburg opposition activist, June 2011. (Ekaterina Titova, Kommersant)

Protestors on Moscow's Prospect Sakharova, 24 December 2011. (Denis Vishinskiy, Kommersant)

Battalion of OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit). Moscow December 2011. (Tatyana Makeyeva, Reuters)

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Grozny, March 2007. (Said Tsarnayev, Reuters)

The Primorsky Partisans. Primorye region, October 2010. (screen grab from video)

1 Troops loyal to Boris Yeltsin storm the rebellious Russian parliament in October 1993. There was hysteria the country might collapse completely.

2 The aftermath of a murder in a St Petersburg stairwell, late 1998. In the 1990s over 150,000 people were murdered in Russia. Even national politicians like Galina Starovoytova were gunned down in their stairwells.

3 Yeltsin weeps at Putin's May 2000 inauguration. His abrupt December 1999 resignation speech implored Russia for forgiveness.

4 The oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky (left) and Vladimir Gusinsky (right) mistook the new president for a weakling. Aiming to manipulate Putin, within a year they had both fled into exile.

5 Putin was both shadow and deputy to Anatoly Sobchak (left), the flamboyant mayor of St. Petersburg from 1991 to 1996.

6 The billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003 and sentenced to eight years in prison. His clash with Putin determined who was sovereign over oil big business or the state.

7 The national leader was remade by television into an alpha male in ever-changing costumes. The aim was a Putin for every Russian.

8 Political technologists: Vyacheslav Volodin (left) holds the tract His Ideology , whilst the spin-doctor Gleb Pavlovsky smiles (centre) next to the grey cardinal Vladislav Surkov (right).

9 Putin exults at an ice-hockey win. In autumn 2008 it seemed he had delivered the impossible: a decade of BRIC economic growth, a 140 per cent hike in incomes and the defeat of an American ally in Georgia.

10 The tandem: Dmitry Medvedev, president 2008=N12, insisted he was not a puppet, until he shuffled aside for Putin, his prime minister, at the next election.

11 Russian Patriarch Kirill I (centre right) hailed the Putin era as a miracle of God. The resurgent Orthodox Church and the Kremlin are increasingly allies.

12 Alexey Navalny led the 2011=N12 protest movement. An internet politician, a liberal and an Islamophobe in trendy clothes, Navalny captured all the promise and flaws of the new opposition.

13 Detested by many Moscow liberals, Evgeny Roizman is the most popular politician in his Ekaterinburg hometown and across the Urals. He is a vigilante, opposition activist and iconcollector who runs a private network of heroin clinics.